76 Facts About Glynis Johns

Glynis Margaret Payne Johns was a British actress.

Glynis Johns received various accolades throughout her career, including a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award, as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Laurence Olivier Award.

Glynis Johns was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood and classical years of British cinema.

Glynis Johns was born in Pretoria, South Africa, the daughter of Welsh actor Mervyn Glynis Johns.

Glynis Johns appeared on stage from a young age and was typecast as a stage dancer from early adolescence, making her screen debut in South Riding.

Glynis Johns rose to prominence in the 1940s following her role as Anna in the war drama film 49th Parallel, for which she won a National Board of Review Award for Best Acting, and starring roles in Miranda and Third Time Lucky.

Glynis Johns made her television and Broadway debuts in 1952 and took on starring roles in such films as The Sword and the Rose, The Weak and the Wicked, Mad About Men, The Court Jester, The Sundowners, The Cabinet of Caligari, The Chapman Report, and Under Milk Wood.

Glynis Johns's mother was Alyce Steele-Wareham, an Australian-born concert pianist who had studied in London and Vienna.

Glynis Johns' father was Welsh actor Mervyn Glynis Johns, who became a star of British films during the Second World War and worked regularly at Ealing Studios.

Glynis Margaret Payne Johns was born on 5 October 1923, while her parents were touring Pretoria, capital of the then Union of South Africa.

Glynis Johns was named "Margaret" "Payne" after her grandmothers Margaret Anne Samuel and Elizabeth Steele-Payne.

Glynis Johns made her theatrical debut in October 1923 at just three weeks old, carried onto the London stage by her grandmother, Elizabeth Steele-Payne, a violinist-impresario who had inherited the production's company from her father.

Glynis Johns thus became the fourth generation in her mother's family to appear on stage.

In 1931 at the age of eight, Glynis Johns was cast as Sonia Kuman in Elmer Rice's Judgement Day at the Phoenix Theatre in London.

Glynis Johns played alongside theatre actors Sir Lewis Casson, Ronald Adam, and George Woodbridge, who played Judge Vlora, Judge Tsankov, and Judge Sturdza, respectively.

Glynis Johns was spotted by a manager and subsequently cast in her first major stage production, as Napoleon's daughter in the 1936 short play St Helena at The Old Vic; she was in productions of The Children's Hour and The Melody That Got Lost the same year.

Glynis Johns made her screen debut in 1938 at the age of 15 with Victor Saville's film adaptation of the Winifred Holtby novel South Riding, in which she played Midge Carne, the daughter of aspiring politician Robert Carne.

Glynis Johns had small roles in David Evans' 1938 crime film Murder in the Family and two Brian Desmond Hurst films - his 1938 black-and-white crime film Prison Without Bars and 1939 thriller On the Night of the Fire.

Glynis Johns averaged one and a half films a year throughout the 1940s, starting in 1940 with Under Your Hat, in which she played Winnie, a supporting character to Jack Hulbert's Jack Millett and Cicely Courtneidge's Kay Millett in this musical comedy spy film.

David Parkinson noted that Glynis Johns "seemed to epitomise modern British womanhood".

Conversely, she was cast as Mabel Chiltern in An Ideal Husband, Alexander Korda's adaptation of the 1895 play by Oscar Wilde, in which Glynis Johns helps Lord Arthur Goring prevent Laura Cheveley from destroying the reputation of her politician brother, Sir Robert Chilton.

The cast included Griffith Jones, Googie Withers, and David Tomlinson, with whom Glynis Johns was later reunited in The Magic Box and Mary Poppins.

Glynis Johns was cast in Thornton Freeland's comedy Dear Mr Prohack, a modern version of Arnold Bennett's 1922 novel, Mr Prohack, as adapted in the play by Edward Knoblock.

On stage, Glynis Johns reprised her role as Miranda Bute in Richard Bird's play Quiet Weekend, which ran from 22 July 1941 to 29 January 1944 at Wyndham's Theatre in London.

Glynis Johns's successes in Miranda, Third Time Lucky and in other movies made her a household name, both in Britain and the United States; director Ken Annakin was an early admirer of her work.

Glynis Johns remained in "noir territory" with Sidney Gilliat's 1950 drama thriller film State Secret, appearing alongside Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

Glynis Johns supported Richard Todd in Flesh and Blood the following year and having previously declined parts in Hollywood productions, because of her loving devotion to British cinema, appeared in the Hollywood-financed No Highway in the Sky, in which an expert's misgivings about a plane's air-worthiness are ignored.

Glynis Johns was one of several names in the 1951 anthology film Encore, appearing as gambler Stella Cotman, who visits Monte Carlo alongside Terence Morgan's Syd Cotman in the segment "Gigolo and Gigolette".

Glynis Johns is not listed in the cast, either credited or uncredited.

Glynis Johns made her television debut in 1952 with Fletcher Markle's Emmy Award-winning series Little Women.

Glynis Johns appeared in just one episode: season four's "Lilly, the Queen of the Movies" as Lily Snape.

Glynis Johns was reunited with Richard Todd for two swashbucklers made for Walt Disney: The Sword and the Rose, directed by Ken Annakin, and Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue.

Glynis Johns did another for Annakin, The Seekers, then co-starred with Robert Newton in The Beachcomber.

Glynis Johns played the Christian missionary in both films, appearing respectively as Marion Southey, the fiance to Jack Hawkins' Philip Wayne who seeks to establish Christianity in 19th century New Zealand, and Martha Jones, who seeks to introduce it to the Welcome Islands.

In 1954, Glynis Johns was one of five judges to oversee the finals of the National Bathing Beauty Contest in Morecambe, England, where Pat Butler was declared the winner.

Glynis Johns starred as Jo Luton in Roy Boulting's 1955 comedy Josephine and Men, a romantic comedy film in which Jack Buchanan's Uncle Charles Luton examines his niece's relationships, and supported Danny Kaye in the musical-comedy medieval romance costume drama film The Court Jester of the same year, playing Jean with "cunning precision".

Alongside Cameron Mitchell, Glynis Johns starred in the 1957 Technicolor melodrama film All Mine to Give, based on the novel by Dale Eunson and his wife Katherine Albert.

Glynis Johns returned to Britain to make Another Time, Another Place with Lana Turner and starred as Kitty Brady in Shake Hands with the Devil.

Glynis Johns made her Broadway debut in 1952 when given the title role in five productions of the Enid Bagnold comedy Gertie.

Glynis Johns returned to the United States in 1956 to again play the title role, this time in a Broadway revival production of George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara.

In 1962, Glynis Johns starred as a nun on Dr Kildare, helping a sick roommate decide on surgery while having medical issues herself.

Glynis Johns starred in the remake of The Cabinet of Caligari as the easily offended and oft-frightened Jane Lindstrom, and she was one of four stars in the 1962 Technicolor drama film The Chapman Report.

When first approached by Walt Disney, Glynis Johns thought it was to play the title role of Mary Poppins, not Mrs Banks.

Glynis Johns portrayed Kitty O'Moyne, an Irish immigrant who falls overboard into the harbour as she arrives in the United States.

The original working title for the series was The Glynis Johns Show; in it, Johns played the neophyte mystery writer and amateur sleuth Glynis Granvile.

In 1965, when CBS reran the series as a summer replacement for The Lucy Show, Glynis Johns ranked number six in the Nielsen ratings.

On stage, Glynis Johns played an invalid gentlewoman in Broadway's Too True to Be Good in 1963.

Glynis Johns returned to London's West End in 1966 to star alongside Keith Michell in The King's Mare at the Garrick Theatre, in which she played Anne of Cleves and Michell King Henry VIII.

London theatre's favourite daughter, Glynis Johns, had agreed to come to London to star in our play.

From 1969 and into the 1970s, Glynis Johns turned increasingly to stage work, appearing first in A Talent to Amuse.

In 1972 and 1973, Glynis Johns narrated several fairy tales and other children's classics for Caedmon Records, the record label imprints of HarperCollins Publishers.

In 1973, Glynis Johns was in the original cast of A Little Night Music, written by Stephen Sondheim, which premiered on 25 February at the Shubert Theatre in New York City.

From 1977 to March 1978, Glynis Johns starred as Alma Rattenbury in Cause Celebre, touring Her Majesty's Theatre in London and Leicester Haymarket Theatre among other locations.

Glynis Johns appeared in Noel Coward's comic play Hay Fever as Judith Bliss from 4 August 1981 to 10 October 1981 at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford and the Theatre Royal in Nottingham.

Glynis Johns had a starring role in Nukie, a South African science-fiction film in which she played the decisive Sister Anne alongside actors Anthony Morrison, Steve Railsback, and Ronald France.

In 1988, Glynis Johns provided the voice for Miss Grimwood, proprietor of Miss Grimwood's Finishing School for Girls, in Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School.

In 1985, Glynis Johns played Bridget O'Hara in the episode "Sing a Song of Murder" of CBS's crime drama television series Murder, She Wrote, working again with Angela Lansbury.

In 1991, Glynis Johns returned to A Little Night Music aged 68, this time playing Madame Armfeldt, the mother of her original character Desiree, with Gordon Davidson directing at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre in Los Angeles.

On screen, Glynis Johns had the main part of Darjeeling alongside Honor Blackman and Derek Jacobi on the American children's television anthology series ABC Weekend Specials.

Glynis Johns appeared in just three films in the 1990s, as the grandmother in each.

Glynis Johns played the camera-toting grandmother in the 1995 Sandra Bullock hit While You Were Sleeping and the waspish Grandma Rose in Ted Demme's 1994 black comedy film The Ref.

In 1998, Glynis Johns was named a Disney legend in the film category.

Glynis Johns was voted by British exhibitors as the 10th-most popular box-office star in 1951 and 1952.

Glynis Johns became an indelible part of the cinema histories of both Britain and America, maintaining her British and American careers simultaneously.

In Finishing the Hat, Stephen Sondheim wrote, "[Glynis Johns was] perhaps the only major British stage actress not associated with Shakespeare".

Glynis Johns's favourite reading was autobiographies, preferably those of celebrities she knew personally.

Glynis Johns met her first husband, Anthony Forwood, while rehearsing for Quiet Wedding.

Glynis Johns began dating producer Antony Darnborough after working together on Encore.

Glynis Johns proposed to her at Windsor's Sunningdale Golf Club in June 1951.

On 1 February 1952 in Manhattan, Glynis Johns married David Foster, a Royal Navy officer and later president of Colgate-Palmolive.

Glynis Johns married Cecil Henderson, a businessman, on 10 October 1960 in Westminster, London.

Glynis Johns cited adultery and she did not contest the charge.

Glynis Johns' grandson, Thomas Forwood, is a French writer and film director.

Glynis Johns suffered from stage fright throughout most of her career.

Glynis Johns retired to the US, where she later resided at the Belmont Village Hollywood Heights, a senior-living community, located near the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

Glynis Johns died in Los Angeles at an assisted-living home, on 4 January 2024, at age 100 from natural causes.