Glynis Johns

Glynis Margaret Payne Johns (5 October 1923 – 4 January 2024) was a British actress and singer. In a career exceeding seven decades on stage and screen, Johns appeared in more than 60 films and 30 plays. She received various accolades throughout her career, including a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award, as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Laurence Olivier Award. Before her death at age 100, she was considered one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood and classical years of British cinema.

Johns was born in Pretoria, South Africa, the daughter of Welsh actor Mervyn Johns. She appeared on stage from a young age and was typecast as a stage dancer from early adolescence, making her screen debut in South Riding (1938). She rose to prominence in the 1940s following her role as Anna in the war drama film 49th Parallel (1941), for which she won a National Board of Review Award for Best Acting, and starring roles in Miranda (1948) and Third Time Lucky (1949). Following No Highway in the Sky (1951), a joint British-American production, Johns took on increasingly more roles in the United States and elsewhere. She made her television and Broadway debuts in 1952 and took on starring roles in such films as The Sword and the Rose (1953), The Weak and the Wicked (1954), Mad About Men (1954), The Court Jester (1955), The Sundowners (1960), The Cabinet of Caligari (1962), The Chapman Report (1962), and Under Milk Wood (1972). On television, she starred in her own sitcom Glynis (1963).

Renowned for the breathy quality of her husky voice, Johns sang songs written specifically for her both on screen and stage, most notably "Sister Suffragette", written by the Sherman Brothers for Disney's Mary Poppins (1964), in which she played Winifred Banks and for which she received a Laurel Award, and "Send In the Clowns", composed by Stephen Sondheim for Broadway's A Little Night Music (1973), in which she originated the role of Desiree Armfeldt and for which she received a Tony Award and Drama Desk Award.

Early life and education

Glynis Margaret Payne Johns was born on 5 October 1923 while her parents were touring Pretoria, capital of the then Union of South Africa (a dominion of the British Empire and later the British Commonwealth of Nations). Her mother was Alyce Steele-Wareham, an Australian-born concert pianist of English descent who had studied in London and Vienna. Her father was Welsh actor Mervyn Johns, who became a star of British films during the Second World War, after which he worked regularly as a character actor at Ealing Studios. Through him, Johns was a cousin of British judge John Geoffrey Jones. She was given the middle names Margaret and Payne after her two grandmothers, her paternal grandmother Margaret Anne Samuel and her maternal grandmother Elizabeth Steele-Payne, the latter's family having formed the musical ensemble The Steele-Payne Bellringers in which she performed as one of the first women virtuoso violinists.

Johns' parents met while both were studying in London, he at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and she at the Royal Academy of Music. They married on 17 November 1922 in St Giles, London, after which they left to tour the British dominions with her family's theatre company. The family returned to England just a few months after she was born. Age five, she joined the London Ballet School; by six, she was hailed in Britain as a dancing wonder; by ten, she was working as a Ballet instructor; and by eleven, she had earned a degree to teach dance. Hoping to study with the Sadler's Wells Ballet at age twelve, she was enrolled instead at Clifton High School in Bristol, balancing academia with the two hours a day she spent at the Cone School of Dancing (which later merged with the Ripman School to form Tring Park School for the Performing Arts). As a dance student, Johns amassed some twenty-five gold medals. Aside from her Clifton education, she also attended South Hampstead High School in London, where she was a contemporary of Angela Lansbury.

Career

1923–1939: Career beginnings

Johns made her theatrical debut in October 1923 at just three weeks old when she was carried onto the London stage by her grandmother Elizabeth Steele-Payne, a violinist-impresario who had inherited the production's company from her father. She thus became the fourth generation in her mother's family to appear on stage.

In 1931 at the age of eight, Johns was cast as Sonia Kuman in Elmer Rice's Judgement Day at the Phoenix Theatre in London. She played alongside theatre actors Sir Lewis Casson, Ronald Adam, and George Woodbridge, who played Judge Vlora, Judge Tsankov, and Judge Sturdza, respectively. As a child ballerina in 1935, Johns played Ursula in Buckie's Bears; this production lasted from 27 December 1935 to 11 January 1936 at the Garrick Theatre. Her proficiency in dance led her to be cast in several children's plays throughout the 1930s, notably during the Christmas holidays. She was spotted by a manager and subsequently cast in her first major stage production, as Napoleon's daughter in the 1936 short play St Helena at The Old Vic; she was in productions of The Children's Hour and The Melody That Got Lost the same year. Following this, she was recast as Sonia Kuman in Elmer Rice's 1937 production of Judgement Day (this time at London's Strand Theatre), J. M. Barrie's 1937 play A Kiss for Cinderella, and Esther McCracken's 1938 play Quiet Wedding, in which she played the bridesmaid Miranda Bute at Wyndham's Theatre, London.

Johns made her screen debut in 1938 at the age of 14 with the eponymous film adaptation of Winifred Holtby's novel South Riding, produced by Alexander Korda and directed by Victor Saville, in which she played Midge Carne, the daughter of aspiring politician Robert Carne (played by Ralph Richardson). She had small roles in David Evans' 1938 crime film Murder in the Family and two Brian Desmond Hurst films – his 1938 black-and-white crime film Prison Without Bars and 1939 thriller On the Night of the Fire (in which she was again cast alongside Ralph Richardson).

1940–1949: British film and theatre

Johns averaged one and a half films a year throughout the 1940s, starting in 1940 with Under Your Hat, in which she played Winnie, a supporting character to Jack Hulbert's Jack Millett and Cicely Courtneidge's Kay Millett in this musical comedy spy film. Johns' scene in the 1941 British historical drama The Prime Minister as Miss Sheridan did not make the final cut, though her role in the 1941 British and Canadian World War II drama film 49th Parallel, in which she replaced Elisabeth Bergner as Anna, earned her a National Board of Review Award for Best Acting and international acclaim. She continued with supporting roles as Romanian resistance fighter Paula Palacek in the 1943 British spy film, The Adventures of Tartu; supernatural innkeeper Gwyneth (alongside her father Mervyn Johns' Rhys) in the 1944 British drama film, The Halfway House; and the fun-loving cousin of Deborah Kerr's Dizzy Clayton in the 1945 British drama film, Perfect Strangers, in which she was part of a very talented cast including Roger Moore, and for which Radio Times' Robyn Karney said she was "excellent". In a starring role, Johns played Millie in the 1946 British comedy film This Man Is Mine and war widow Judy in the 1947 British drama film Frieda. David Parkinson noted that Johns "seemed to epitomise modern British womanhood". Conversely, she was cast as Mabel Chiltern in An Ideal Husband (1947), Alexander Korda's adaptation of the 1895 play by Oscar Wilde, in which Johns helps Lord Arthur Goring (Michael Wilding) prevent Laura Cheveley (Paulette Goddard) from destroying the reputation of her politician brother, Sir Robert Chilton (Hugh Williams).

For her role as playful Cornish mermaid Miranda Trewella in Ken Annakin's 1948 black and white comedy film Miranda, in which she causes havoc in a London household, David L. Vineyard on MysteryFile wrote, "Johns is a revelation: long platinum hair, Khirghiz eyes, and that breathless voice, perfect for this sexy romp," and ScreenOnline's Matthew Coniam wrote, "Miranda ... is played ideally by Glynis Johns ... a strikingly unusual actress facially reminiscent of Gloria Grahame, with a melodic, purring voice." As Miranda, Johns wore a tail made specially by The Dunlop Rubber Company and commissioned by producer Betty Box. The cast also included Griffith Jones, Googie Withers, and David Tomlinson, with whom Johns was later reunited in The Magic Box (1951) and Mary Poppins (1964). Given the weight of her tail, Tomlinson recalled his alarm at having to carry her around. The following year, she had a brief cameo in Helter Skelter, a gleefully scattershot comedy in which she again played the flirtatious mermaid Miranda.