Glynis Johns, Mary Poppins star and ‘Send in the Clowns’ singer, dies aged 100

Glynis Johns, the star of stage and screen best known for playing Mrs Banks in Mary Poppins, has died aged 100.

The Tony Award-winning British actor died “peacefully” at an assisted living home in Los Angeles on Thursday (4 January), her manager Mitch Clem confirmed. No cause of death was given.

In a statement to the PA news agency, Clem said his heart was “heavy” to lose the “beloved” star.

“Glynis powered her way through life with intelligence, wit, and a love for performance, affecting millions of lives,” he said. “She entered my life early in my career and set a very high bar on how to navigate this industry with grace, class, and truth. Your own truth. Her light shined very brightly for 100 years.

“She had a wit that could stop you in your tracks powered by a heart that loved deeply and purely. Today is a sombre day for Hollywood.”

Rising to fame in the 1940s, Johns – who celebrated her 100th birthday on 5 October – was considered to be one of the last major stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. With her death, Clem said, “not only do we mourn the passing of our dear Glynis, but we mourn the end of the Golden Age of Hollywood”.

Making her screen debut in 1938, Johns amassed more than 60 film appearances and 30 in the theatre throughout her eight-decade career, picking up Oscar and Golden Globe nominations along the way.

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To most, she is known as Winifred Banks, the “Sister Suffragette”-singing matriarch of Disney’s 1964 Mary Poppins musical film.

On stage, Johns was known for the instantly recognisable husky tone of her singing voice. She originated the character of Desiree Armfeldt – and the musical theatre standard “Send in the Clowns” – in Stephen Sondheim’s musical A Little Night Music in 1973. For the role, she won a Tony and Drama Desk award.

Born in South Africa in 1923 to actor Melvyn Johns and concert pianist Alyce Steele-Wareham, Johns was raised in the UK where she displayed a natural talent for ballet. Hailed as an expert in the craft at a young age, she began teaching when she was just 10 years old.

First appearing on stage when she was just three weeks old, Johns made her acting debut in the West End aged eight and continued to perform throughout the 1930s. Her screen debut came in 1938 in Victor Saville’s South Riding, before her career really took off in the 1940s.

Throughout the Fourties, John averaged more than one film a year, earning international acclaim and a National Board of Review Award for Best Acting for her role in 1941 war drama 49th Parallel. She continued to perform on stage in the West End amid the Second World War and even took on a role in Judgement Day at the Phoenix Theatre amid the Blitz.

It was this decade that also saw Johns meet her first husband, co-star Anthony Forwood, with whom she had one child, actor Gareth Forwood. They divorced in 1948. Johns would go on to be married three more times: to David Foster in 1952, Cecil Henderson in 1960, and Elliott Arnold in 1964.

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Johns was known to be a perfectionist about her profession, saying in an interview: “As far as I’m concerned, I’m not interested in playing the role on only one level. The 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.”

By the Sixties, Johns was a bonafide star with her own self-titled sitcom, Glynis. After picking up an Oscar nomination in 1960 for The Spider’s Web (she lost to Shirley Jones), and a Golden Globe nomination in 1963 for The Chapman Report, her most notable role came in 1964 when Disney came knocking.

Johns landed the role of Mrs Banks, the women’s suffrage-supporting mother of Jane and Michael Banks who come into the care of Julie Andrews’ magical nanny, in Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins in 1964. The film was a Best Picture nominee.

Continuing to work on stage and screen, her biggest musical theatre part came in 1973, when she originated the role of fading actor Desiree Armfeldt in Sondheim’s A Little Night Music on Broadway. The character’s main song, “Send in the Clowns”, would go on to be performed by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughan and Olivia Newton-John.

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On screen, Johns appeared opposite Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Under Milk Wood, and continued to work in film and TV, even making a guest appearance in Cheers.

Her career came full circle in 1991, as Johns returned to a revival production of A Little Night Music playing Madame Armfeldt, the mother of the character she originated.

She was thrilled to take on the role, telling The Los Angeles Times at the time: “I’m not going to play Peter Pan again. I’m happy to get on to another role. There’s no point in acting at my age unless I’m going to feel that I’m stretching – or unless [I were] getting a million bucks a day.

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“In classical theatre in Europe, everybody plays all kinds of parts. Juliets go on to play the Nurses; they don’t want to play Juliet again. I think we’ve got to remember to grab onto our perks, whatever is the good thing about each age. Each stage of life should be a progression.”

Johns’ career came to an end in 1999, one year after she was named a Disney legend. Her final role was in the comedy Superstar, about Molly Shannon’s Saturday Night Live character Mary Katherine Gallagher.

Ahead of her 100th birthday in October, Johns’ family called on the British government for her to finally be given a damehood.

Her grandson, screenwriter Thomas Forwood, told the Mail Online: “I look at other actors like, for example, Dame Joan Collins or Dame Penelope Keth, Dame Maureen Lipman or Dame Joanna Lumley, who have been honoured in this way. And while I would never seek to diminish their achievements, I do feel that in this context it’s clear that Glynis has been overlooked.”

On turning 100, however, Johns had a more relaxed response. “It doesn’t make any difference to me,” she told ABC7. “Well, I looked very good for every age.”