Jessica Tandy

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Jessie Alice Tandy (7 June 1909 – September 1994), also known as Jessica Tandy, was an English-American actress.

Tandy appeared in over 100 theatre productions and appeared in more than 60 film and television roles, winning such accolades as an Academy Award, four Tony Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award in London, 1927.

During the 1930s, she appeared in several plays in London's West End, including Ophelia (opposite John Gield's legendary Hamlet) and Katherine (opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V).

Following the breakdown of her marriage to British actor Jack Hawkins, she migrated to New York City in 1940, where she first encountered Canadian actor Hume Cronyn.

He was her second husband and a frequent collaborator on stage and film. She received the Tony Award for Best Actress in A Play for her role as Blanche DuBois in 1948's Broadway revival of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Katharine Cornell (who won for the female lead in Antony and Cleopatra) and Judith Anderson (for the latter's portrayal of Medea) in a three-way tie for the award.

Her career evolved sporadically over the past three decades, including a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's horror film The Birds (1963) and a Tony Award-winning appearance in The Gin Game (1977, where she appeared in Hume Cronyn's two-hander role).

She and Cronyn were members of the original acting company of the Guthrie Theatre in the 1980s.

She appeared with Cronyn in 1983 and its television adaptation four years later, receiving both a Tony Award and an Emmy Award for her portrayal of Annie Nations.

During those years, she appeared in films including Cocoon (1985), as well as with Cronyn, and she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Support Actress for Fried Green Tomatoes (1991).

She was voted one of People's "50 Most Beautiful People" at the time of her fame.

In 1990, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and continued working until shortly before her death.

Early life

Tandy, the youngest of three siblings, was born in Geldeston Road in Hackney, London, to Harry Tandy and his partner, Jessie Helen Horspool. Her mother was a traveling salesman for a rope manufacturer in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, and the head of a school for intellectually disabled students. She was educated at Dame Alice Owen's School in Islington.

Her father died when she was 12, and her mother later taught evening courses to make an income. Edward, her brother, was later identified as a prisoner of the Japanese in Asia.

Personal life and demise

Tandy married English actor Jack Hawkins in 1932 and together they had a daughter, Susan Hawkins. Susan became an actress and was the daughter-in-law of John Moynihan Tettemer, a former Passionist monk who wrote I Was a Monk, and she was cast in small parts in Lost Horizon and Meet John Doe.

In 1940, Tandy and Hawkins married. Hume Cronyn, a Canadian actress, married her in 1942. She and Cronyn lived in Pound Ridge, New York, for many years before moving to Connecticut, and they remained together until her death in 1994. They had two children, daughter Tandy Cronyn, an actress who would co-star with her mother in The Story Lady's television film, and son Christopher Cronyn. In 1952, Tandy became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Jessica Tandy was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1990, and she also suffered from angina and glaucoma. Despite her illness and old age, she continued working. She died at the age of 85 on September 11, 1994 at her home in Easton, Connecticut.

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Acting career

When Tandy made her professional debut on the London stage in 1927, she was 18 years old. She appeared in many plays in London's West End during the 1930s, including Ophelia (opposite John Gield's legendary Hamlet) and Katherine (opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V).

She appeared in British cinemas, but after her marriage to Jack Hawkins fell apart, she migrated to the United States in the hopes of finding bigger roles. She was often forced to fight over roles with her two rivals, Peter Ashcroft and Celia Johnson, during her time as a leading actress in London. She appeared in many Hollywood films in the years after.

Tandy also worked in radio, as many stage actors. She appeared on Mandrake the Magician (as Princess Nada), and then in The Marriage, which ran on radio from 1953 to 1954, and then transitioned to television.

In The Seventh Cross (1944), she made her American film debut (1944). She appeared in The Valley of Decision (1945), The Green Years (1946), as Cronyn's daughter, Dragonwyck (1946), starring Gene Tierney and Vincent Price and Forever Amber (1947). In A Woman's Vengeance (1948), a film noir adapted by Aldous Huxley from his short story "The Gioconda Smile," she appeared as the insomniac murderess.

Her film career stalled over the next three decades, though she found more prominent roles on stage. During this period, she appeared in The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951) opposite James Mason, The Light in the Forest (1958), and In Alfred Hitchcock's film, The Birds (1963), she appeared as a domineering mother.

She received a Tony Award for her role as Blanche Dubois in the original Broadway revival of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948. She concentrated on the stage after this (Vivien Leigh lost the film role). She and Cronyn formed the acting company at the Stratford Festival in 1976 and then returned in 1980 to debut Cronyn's play Foxfire. In 1977, she was awarded her second Tony Award for her role (with Cronyn) in The Gin Game and her third in 1982 for her appearance in Foxfire, again with Cronyn.

With character appearances in The World According to Garp, Best Friends, Still of the Night (1984), and The Bostonians (1984), the 1980s saw a revival in her film career. On stage and television, she and Cronyn were more regularly on stage and television, including the films Cocoon (1985), *batteries not included (1987) and Foxfire (1987), recreating her Tony Award-winning Broadway role.

Nonetheless, it was her vibrant appearance in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), as an elderly, clumsy Southern Jewish matron, which earned her an Oscar.

She received a Best Supporting Actress award for her role in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), co-starring Tandy Cronyn and Shirley MacLaine's mother Tandy Cronyn), The Story Lady (1992, Camilla (1994, with Cronyn), and To Dance with the White Dog (1991), as Shirley MacLaine's mother). Nobody's Fool (1994), she was her last appearance at the age of 84, was Nobody's Fool (1994).

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