{"id":3651,"date":"2024-01-05T14:30:43","date_gmt":"2024-01-05T14:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/?p=3651"},"modified":"2024-01-05T14:30:43","modified_gmt":"2024-01-05T14:30:43","slug":"actress-glynis-johns-who-played-mrs-banks-in-mary-poppins-dies-at-100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/2024\/01\/actress-glynis-johns-who-played-mrs-banks-in-mary-poppins-dies-at-100.html","title":{"rendered":"Actress Glynis Johns, Who Played Mrs. Banks in ‘Mary Poppins,’ Dies at 100"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"glynis<\/a>
Featureflash Photo Agency\/ Shutterstock.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Glynis Johns, the Tony Award-winning screen and stage star who played the mother opposite Julie Andrews in \u201cMary Poppins\u201d and introduced the world to the bittersweet standard-to-be \u201cSend in the Clowns\u201d by Stephen Sondheim, has died at 100 years old.<\/p>\n

Her manager, Mitch Clem, said she died of natural causes at an assisted living home in Los Angeles. He said, \u201cToday\u2019s a sad day for Hollywood. She is the last of the last of old Hollywood.\u201d Johns was known to be a perfectionist in her profession: precise, analytical and opinionated. The roles she took had to be multi-faceted. Anything less was giving less than her all. In 1990, she told The Associated Press, <\/em>\u201cAs far as I\u2019m concerned, I\u2019m 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her greatest triumph was playing Desiree Armfeldt in \u201cA Little Night Music,\u201d for which she won a Tony in 1973. Sondheim wrote the show\u2019s hit song \u201cSend in the Clowns\u201d for her distinctive husky voice, but she lost the part in the 1977 movie version to Elizabeth Taylor. \u201cI\u2019ve had other songs written for me, but nothing like that,\u201d Johns told the AP in 1990. \u201cIt\u2019s the greatest gift I\u2019ve ever been given in the theater.\u201d Johns was the fourth generation of an English theatrical family. Her father, Mervyn Johns, had a significant career as a character actor, and her mother was a pianist. She was born in Pretoria, South Africa, as her parents were visiting the area on tour at the time of her birth.<\/p>\n

At 12, she was a dancer and at 14, Johns was an actor in London\u2019s West End. Her breakout role was as the romantic mermaid in the title of the 1948 hit comedy \u201cMiranda.\u201d Other highlights from her career include playing the mother in \u201cMary Poppins,\u201d the film that introduced Julie Andrews and where she sang \u201cSister Suffragette.\u201d Johns also starred in the 1989 Broadway revival of \u201cThe Circle,\u201d W. Somerset Maugham\u2019s romantic comedy about marriage, love, and fidelity, opposite Stewart Granger and Rex Harrison.<\/p>\n

Johns also played Desiree\u2019s mother in several\u00a0\u201cA Little Night Music\u201d revivals. From 1988-89, she portrayed a senior citizen living in an Arizona retirement community (and the wife of onetime\u00a0Mr. Ed\u00a0star\u00a0Alan Young) in the CBS sitcom\u00a0\u201cComing of Age.\u201d More recently, she stood out as a vibrant grandmother in\u00a0Denis Leary\u2019s\u00a0\u201cThe Ref\u201d and had similar roles in\u00a0\u201cWhile You Were Sleeping\u201d\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cSuperstar.\u201d Married four times, Johns had one son, the late actor Gareth Forwood, during her marriage to Anthony\u00a0Forwood. She has no survivors, Clem said.<\/p>\n

When asked by KABC-TV entertainment reporter George Pennacchio in October what it was like to turn 100,\u00a0she replied<\/a>: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t make any difference to me. I\u2019ve looked good at every age.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Glynis Johns, the Tony Award-winning screen and stage star who played the mother opposite Julie Andrews in \u201cMary Poppins\u201d and introduced the world to the bittersweet standard-to-be \u201cSend in the Clowns\u201d by Stephen Sondheim, has died at 100 years old. Her manager, Mitch Clem, said she died of natural causes at an assisted living home…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":3672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[127,121,122],"tags":[894],"class_list":["post-3651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actor","category-celebrity","category-entertainment","tag-glynis-johns"],"yoast_head":"\nActress Glynis Johns, Who Played Mrs. Banks in 'Mary Poppins,' Dies at 100<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Glynis Johns, star who played the mother opposite Julie Andrews in \u201cMary Poppins," has died at 100 years old due to natural causes.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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