Glynis Johns, ‘Mary Poppins’ star who first sang Sondheim’s ‘Send in the Clowns,’ dies at 100
Glynis Johns, a Tony Award-winning stage and screen star who played the mother opposite Julie Andrews in the classic movie “Mary Poppins” and introduced the world to the bittersweet standard-to-be “Send in the Clowns” by Stephen Sondheim, has died.
Glynis Johns, a Tony Award winning stage and screen star who played the mother opposite Julie Andrews in the classic movie “Mary Poppins” and introduced the world to the bittersweet standard-to-be “Send in the Clowns” by Stephen Sondheim, has died. She was 100.
Mitch Clem, her manager, said she died Thursday at an assisted living home in Los Angeles of natural causes. “Today’s a sad day for Hollywood,” Clem said. “She is the last of the last of old Hollywood.”
Johns was known to be a perfectionist about her profession — precise, analytical and opinionated. The roles she took had to be multi-faceted. Anything less was giving less than her all.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m not interested in playing the role on only one level,” she told The Associated Press in 1990. “The whole point of first-class acting is to make a reality of it. To be real. And I have to make sense of it in my own mind in order to be real.”
Glynis Johns, center, with Hermione Baddeley, left, and Elsa Lanchester in "Mary Poppins."Courtesy Everett CollectionJohns’ greatest triumph was playing Desiree Armfeldt in “A Little Night Music,” for which she won a Tony in 1973. Sondheim wrote the show’s hit song “Send in the Clowns” to suit her distinctive husky voice, but she lost the part in the 1977 film version to Elizabeth Taylor.
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