sassy old broads

Mimi Weddell, Hat Enthusiast, Actress, Is Dead

All too often, we find that the only people who come across as truly likable in the news are the ones that have just died. Such as Mimi Weddell, a flamboyant actress and one of New York Magazine’s Most Beautiful New Yorkers, who passed away a couple of weeks ago at the age of 94. Mimi was the kind of sassy old broad your Intel editors fancy they would like to be one day.

She came to acting late, getting into the business only in her early sixties, but she quickly distinguished herself with roles such as the “snoring woman” in Heartburn, the “choking diner” in Hitch, and as Stanford’s Waspy grandmother in Sex and the City, along with sundry campy parts in movies like Dracula’s Last Rites and Student Bodies. She was tall and willowy and smoked using a cigarette holder, and she famously had a 150-plus collection of hats, which were the subject of a 2008 documentary, Hats Off, and which she wore everywhere, much to the chagrin of her children.

She would walk down the street wearing a pith helmet,” her daughter told the Times. “It could be embarrassing.”

Mimi, of course, didn’t care:

Hats give you a frame,” she told The Times in 2008. “However dreary you feel, if you put on a hat, by golly, you’ve changed everything. I keep telling my daughter, my granddaughter, everybody, ‘If you don’t wear a hat, you’re missing it.’ ”


And apparently, she was fearless until the end. A letter on the website for the documentary relays that toward the end, she was asked if she was scared.

I heard a strong, ”NO”, and then silence.


We know that it’s customary to take off your hat when someone dies. But today, we suggest everyone put their hats on.

Mimi Weddell dies at 94; the subject of ‘Hats off’ [LAT]
Mimi Weddell, Actress and Hat Devotee, Is Dead at 94 [NYT]

Related: The Most Beautiful New Yorkers [NYM]

Mimi Weddell, Hat Enthusiast, Actress, Is Dead