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Credit: DisneyTony Award-winning Disney Legend Glynis Johns passed away at age 100. The Mary Poppins (1964) star was a legend of screen and stage, was nominated for virtually every major acting award, and was, as of 2021, the oldest living Disney legend.
Glynis Johns died of natural causes at her assisted care facility in Los Angeles (per Reuters) after eight decades of work in show business. The British actress acted in every genre of film from drama to comedy to musicals, but is best known for her role as Mrs. Winifred Banks in Mary Poppins, widely considered the apex of Disney live-action films of the 1960s.
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Reportedly, Glynis Johns initially assumed that when Walt Disney contacted her regarding a role in Mary Poppins, she would be playing the role of the titular magical nanny. When she discovered that she, in fact, was being offered the role of the politically active Banks matriarch, Disney instructed the Sherman Brothers (the studio’s in-house musical team) to write a song specifically for her as something of an apology.
The song ended up being “Sister Suffragette,” an upbeat highlight of the film that amply featured Glynis Johns and her singing ability.
Glynis Johns won the Laurel Award for Best Female Supporting Performance for Mary Poppins, and throughout the course of her life, was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Laurence Olivier Award. She also won both a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for A Little Night Music (1973), a musical romance from the legendary composer Stephen Sondheim.
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Glynis Johns was born in South Africa in 1923 to a family of performers; her father was prolific Welsh actor Mervyn Johns, and her mother, Alyce Steele-Wareham, was an accomplished concert pianist. The Sundowners (1960) star would become the fourth generation of her family to perform theatrically and was considered a national dancing prodigy by age 6.
Within a few years, Johns made her theatrical debut and quickly became a well-known child performer. She made her screen debut in the drama South Riding (1938) and quickly became as prolific as her father; over the course of her career, she appeared in more than 60 films.
In 1963, she also starred in the sitcom Glynis, in which she played a mystery writer who solves real-life crimes. Interestingly, her South Hampstead High School classmate Angela Lansbury, would go on to star in Murder, She Wrote, a long-running TV series with a very similar premise; Johns would make a guest appearance on the 1985 episode “Sing a Song of Murder.”
In addition to her work in Mary Poppins, Glynis Johns appeared in several other Disney films. She starred as Mary Tudor in The Sword and the Rose (1953), one of the first of Disney’s British productions, as well as Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue (1953), as Helen Mary MacPherson MacGregor. Her second to last film, the Sandra Bullock romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping (1995), was also distributed by Buena Vista, a Disney-owned company.
Glynis Johns was an indelible part of Disney’s history and one of the final living members of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Rest in Peace, Mrs. Banks.
What’s your favorite Glynis Johns role? Let’s hear it in the comments below!