Member-only story

Glynis Johns Turns 100…Where Are Her Honors?

The dancer-turned-actress offered a new sense of spirit to the arts, but our ‘Sister Suffragette’ deserves a symbol of our gratitude for it.

Dylan James
3 min readAug 16, 2023
(Glynis Johns)

Most know her as the spirited feminist Mrs. Banks, mother of Jane and Michael, in Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins, but actress Glynis Johns has had a storied career apart from the movie masterpiece. On October 5th of this year, the South African-born British actress will have seen an entire century pass before her.

What does that century have to show? 58 movie roles (including an Oscar nomination in 1960), 32 TV shows (including one bearing her name), 15 LP record appearances, 30 stage shows (including 5 leading roles on Broadway), a handful of Radio voiceovers, and a string of World-War-II pin-up photos that your grandfather or great-grandfather definitely used to relieve himself from frontline duties.

Johns was and is a gift to the film world, her beauty unparalleled. Her buttery complexion, piercing eyes, and nasal-voice, sounding even a most exuberant moment as if she’d persisted through half-dried rivers of tears, made…

--

--

Dylan James
Dylan James

Written by Dylan James

Screenwriter, Author, Actor. Commentator on Arts, Culture, and Politics. Blessed be the “extras”, for they will inherit the spotlight.

No responses yet