Glynis Johns, Tony winner of ‘A Little Night Music,’ dies at 100

Glynis Johns, the British actress who won a Tony Award for her role in “A Little Night Music,” lending a husky, emotion-filled voice to the show’s most memorable song: “Send in the clowns,” and starred as a feisty Edwardian suffragist in the Disney film classic “Mary Poppins” in a transatlantic career that lasted more than 60 years, died Thursday in Los Angeles. She was 100.

The death at an assisted living facility was confirmed by her manager, Mitch Clem.

Mrs. Johns was 49 and on the brink of her fourth divorce when Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music” premiered at the Shubert Theater in February 1973. The New York Times described her character, Desirée Armfeldt, as “a somewhat world-weary and deeply loving actress in turn-of-the-century Sweden.”

The critics loved her. For Clive Barnes of The New York Times, “Glynis Johns’ misty voice and glittering eyes were a vibrant concept.”

To Walter Kerr, also writing in The Times, she was “that cousin of bullfrogs and consort of weary gods,” described as “discreet, dangerous… and gratifyingly funny.”

When she received the award for best actress in a musical in the 1973 Tony Awards Presentationshe thanked the “whole company” of the show, who “gave me back a joy I had lost in the theater.”

She was best known as a very different kind of character. In “Mary Poppins,” Disney’s award-winning 1965 family musical, Mrs. Johns was Mrs. Banks, an enthusiastic wife, mother and political activist in 1910s London.

While her two small children had adventures with their supernatural nanny (Julie Andrews), Mrs. Banks donned a sash that read “Votes for Women” and made plans to “throw things at the Prime Minister.”

Ms. Johns’s easy-going versatility suggested she might have been born to act, but it had not been her only passion, as she told The Los Angeles Times in 1991. “I wanted to be a scientist,” Ms. Johns said. “I would have liked to continue at university. But you can’t do everything in life.”

“And I had no choice at that point,” she added. The Second World War ‘broke out when I was sixteen’.

Glynis Margaret Payne Johns was born on October 5, 1923 in Pretoria, South Africa, where her parents, both artists, were on tour.

Her father, Mervyn Johns, was a Welsh actor who had a prolific theater and film career in London, and was perhaps best known as Bob Cratchit in the 1951 British film ‘Scrooge’ (released as ‘A Christmas Carol’ in the United States). Her mother, Alice Maude (Steele-Wareham) Johns, who was Australian, was a concert pianist who played under the stage name Alyse Steele-Payne.

Glynis studied at the London Ballet School from the age of five. When she made her debut in “Buckie’s Bears” at the age of twelve, she became the fourth generation – on her mother’s side – to make a career in the theater.

And she grew up on stage. In 1936, she was the troubled schoolgirl who sparked the plot in Lillian Hellman’s play “The Children’s Hour.” A year later she played the fairy tale heroine in ‘A Kiss for Cinderella’ and in 1943 the title role in ‘Peter Pan’.

She made her film debut in “South Riding” (1938) as the daughter of Ralph Richardson. She made a war drama, “49th Parallel” (1941), starring Laurence Olivier. In “An Ideal Husband” (1947) she was Oscar Wilde’s frivolous and feisty Mabel Chiltern.

When Ms. Johns’s films were shown in the United States, they were met with sincere, if faint, praise. Of ‘Miranda’ (1949), a comedy about a mermaid who wanted to see London, Bosley Crowther wrote in The Times: ‘Glynis Johns is enchanting – at least one half of her is – as the coy, flirtatious, finny creature. ‘ When she returned in “State Secret” (1950), with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Crowther found her “very sassy and explosive as the music hall girl.”

Exactly when she made her Hollywood film debut is a matter of opinion. “No highway in the sky” (1951), in which she played a mild-mannered and very military-looking flight attendant, was a 20th Century Fox film starring James Stewart, but filmed in England.

She made two Disney films abroad that were British co-productions. In “The Sword and the Rose” (1953) she played Henry VIII’s little sister; in “Rob Roy” (1953), the wife of the Scottish freedom fighter.

She appeared in more than a dozen Hollywood films, displaying aristocratic restraint as often as boisterous working-class enthusiasm.

Mrs. Johns was a true Southern belle of the early 20th century, fed up with her obnoxious husband (Jackie Gleason) in the comedy “Papa’s Delicate Condition” (1963) and a talkative Australian innkeeper in “The Sundowners” (1960) . ), starring Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr.

In addition to playing the London suffragist in ‘Mary Poppins’ (1965), she was the comic relief in ‘The Chapman Report’ (1962), playing a 19th-century Scottish immigrant in the drama ‘All of me to give” (1957), Jimmy Stewart’s wife in “Dear Brigitte” (1965), a comedy about a math prodigy, and an author having too much fun to finish her book in “Don’t Just Stand There” ( 1968).

Proud of her Welsh heritage, she appeared in “Under Milk Wood” (1971), a British film version of the poet Dylan Thomas’s film of the same name. radio play starring and narrated in part by Richard Burton. As Myfanwy Price, a seamstress and sweet shop owner in a Welsh fishing village, she passionately fantasized about the cloth merchant on the other side of town.

In “The ref” (1994), she was Kevin Spacey’s obnoxious mother. In “While You Were Sleeping” (1995), she was the vulnerable grandmother of the comatose hero. Her last film was “Superstar” (1999), a comedy in which she played Molly Shannon’s grandmother, who runs over a priest in her motorized wheelchair.

On American television, she was a mystery writer in a short series of her own, “Glynis” (1963), and once played Diane Chambers’ well-dressed, chauffeur-driven mother in “Cheers.” In the 1982 miniseries “Little Gloria… Happy at Last,” she was the mother of Gloria Vanderbilt’s mother, a lively flapper of a certain age.

But Ms. Johns had begun her career on the stage and returned to it often. She made her Broadway debut in “Gertie‘ (1952), received critical acclaim – ‘quietly humorous in everything she does’, according to The Times – but the play closed after five performances.

She conquered Broadway audiences as the title character of George Bernard Shaw’s “Major Barbara” (1956), a munitions heiress who worked at a Salvation Army shelter, starring Charles Laughton. Brooks Atkinson of The Times called the production “a stalemate” between Laughton and Shaw, but The Daily News called the comedy “one of the best in many seasons.”

On Broadway, she appeared in a second Shaw play, “Too True to Be Good” (1963), with Lillian Gish.

In London, she played Anne of Cleves in “The King’s Mare” (1966) and Alma Rattenbury, a notorious murderer from the 1930s, in “Cause Célèbre” (1977). In the early 1970s she toured internationally – playing England, the United States and Australia – in Noël Coward’s romantic comedy ‘The Marquise’.

Her final appearance on Broadway, opposite Rex Harrison in his final stage production, was in W. Somerset Maugham’s comedy “The Circle” (1989).

Mrs. Johns was married and divorced four times. Her first husband, from 1942 to 1948, was Anthony Forwood, a British actor. She then married David R. Foster (1952-56) and Cecil Henderson (1960-62), both businessmen, and finally Elliott Arnold (1964-73), an American feature film writer and novelist.

Her only child, a son, Gareth Forwood, died in 2007. She is survived by a grandson and three great-grandchildren. She was a longtime resident of Los Angeles.

Perhaps it was a good thing that fate had pushed her into show business. In her youth, she said in a 1973 article in The Times, she had wanted to lead “what I considered a ‘normal’ existence, but I soon found that I was not as normal outside the theater as in it .

She concluded: ‘Acting is my highest form of intelligence, the time when I use the best part of my brain.’

Alex Traub reporting contributed.