Glynis Johns has passed away at the age of 100. Her publicist Mitch Clem confirmed the sad news saying that she had died of natural causes.
Disney fans will recognized Johns as Winifred Banks in Mary Poppins. However, her career spanned over eight decades. During this, she appeared in over 60 movies and 30 plays. During this time she received a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award. She was also nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe in 1961 and 1963 respectively.
Johns was born in Pretoria, South Africa, the daughter of Welsh actor Mervyn Johns. She began acting at a very young age. “I’ve been working at something ever since I was born I think,” Johns told ABC7 during an interview for her 100th birthday in October. Her career saw her appear in 1948’s Miranda, Mad About Men in 1954 and 1958’s Another Place, Another Time. She received an Academy Award Nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in 1960’s The Sundowners movie, where she played Mrs. Firth. Fast forward a few years and Johns was appearing in While You Were Sleeping as Elsie in 1995 and then Grandma Gallagher in 1999’s Superstar. On the stage, she appeared in plays like Peter Pan and A Little Night Music. She also appeared on television. This included appearing as a villain in the Batman series and as Diane’s mother in Cheers.
“I’ve been doing songs from the show off and on through the years,” she told Los Angeles Times in 1991. “So I’ve never really been away. Even a few months ago, I was singing ‘Send in the Clowns’ for a charity performance. But my doctors were advising that I not work for a couple of months–that I needed to relax, take it easy, do physiotherapy for my dental problems. More specifically, I had to make the decision about whether I wanted to come back playing another role: to hear somebody else eight performances a week, doing something that I was used to doing.”
Johns was married four times throughout her life. She was married to Anthony Forwood from 1942 to 1948, David Ramsay Foster from 1952 to 1956, Cecil Peter Lamont Henderson from 1960 to 1962 and Elliott Arnold from 1964 to 1973. She had a son, Gareth Forwood, who was an actor and died in 2007 at the age of 62. Her grandson, Thomas Forwood, had been campaigning for Johns to be given damehood. He said to MailOnline, “It would be fitting on this occasion for the UK government to formally acknowledge her cultural contribution by making her a Dame. I look at other actors like, for example, Dame Joan Collins or Dame Penelope Keth, Dame Maureen Lipman or Dame Joanna Lumley, who have been honored in this way. And while I would never seek to diminish their achievements, I do feel that in this context, it’s clear that Glynis has been overlooked.”