‘Mary Poppins’ star Glynis Johns dead at 100

Glynis Johns, the actress famous for her role as Mrs. Banks in “Mary Poppins,” has died. She was 100. 

After a career spanning eight decades, Johns died Thursday of natural causes at an assisted living facility in Hollywood, her manager, Mitch Clem, told the Hollywood Reporter.

Born in South Africa in 1923, Johns had a theatrical family – her father, Mervyn Johns, was a Welsh actor, and her mother, Alyce Steele-Wareham, was an Australian-born concert pianist. 

“My father taught me to listen to what the other actors are saying,” she told the New York Times in 1973.

She grew up in England, where she became a dancer, singer, pianist and actress. By 10, she’d won more than 24 gold medals in dance competitions, and earned a degree to teach ballet. 

“I’ve been working at something ever since I was born, I think,” Johns told ABC7 in October.

Her film debut was in the 1938 movie “South Riding,” when she was 13. She also played Peter Pan onstage when she was 19. 

Some of her early credits include 1948’s “Miranda” and 1949’s “Helter Skelter.” 

Johns also co-starred in 1955’s “The Court Jester” with Angela Lansbury. 

Stephen Sondheim wrote “Send in the Clowns,” for her to sing, and she won a Tony for her performance as Desiree Armfeldt in the 1973 production of “A Little Night Music.”

“They didn’t say yes right there and then,” she told the New York Times, about nabbing the famous role. “So I flew to London and went about my business until I heard they’d decided on me for the part of Desiree. I think there were two or three others who were quite disappointed not to do it.”

Sondheim told the New York Times in 2003, about writing the song to suit Johns and that the actress had a lovely, crystal voice, but sustaining notes was not her thing. “I wanted to write short phrases, so I wrote a song full of questions,” he said.

She also earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for playing the widowed saloon and hotel owner Mrs. Firth in Fred Zinnemann’s Australia-set “The Sundowners.” 

Johns was nominated for a Golden Globe for 1962’s “The Chapman Report.”

Walt Disney tapped her to co-star in his 1964 film “Marry Poppins” with Julie Andrews, 88, and Dick Van Dyke, 98. 

She played Mrs. Banks, who recruits the nanny Mary Poppins (Andrews) to watch her children, and she sang the song “Sister Suffragette.” In 1998, she was deemed a “Disney Legend,” a hall of fame recognition from the studio.

In the 1972 movie “Under Milk Wood,” Johns co-starred with Elizabeth Taylor, Peter O’ Toole and Richard Burton. 

In her later years, she starred in the 1988 CBS sitcom “Coming of Age,” and she was in the 1994 film “While You Were Sleeping.” 

According to her manager, she has no survivors – she had one son, actor Gareth Forwood, with the actor Anthony Forwood, who predeceased her. 

Gareth died at 62 in 2007, after getting diagnosed with cancer and having a heart attack. 

Johns was married four times during her long life: she married her first husband, Anthony Forwood, from 1942 to 1948. 

In 1952, she married David Foster, president of Colgate-Palmolive, before divorcing him in 1956. 

She married businessman Cecil Henderson in 1960 and divorced him in 1962. 

Her final husband was novelist and screenwriter Elliott Arnold, who she married from 1964 to 1973. 

She told the New York Times in 1973, “I became a professional at 12, so it’s always been my life. Later on, I wanted to lead what I thought of as a ‘normal’ existence, but I soon found I wasn’t as normal away from the theater as in it. Acting … acting is my highest form of intelligence, the time when I use the best part of my brain. I was always told, by my married friends, for example, that I could apply that intelligence to something else, some other aspect of living, but I can’t. I don’t have the same flair in other things.”

She also said, “Why so many marriages? It was absolute conservatism on my part. I was brought up to feel that if you wanted to have an affair with a man, well, you married him. I have friends who, if they’d followed that rule, would have collected an awful lot of pieces of paper by now.”

In October, KABC-TV reporter George Pennacchio asked her what it was like to turn 100.

“It doesn’t make any difference to me,” she said. “I’ve looked good at every age.”