Features

Doris Hoffmann, early face of Alzheimer’s in documentary, dies at 94

Staff
Saturday April 27, 2002

OAKLAND, Calif. — Doris Goodday Hoffmann, an Alzheimer’s patient who put a face on the devastating disease in her daughter’s Oscar-nominated film, has died. She was 94. 

Hoffmann died Tuesday at a nursing home from complications related to Alzheimer’s. Her daughter, filmmaker Deborah Hoffmann, spent many years documenting her descent into dementia. 

“You read things like this disease would rob people of their humanity, and I was not finding that to be the case. I wanted to make something different than what was out there,” Deborah Hoffmann said of her inspiration to make the 1994 film, “Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter.” 

The film won more than 30 international awards, including a Peabody and Emmy, and became an important work for doctors, patients and family members trying to understand and cope with the disease. 

Hoffmann focused on her mother’s cheerfulness and goofiness, showing millions of viewers around the world her obsessions with constantly eating bananas and hiding boxes of cookies around her apartment. 

Hoffmann was born in San Francisco and earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1930 and later a master’s degree in social work at Columbia University. 

She is survived by her daughter, as well as a son, two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.