by In the childhood memories of more than one generation, Glynis Johns, who has died aged 100, will be best remembered as the Edwardian family in the Walt Disney musical Mary Poppins (1964). Winifred Banks, who is married to David Tomlinson’s George W Banks, is the mother of Jane and Michael, the children in the care of the magical dwarf played by Julie Andrews. As a protester for the right to vote, Winifred gives a rousing rendition of the song Sister Suffragette – “Our daughters’ daughters will kill us. And they will sing with a grateful chorus: ‘Well done, Dear Suffragette!’” – as a former nanny tries to quit.
But the husky-voiced actor famous for more than 60 films and 30 stage productions was in demand. In 1973, Stephen Sondheim composed the song Send in the Clowns for Johns when she was cast in the lead role in the Broadway production of his musical A Little Night Music. And she won a leading award in British cinema as a mermaid.
In the title role of the comedy Miranda (1948), she travels from Cornwall to London and has romantic difficulties among the Chelsea team. Although the film’s whimsy may seem strained, it was a huge commercial success, putting Johns on the cutting edge of British cinema. Miranda returned in a rather lengthy sequel, Mad About Men (1954).
By then, Johns had moved almost entirely from the stage to films, where she was primarily involved in light roles, with fluff and costumes. One of her most compelling opportunities came in the thriller State Secret (1950, released as The Great Manhunt in the US), playing a cabaret artist in a fictitious Balkan country, and singing Paper Doll politely in a tongue-in-cheek invented.
It says something of her youthful qualities that at the age of 30 she could play a schoolgirl in the melodrama Personal Affair (1953). In the same year she was in two great British Walt Disney productions, as Mary Tudor in The Sword and the Rose, and as the heroine of Rob Roy, and she went on to make her first Hollywood picture, the Danny Kaye comedy The Court Jester , in 1955. The following year she had a cameo role in the starrer Around the World in 80 Days.
At the time Johns alternated between American and British films, usually in supporting roles, but a noteworthy one came in The Sundowners (1960), set in Australia, as a jolly bard who cheers on a visiting Englishman played by Peter Ustinov. It earned her an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. Top billing came in a stylish horror film, The Cabinet of Caligari (1962). She was well known to American audiences by this time for starring in 1963’s Glynis, a television sitcom series that ran for one season.
In 1966 Johns returned to the London stage in the King’s Mare, as Anne of Cleves to Keith Michell’s Henry VIII. Her Welsh heritage came into play when she took on the role of Myfanwy Price in Dylan Thomas’s screen version of Under Milk Wood (1971) with Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Peter O’Toole, and two years later her breakthrough came great on Broadway as Desiree. Armfeldt in A Little Night Music , which brought her a Tony award.
Glynis came from a show business background: her mother, Alice Steele (nee Wareham), was a concert pianist who went by the name Alys Steele-Payne, and her father was the prolific character actor Mervyn Johns. He was particularly a driving force in Ealing Studios films: father and daughter reunited in the Ealing drama The Halfway House (1944).
Although her accent reflected her Welsh, Glynis was born in Pretoria, South Africa, where her parents were on tour. She was reportedly brought onto the stage at three weeks of age, and it was not long before she appeared there in a professional capacity, making her debut at the Garrick Theatre, London, as a dancer in a revue on called Buckie Bears (1935).
Educated at Clifton high school, Bristol, and South Hampstead high school and the Cone School of Dancing in London, she quickly graduated to young acting roles in theater and cinema. Her first screen appearance came at the age of 14, as the troubled daughter of politician Ralph Richardson in South Riding (1938), and on stage she was the younger sister, another Miranda, in the Esther McCracken comedies Quiet Wedding ( 1938) and Quiet Weekend (1941). ).
That year brought an opportunity to appear in the film 49th Parallel, with Leslie Howard and Laurence Olivier starring in a spy thriller that aims to support the second world war in the US. When the prospect of becoming a mermaid came after the war, she was able to draw on her theatrical versatility: “I was an athlete, my muscles were strong from dancing, so the tail was right enough. I swam like a pig.”
Johns returned to the London stage in 1977, as Terence Rattigan’s choice to play the murderer Alma Rattenbury in his drama about the Rattenbury case, Cause Célèbre, which was well received. She gave up her acting appearances from time to time, but in 1989 she starred with Rex Harrison and Stewart Granger on Broadway in Somerset Maugham’s The Circle.
She occasionally guest-starred in US TV series such as Murder She Wrote and The Love Boat, and played Diane’s wealthy mother, Helen Chambers, in the first series of Cheers (1983) and Trudie Pepper in the sitcom Coming of Age (1988-). 89). By the time of her last films, While You Were Sleeping (1995) and Superstar (1999), she was a character grandmother.
Johns was married and divorced four times. Her first husband was the actor Anthony Forwood, from 1942 to 1948. Her son, Gareth, also an actor, died in 2007. Two subsequent marriages to businessmen: David Foster, from 1952 to 1956, and Cecil Henderson, from 1960 to 1962. She was married to Elliott Arnold, a novelist, from 1964 to 1973, and is survived by one and three grandchildren.
• Glynis Margaret Payne Johns, actress, born 5 October 1923; died 4 January 2024
