CNN
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Glynis Johns, the British actress identified for her position as feminist icon Mrs. Banks in 1964’s “Mary Poppins,” has died. She was 100.
Johns’ longtime supervisor Mitch Clem instructed CNN on Thursday that she died “peacefully” Thursday morning in Los Angeles at an assisted dwelling dwelling, the place she’s lived for the previous a number of years. She is survived by her grandson Thomas and her three great-grandchildren, Clem mentioned.
A reason for demise has not but been decided.
“Glynis powered her manner via life with intelligence, wit, and a love for efficiency, affecting hundreds of thousands of lives,” Clem mentioned in a press release on Thursday. “She entered my life early in my profession and set a really excessive bar on how one can navigate this business with grace, class, and fact.”
Johns’ profession as a movie, TV and stage actor spans almost 9 many years.
As a young person, Johns scored her first movie position within the 1938 romantic drama “South Driving.” She went on to look in plenty of films all through the Forties, together with the war-era drama “forty ninth Parallel” in 1941, for which she earned a finest performing award from the Nationwide Board of Assessment.
Born in South Africa and raised in the UK, Johns starred in plenty of Hollywood movies and TV reveals all through the Nineteen Fifties till her large break in 1960, when she starred alongside Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum within the family-driven drama “The Sundowners” as Mrs. Firth. The movie earned 5 Oscar nominations, together with one for Johns in the very best supporting actress class.
In 1963, Johns starred in her self-titled TV collection “Glynis,” a comedy a couple of thriller author who delves into beginner detective work together with her lawyer husband (Keith Andes), earlier than touchdown her best-known position as Mrs. Banks in Disney’s 1964 basic “Mary Poppins.”
Starring alongside Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke and David Tomlinson in “Mary Poppins,” Johns performed Mrs. Banks, a vibrant and upbeat feminist character who sang “Sister Suffragette” within the Oscar-winning movie.
She can be identified for originating the position of Desiree Armfeldt within the 1973 Broadway play “A Little Night time Music,” a personality later portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor within the 1977 cinematic adaptation. Johns received a Tony Award for her work within the stage model, the place her distinctively guttural vocal styling shined whereas singing the well-known Stephen Sondheim-composed ballad “Ship Within the Clowns.”
By means of the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, Johns appeared in varied TV collection, together with 1988’s “Coming of Age” and the 1994 dramedy “The Ref,” alongside Denis Leary and Judy Davis. Different credit embrace 1995’s “Whereas You Had been Sleeping” and the 1999 comedy “Celebrity.”
In October, Johns celebrated her a centesimal birthday and told ABC7 on the time that her age “doesn’t make any distinction to me.” Nonetheless quick-witted, the Hollywood veteran went on to joke that, “I seemed superb at all ages.”
“Her gentle shined very brightly for 100 years,” Clem mentioned in his assertion Thursday. “She had a wit that might cease you in your tracks powered by a coronary heart that cherished deeply and purely.”