NEW YORK – Glynis Johns, a Tony Award-winning stage and screen performer who played the mother opposite Julie Andrews in the iconic film “Mary Poppins” and introduced the world to the bittersweet standard-to-be “Send in the Clowns” by Stephen Sondheim, has died. She was 100 years old.
Her manager, Mitch Clem, said she died of natural causes on Thursday at a Los Angeles assisted living facility. “Today’s a sad day for Hollywood,” Clem stated. “She is the last of the last of old Hollywood.”
Johns was recognized as a perfectionist in her field – precise, analytical, and opinionated. Her functions have to be multifaceted. Anything less was less than giving her all.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m not interested in only playing the role on one level,” she told The Associated Press in 1990. “The whole point of first-rate acting is to make it a reality.” To be honest. And to be real, I have to make meaning of it in my mind.”
Glynis Johns, ‘Mary Poppins’ Star Who First Sang Sondheim’s ‘Send In The Clowns,’ Dies At 100
Johns’ greatest success was as Desiree Armfeldt in “A Little Night Music,” for which she received a Tony Award in 1973. Sondheim penned the classic song “Send in the Clowns” for her unusual husky voice, but she lost the role in the 1977 film adaptation to Elizabeth Taylor.
“I’ve had other songs written for me, but nothing like that,” Johns explained to the Associated Press in 1990. “It’s the greatest gift I’ve ever been given in the theater.”
Others who have performed Sondheim’s most popular song after Johns include Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughan, and Olivia Newton-John. It was also performed by Elijah Wood in season two of “Yellowjackets” in 2023.
“A Little Night Music” had gone into rehearsal with some of the text and score incomplete, including a solo piece for Johns, when it was first conceived. Director Hal Prince proposed that she and co-star Len Cariou improvise a scene or two to spark ideas for book writer Hugh Wheeler.
“Hal said, ‘Why don’t you just say what you feel,” she recalled to the AP. “When Len and I did that, Hal got on the phone to Steve Sondheim and said, ‘I think you’d better get in a cab and get round here and watch what they’re doing because you are going to get the idea for Glynis’ solo.” ‘
Johns was the fourth generation of a theatrical family from England. Her father, Mervyn Johns, was a character actor, and her mother was a pianist. She was born in Pretoria, South Africa, because her parents were on a tour there then.
Glynis Johns, ‘Mary Poppins’ Star Who First Sang Sondheim’s ‘Send In The Clowns,’ Dies At 100
Johns began her career as a dancer at the age of 12 and as an actor in London’s West End at the age of 14. Her breakout performance was as the passionate mermaid in the 1948 blockbuster comedy “Miranda.”
“I was quite an athlete; my muscles were strong from dancing, so the tail was just fine; I swam like a porpoise,” she told Newsday then. She was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress in 1960’s “The Sundowners,” alongside Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum. (She was defeated by Shirley Jones in “Elmer Gantry.”)
Other highlights include her role as the mother in “Mary Poppins,” which introduced Julie Andrews and included her singing the rousing song “Sister Suffragette.” She also appeared in the 1989 Broadway revival of W. Somerset Maugham’s romantic comedy “The Circle,” with Rex Harrison and Stewart Granger.
“I’ve retired several times. My personal life has taken precedence over my professional life. My life includes the theatre. It most likely requires my maximum level of intelligence; thus, I must return to it to discover that I have the skill. “I’m not as good at anything else,” she told the Associated Press.
Glynis Johns, ‘Mary Poppins’ Star Who First Sang Sondheim’s ‘Send In The Clowns,’ Dies At 100
To prepare for Horton Foote’s 1998 play “A Coffin in Egypt,” about a grand dame reminiscing about her life on and off a ranch on the Texas plains, she got the Texas-born Foote to record a short audio of himself reading certain lines and used it as her coach.
In a 1991 “A Little Night Music” performance in Los Angeles, she played Madame Armfeldt, Desiree’s mother, a role she created. In 1963, she had her television sitcom, “Glynis.”
Johns had four marriages and lived all over the world. The first was her only child’s father, the late Gareth Forwood, an actor who died in 2007.
SOURCE – (AP)
