British actress Glynis Johns is the doyenne of cinema and is celebrating her 100th birthday this year! And if you don’t know his name, you all know his Disney film.
100 years and a legendary film that has rocked the childhood of millions of people, this is how we can quickly introduce Glynis Johns, British actress who is the doyenne of cinema!
She starred in more than 90 films and series, received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor in Horizons Without Borders (1960) and a Tony for her role in A Little Night Music (1973), the musical comedy inspired by the film Smiles of a Midsummer Night by Ingmar Bergman.
But many people know his face from a much more popular feature film.
The general public best remembers her in the role of Mrs. Winifred Banks, the Suffragette mother of young Jane and Michael and wife of George W. Banks in Mary Poppins. A positive, funny and committed character, who doesn’t let her whimsical husband count her out.
Johns appeared in her first film in 1938, South Riding, when she was just 15 years old. She obtained her first major role in This Man Is Mine by Marcel Vanel (1946) then Frieda (1947) and Miranda the following year, in which she played a mermaid for director Ken Annakin. She will also play a mermaid again in Folle des hommes (1954), a few years later.
During the 1950s, she specialized in adventure films with Moana, Daughter of the Tropics, The King’s Jester and The Wanderer of the Islands and was given the lead in the prison film Girls Without Joy (1954).
A place of choice that she will find for the comedies Joséphine et les hommes, La Bourrasque or The Spider’s Web, adapted from Agatha Christie. She made her first Disney films in 1953 with The Rose and the Sword and Chess to the King.
Here she was interviewed just a few weeks ago on ABC7:
The early 1960s were more difficult for Glynis Johns, who lost her status as a movie star and instead found work on television, including the series Glynis (1963), of which she was the heroine and where she played a writer of thriller who tries his hand at being a detective.
It was a failure, but Walt Disney did not forget her and offered her a role in Mary Poppins, which would make her recognizable to a worldwide audience.
This will not be enough to relaunch her cinematographic career, but she will continue her work on television, notably as a Batman villain (for 4 episodes all the same), in Arabesque, but also The Crime of Ovide Plouffe or Coming of Age.
In 1999, she played what would be her last role: that of a grandmother in Superstar. She was then 76 years old and ended her career. The years have passed and in 2023 it celebrated its 100th birthday!
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