Biography
During her twenty-one year Hollywood career, Minna Gombell was also billed as Winifred Lee and Nancy Carter. By any name, Gombell was usually typecast in brittle, hollow-eyed, hard-boiled character parts. Devoted Late Late Show fans will recall Gombell as one of the secondary murder victims in
The Thin Man (1934), as Mrs. Oliver Hardy in
Block-Heads (1938), as the Queen of the Beggars in
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), and as clubfooted Joan Leslie's mother in
High Sierra (1941). In 1935, Minna Gombell was afforded top billing in the above-average Monogram domestic drama
Women Must Dress. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide