Obituaries

Glynis Johns obituary: Star of Mary Poppins and first to sing Send in the Clowns on stage

She was part of the childhood memories of more than one generation

Glynis Johns, with David Tomlinson, her on-screen husband, and on-screen children Matthew Garber and Karen Dotrice in a scene from Mary Poppins. Photograph: Donaldson Collection/Getty Images

Sat Jan 13 2024 - 00:01

Born: October 5th, 1923

Died: January 4th, 2024

In the childhood memories of more than one generation, Glynis Johns, who has died aged 100, will be best remembered as the Edwardian materfamilias of the hugely popular Walt Disney musical Mary Poppins (1964). Winifred Banks is the mother of Jane and Michael, the children in the care of the magical nanny played by Julie Andrews. A protester for the right to vote, Winifred delivers a spirited rendition of the song Sister Suffragette – “Our daughters’ daughters will adore us. And they’ll sing in grateful chorus: ‘Well done, Sister Suffragette!’”

But the husky voiced actor had other claims to fame from her more than 60 films and 30 stage productions. In 1973 Stephen Sondheim composed the song Send in the Clowns for Johns when she was cast in the leading role of the premiere production of his musical A Little Night Music, on Broadway. And she had won initial stardom in the British cinema as a mermaid.

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In the title role of the film comedy Miranda (1948), she travels from Cornwall to London and causes romantic complications among the Chelsea set. Although the film’s whimsy may now seem strained, it was a great commercial success in its day, making Johns a top-liner in British movies.

She was associated chiefly with lightweight film roles, alternately fluffy and feisty. One of her most appealing opportunities came in the thriller State Secret (1950, released as The Great Manhunt in the US).

Glynis Johns in her role in the film The Magic Box in 1951. Photograph: PA

It says something for her properties of youthfulness that at the age of 30 she could play a teenage schoolgirl in the melodrama Personal Affair (1953). The same year she played in two fanciful Walt Disney British productions, as Mary Tudor in The Sword and the Rose, and as the heroine wife of Rob Roy, and she went on to make her first Hollywood picture, the Danny Kaye comedy The Court Jester, in 1955.

A more rewarding role came in The Sundowners (1960), set in Australia, as a jolly barmaid who takes a shine to a visiting Englishman played by Peter Ustinov. It brought her an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress. She was well enough known to American audiences by this time to star in 1963 in Glynis, a TV sitcom series that ran for just one season.

Her Welsh heritage came into play when she took the role of Myfanwy Price in a screen version of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood (1971) starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Peter O’Toole, and two years later came her great Broadway success as Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, which brought her a Tony award.

Glynis came from a show business background: her mother, Alice Steele (nee Wareham), was a concert pianist and her father was the prolific character actor Mervyn Johns. Father and daughter appeared together in The Halfway House (1944).

Glynis was born in Pretoria, South Africa, where her parents were on tour. She was reportedly carried on to the stage at the age of three weeks, and it was not too much longer before she was appearing there in a professional capacity.

Educated at Clifton high school, Bristol, and South Hampstead high school and the Cone School of Dancing in London, she rapidly graduated to juvenile acting roles in both theatre and cinema.

When the prospect of playing a mermaid came after the war, she was able to draw on her theatrical versatility: “I was quite an athlete, my muscles were strong from dancing, so the tail was just fine. I swam like a porpoise.”

She was occasionally a guest star in US television series such as Murder She Wrote and The Love Boat, and played Diane’s rich mother, Helen Chambers, in the first series of Cheers (1983).

Johns was married and divorced four times. Her first husband, from 1942 to 1948, was the actor Anthony Forwood. Their son, Gareth, also an actor, died in 2007. Marriages to two businessmen followed: David Foster, from 1952 to 1956, and Cecil Henderson, from 1960 to 1962. She was married to Elliott Arnold, a novelist, from 1964 to 1973, and is survived by a grandson and three great-grandchildren.

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