NEW YORK (AP) — Glynis Johns, a Tony Award-winning star of stage and screen who played the mother opposite Julie Andrews in the classic film “Mary Poppins” and introduced the world to the bittersweet standard film “Send in the Clowns” by Stephen Sondheim , has died. She was 100.
Mitch Clem, her manager, said she died of natural causes Thursday at an assisted living home in Los Angeles. “Today is a sad day for Hollywood,” Clem said. “She’s the last of the last of old Hollywood.”
Johns was known in her profession as a perfectionist – precise, analytical and opinionated. The roles she took on had to be diverse. Everything else meant less when she gave everything.
“In my opinion, I'm not interested in playing the role on just one level,” she told The Associated Press in 1990. “The point of top-notch acting is to make it real.” Be real. And I have to understand it in my own head to be real.”
Johns' greatest triumph was the role of Desiree Armfeldt in “A Little Night Music,” for which she won a Tony in 1973. Sondheim wrote the series' hit song “Send in the Clowns” to match her distinctive husky voice, but she lost the role to the 1977 film adaptation by Elizabeth Taylor.
“I've had other songs written for me, but nothing like this,” Johns told the AP in 1990. “It’s the greatest gift I’ve ever been given in the theater.”
Others who followed Johns and sang Sondheim's most popular song included Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughan and Olivia Newton-John. It also appeared in the second season of “Yellowjackets” in 2023, sung by Elijah Wood.
When A Little Night Music was conceived, rehearsals were still at the stage where some of the book and score had not yet been completed, including a solo song for Johns. Director Hal Prince suggested that she and her co-star Len Cariou improvise a scene or two to give author Hugh Wheeler some ideas.
“Hal said, 'Why don't you just say what you feel,'” she recalled to the AP. “When Len and I were doing that, Hal called Steve Sondheim and said, 'I think you'd better get in a cab and drive over here and see what they do, because you'll get the idea.' Glynis' Solo.'
Johns was the fourth generation of an English theater 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 in London's West End at 14. Her breakthrough came with the role of the love-struck mermaid in the hit comedy “Miranda” from 1948.
“I was quite an athlete, my muscles were strong from dancing, so the cock was just fine; I swam like a porpoise,” she told Newsday in 1998. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1960's The Sundowners, starring Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum. (She lost to Shirley Jones in “Elmer Gantry.”)
Other highlights include playing the mother in “Mary Poppins,” the film that introduced Julie Andrews and in which she sang the stirring tune “Sister Suffragette.” She also starred in the 1989 Broadway revival of The Circle, W. Somerset Maugham's romantic comedy about love, marriage and loyalty, opposite Rex Harrison and Stewart Granger.
“I have retired many times. My personal life preceded my work. Theater is simply a part of my life. It probably demands my utmost intelligence, so I have to come back to it to realize that I have the talent for it. I’m not as good at anything else,” she told the AP.
To prepare for “A Coffin in Egypt,” Horton Foote's 1998 play about a tall lady recalling her life on and off a ranch on the Texas prairie, she asked the Texas-born Foote to record a short tape , in which he reads a few lines, used it as her trainer.
In a 1991 revival of “A Little Night Music” in Los Angeles, she played Madame Armfeldt, the mother of Desiree, the role she created. In 1963 she starred in her own TV sitcom Glynis.
Johns lived all over 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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