![]() ![]() As a dance student, Johns amassed some 25 gold medals. Hoping to study with the Sadler's Wells Ballet at age 12, she was enrolled instead at Clifton High School in Bristol, balancing academia with the two hours a week she spent at the Cone School of Dancing (which later merged with the Ripman School to form Tring Park School for the Performing Arts). At the age of 5, Glynis joined the London Ballet School by 6, she was hailed in Britain as a dancing wonder by 10, she was working as a Ballet instructor and by 11, she had earned a degree to teach. The family returned to Britain, where Mervyn Johns continued to train with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began his career in repertory theatre in 1926. She later became the fourth generation in their family to act on stage. While touring South Africa in October 1923, their only child Glynis Margaret Payne Johns was born, named for her paternal grandmother, Margaret Anne Samuel, and her maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Steele-Payne. They married on 17 November 1922 in St Giles, London, and began touring with her family's theatre company. Alyce and Mervyn met while studying in London, he at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and she at the Royal Academy of Music. ![]() Through him, Johns is a cousin of British judge John Geoffrey Jones. Johns' father was Welsh actor Mervyn Johns, who became a star of British films during the Second World War and worked regularly at Ealing Studios. Originally of English descent, Alyce's family found fame as performing actors, singers and musicians, touring Australia, New Zealand and South Africa with their musical programmes her mother, Elizabeth Steele-Payne, was one of the first accomplished women violinists of her time. Her mother was Alyce Steele-Wareham, an Australian-born concert pianist who had studied in London and Vienna. I would've loved to go on and on at university. It's difficult to turn down a chance to star with Laurence Olivier, to say, 'No, she has to go to school'. There were situations that were hard for parents to turn down. With the death of Olivia de Havilland in 2020, Johns became the oldest living Academy Award nominee in any acting category, and in 2021, with the death of Betty White, she became the oldest living Disney Legend. ![]() Renowned for the breathy quality of her husky voice, Johns sang songs written specifically for her both on screen and stage, including " Send In the Clowns", composed by Stephen Sondheim for Broadway's A Little Night Music, in which she originated the role of Desiree Armfeldt and for which she won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical, and " Sister Suffragette", written by the Sherman Brothers for Walt Disney's musical motion picture Mary Poppins, in which she played Winifred Banks and for which she won a Laurel Award for Best Female Supporting Performance. She continued throughout the following decades with starring roles in the United Kingdom and abroad, including The Weak and the Wicked (1954), Mad About Men (1954), The Court Jester (1955), The Sundowners (1960), The Cabinet of Caligari (1962), The Chapman Report (1962), and Under Milk Wood (1972). The 1951 black-and-white aviation drama film No Highway in the Sky, a joint British-American production, was Johns' first role in Hollywood cinema. She rose to prominence in the 1940s following her role as Anna in the war drama film 49th Parallel (1941), for which she won a National Board of Review Award for Best Acting, and starring roles in Miranda (1948) and Third Time Lucky (1949). She was hailed for her dancing skills and typecast as a stage dancer from early adolescence, making her screen debut in 1938 with the film adaptation of Winifred Holtby's posthumous novel South Riding. Her family returned to the United Kingdom, where she was educated in London and Bristol. As one of the last surviving major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood and classical years of British cinema, she has several longevity records to her name.īorn in Pretoria, South Africa, while her parents were on tour, Johns made several appearances on stage throughout the 1920s and into the early 1930s. She is the recipient of awards and nominations in various drama award denominations, including the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, the Academy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, the Laurel Awards, the Tony Awards, the Drama Desk Awards, and the Laurence Olivier Awards, within which she has won two thirds of her nominations. Recognised as a film and Broadway icon, Johns has a career spanning eight decades, in which she appeared in more than 60 films and 30 plays. Glynis Margaret Payne Johns (born 5 October 1923) is a British retired actress, dancer, musician, and singer. ![]()
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