Glynis Johns Dies: ‘Mary Poppins’ Mom, Broadway’s Tony Winner Who Debuted ‘Send In The Clowns’ Was 100

Greg Evans
·4 min read
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Glynis Johns, remembered by movie audiences as Mrs. Banks from Mary Poppins and by Broadway devotees as the first person to sing Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” on a national stage, died Thursday of natural causes at an assisted living home in Los Angeles. She was 100.

Her death was announced by her manager and publicist Mitch Clem. “Today’s a sad day for Hollywood,” Clem said in a statement. “She is the last of the last of old Hollywood.”

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A Tony winner (Best Actress/Musical) for her performance as Desiree Armfeldt in the original 1973 Broadway cast of the Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler A Little Night Music, Johns both debuted and, due to her widespread acclaim, helped popularize what would become perhaps Sondheim’s most beloved and well-known songs with “Send in the Clowns.”

Born in Pretoria, South Africa, the Welsh Johns made her West End debut in 1931 at age 8 in Elmer Rice’s Judgment Day, but wouldn’t hit the Broadway stage until 1952, when she played the title role in Enid Bagnold’s play Gertie. Over the next decade she’d appear on Broadway twice again — in 1956’s Major Barbara and 1963’s Too Good To Be True — but it wasn’t until 1973, with Night Music, that she became one of the major Broadway stars of the era.

Sondheim wrote “Send in the Clowns” specifically for her (and her husky voice). The song would go on to become a popular standard, with versions by Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins, Barbra Streisand and countless others.

(L-R) Julie Harris, Ben Vereen and Glynis Johns at the 1973 Tony Awards
(L-R) Julie Harris, Ben Vereen and Glynis Johns at the 1973 Tony Awards

In the meantime, she made an indelible impression as the eccentric Winifred Banks, a liberated, if harried, mother in desperate need of a nanny in Walt Disney’s massive hit 1964 film Mary Poppins starring Julie Andrews. As Mrs. Banks, Johns performed one of the more memorable tunes not sung by Andrews or co-star Dick Van Dyke: “Sister Suffragette.”

While Johns would go on to star in one more Broadway production — The Circle in 1989 — she would be a more frequent presence on TV and in film, where she had started her career in 1938 with the movie South Riding.

In the decades prior to Poppins, her credits included the films 49th Parallel (1941), An Ideal Husband (1947), Dear Mr. Prohack (1949), The Magic Bus (1951), The Promoter (1952) Around The World In 80 Days (1956) and, in perhaps her highest-profile film prior to the Disney classic, 1960’s The Sundowners, for which she earned a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination

On TV, she appeared in the early ’50s drama series Studio One and Lux Video Theatre, and then such 1960s episodic programs including Naked City, Dr. Kildare, The Lloyd Bridges Show, Burke’s Law and The Defenders. She starred in her own short-lived Desilu sitcom Glynis in 1963, in which she played a rather daffy mystery writer.

Johns as Lady Penelope Peasoup and Rudy Vallée as Lord Marmaduke Ffogg in <em>Batman</em> (1967)
Johns as Lady Penelope Peasoup and Rudy Vallée as Lord Marmaduke Ffogg in Batman (1967)

Scores of TV credits would follow over the next several decades, with one standout being her 1967 turns on several episodes of Batman, in which she played Lady Penelope Peasoup, a seemingly upper crust society type secretly running a finishing school for villainesses with her brother Lord Marmaduke Ffogg (Rudy Vallée).

Shelley Long, Johns, ‘Cheers’ (1983)
Shelley Long, Johns, ‘Cheers’ (1983)

But her most notable latter-day TV role came in a 1983 episode of Cheers, when she played the snooty (but desperately broke) Helen Chambers, dowager mother of Shelley Long’s Diane Chambers. Demanding that her daughter immediately marry in order to meet the requirements of daddy’s will, “Mummy” deadpans, “I’ll never be broke. I’ll either be rich or dead, the choice is yours.”

In her own life, Johns was married and divorced four times — the first to actor Anthony Forwood, who rather famously left her for the man who would become his long-term partner, actor Dirk Bogarde. A son from the marriage, Gareth Forwood, was her only child. He died in 2007.

She is survived by a grandson and three great-grandchildren.

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