NEW YORK (AP) â Glynis Johns, a Tony Award-winning and star who played the mother opposite Julie Andrews in the classic movie âMary Poppinsâ and introduced the world to the bittersweet standard-to-be âSend in the Clownsâ by Stephen Sondheim, has died. She was 100.
Mitch Clem, her manager, said she died Thursday at an assisted living home in Los Angeles of natural causes. âTodayâs a sad day for Hollywood,â Clem said. âShe is the last of the last of old Hollywood.â
Johns was known to be a perfectionist about her profession â precise, analytical and opinionated. The roles she took had to be multi-faceted. Anything less was giving less than her all.
âAs far as Iâm concerned, Iâm not interested in playing the role on only one level,â she told The Associated Press in 1990. âThe whole point of first-class acting is to make a reality of it. To be real. And I have to make sense of it in my own mind in order to be real."
Johnsâ greatest triumph was playing Desiree Armfeldt in âA Little Night Music,â for which she won a Tony in 1973. Sondheim wrote the showâs hit song âSend in the Clownsâ to suit her distinctive husky voice, but she lost the part in the 1977 film version to Elizabeth Taylor.
âIâve had other songs written for me, but nothing like that,â Johns told the AP in 1990. âItâs the greatest gift Iâve ever been given in the theater.â
Others who followed Johns in singing Sondheimâs most popular song include Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughan and Olivia Newton-John. It also appeared in season two of âYellowjacketsâ in 2023, sung by Elijah Wood.
Back when it was being conceived, âA Little Night Musicâ had gone into rehearsal with some of the book and score unfinished, including a solo song for Johns. Director Hal Prince suggested she and co-star Len Cariou improvise a scene or two to give book writer Hugh Wheeler some ideas.
âHal said âWhy donât you just say what you feel,ââ she recalled to the AP. âWhen Len and I did that, Hal got on the phone to Steve Sondheim and said, âI think youâd better get in a cab and get round here and watch what theyâre doing because you are going to get the idea for Glynisâ solo.ââ
Johns was the fourth generation of an English theatrical family. Her father, Mervyn Johns, had a long career as a character actor and her mother was a pianist. She was born in Pretoria, South Africa, because her parents were visiting the area on tour at the time of her birth.
Johns was a dancer at 12 and an actor at 14 in Londonâs West End. Her breakthrough role was as the amorous mermaid in the title of the 1948 hit comedy âMiranda.â
âI was quite an athlete, my muscles were strong from dancing, so the tail was just fine; I swam like a porpoise,â she told 51°”Íűday in 1998. In 1960âs âThe Sundowners,â with Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum, she was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar. (She lost out to Shirley Jones in âElmer Gantry.â)
Other highlights include playing the mother in âMary Poppins,â the movie that introduced Julie Andrews and where she sang the rousing tune âSister Suffragette.â She also starred in the 1989 Broadway revival of âThe Circle,â W. Somerset Maughamâs romantic comedy about love, marriage and fidelity, opposite Rex Harrison and Stewart Granger.
âIâve retired many times. My personal life has come before my work. The theater is just part of my life. It probably uses my highest sense of intelligence, so therefore I have to come back to it, to realize that Iâve got the talent. Iâm not as good doing anything else,â she told the AP.
To prepare for âA Coffin in Egypt,â Horton Footeâs 1998 play about a grand dame reminiscing about her life on and off a ranch on the Texas prairie, she asked the Texas-born Foote to record a short tape of himself reading some lines and used it as her coach.
In a 1991 revival of âA Little Night Musicâ in Los Angeles, she played Madame Armfeldt, the mother of Desiree, the part she had created. In 1963, she starred in her own TV sitcom âGlynis.â
Johns lived all around the world and had four husbands. The first was the father of her only child, the late Gareth Forwood, an actor who died in 2007.
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Mark Kennedy is at
Mark Kennedy, The Associated Press
