Glynis Johns, a British performer best known to audiences for playing Mrs. Winifred Banks in Disney’s Mary Poppins, has passed away. She was 100. The Hollywood Reporter brings word of her death, confirming that she passed today, Thursday, January 4, from natural causes at the assisted living facility where she resided. Johns’ manager Mitch Clem confirmed the news.
Born October 5, 1923 in South Africa, Glynis Margaret Payne Johns came from a family with a performing background, even reportedly making her stage debut at just three weeks old. Johns would study ballet as a young girl and join the cast of Elmer Rice’s Judgement Day in 1931, her first featured role. Just seven years later she would make her feature film debut, appearing in Victor Saville’s South Riding, it would be the start of an extensive career in front of the camera and on the stage.
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Among the other feature film roles that Johns would take over the years included appearances in Around the World in 80 Days, The Seekers, The Weak and the Wicked, The Sword and the Rose, The Cabinet of Caligari, The Vault of Horror, and more. Johns also starred in the Warner Bros. film The Sundowners, earning her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, she earned a Golden Globe nomination for her role in The Chapman Report the very next year.
After those two films she would make her most famous appearance on the big screen, playing Mrs. Banks in Disney’s live-action Mary Poppins movie, even getting her own song to sing in the film, “Sister Suffragette.” Johns career didn’t end with the Disney movie though and also included appearances in some surprising cult movies later in her life such as the cult-sci-fi movie Nukie in 1987 and even the 1999 Saturday Night Live movie Superstar, her final film role.
On the stage her career was just as varied and extensive, with appearances on London’s West End as early as 1931 and even Broadway shows up until the 1990s. Johns won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role in A Little Night Music, the Stephen Sondheim show that premiered in 1973. She notably had another major number all to herself in that show as well, “Send In the Clowns.”
Our thoughts go out to Ms. Johns’ family and friends during this difficult time.
(Cover Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
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