Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy

Hume Cronyn Born July 18, 1911 in London, Ontario, Canada Died June 15, 2003 in Fairfield, Connecticut, USA (prostate cancer) Birth Name Hume Blake Cronyn Jr. Height 5' 6" (1.68 m) Hume Cronyn was born on July 18, 1911 in London, Ontario, Canada as Hume Blake Cronyn Jr. He was an actor and producer, known for Cocoon (1985), *Batteries Not Included (1987) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943). He was married to Susan Cooper, Jessica Tandy and Emily Woodruff. He died on June 15, 2003 in Fairfield, Connecticut, USA. Spouse (3) Susan Cooper (20 July 1996 - 15 June 2003) ( his death) Jessica Tandy (27 September 1942 - 11 September 1994) ( her death) ( 2 children: son: Christopher Cronyn, daughter: Tandy Cronyn. Emily Woodruff (22 June 1935 - 18 June 1936) ( divorced) 1932: Member of the Kappa Alpha Society at the McGill University. Won a Tony Award in 1964 for his performance as Polonius in the Richard Burton Broadway production of "Hamlet" which was recorded live on stage and shown in movie theaters the same year (Hamlet (1964)). His father Hume Blake Cronyn Sr. has an observatory dedicated to him in the University of Western Ontario. The refractor telescope was the largest ever built in the western hemisphere at the time. Although not widely known, he had a glass eye, having lost the real one to cancer. Attended Ridley College, St. Catharines, Ontario Became a US citizen late in life. Appeared as Sosigenes in Cleopatra (1963), At time of death had eight grandchildren and five great-granchildren. Son: Christopher Cronyn, daughter: Tandy Cronyn. Granddaughter: Katherine Cronyn. Stepchildren: Jonathan Grant and Kate Glennon. Starred (with wife Jessica Tandy) as Ben Marriott on NBC Radio's "The Marriage" (1953-1954). Won two Tony Awards: in 1964, as Best Supporting or Featured Actor (Dramatic) for playing Polonius in Shakespeare/s "Hamlet," and, in 1994, a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement that was shared with his wife, Jessica Tandy. And he was nominated six other times: as Best Actor (Dramatic), in 1961 for: "Big Fish, Little Fish" and in 1967 for Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance;" as Best Actor (Play), in 1978 for "The Gin Game" and in 1986 for "The Petition;" as Producer (Dramatic), in 1965 as co-producer of Best Play nominee "Slow Dance on the Killing Ground;" and as co-producer in 1978 of Best Play nominee "The Gin Game.". 1990: He and wife Jessica Tandy were both honored with the American National Medal of the Arts from the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington DC. In 1946 Elia Kazan, looking for an actress to play Blanche Dubois in his upcoming Broadway production of "Streetcar Named Desire", saw a Los Angeles production of Tennessee Williams' earlier play "Portrait of a Madonna" in which Cronyn directed his wife Jessica Tandy. He was so impressed by her performance that he offered her the role. 1972: Won an 1972-1973 Obie for Distinguished Performance for "Krapp's Last Tape". Was once a boxer who was nominated for the Canadian Olympic boxing team. 7/11/88: He was awarded the O.C. (Officer of the Order of Canada) for his services to drama. The original screenplay of The Locket (1946), called "What Nancy Wanted", was written by Norma Barzman, who was married to writer Ben Barzman, who was blacklisted during the McCarthy "Red Scare" period of the 1940s and 1950s. She sold the script to Cronyn, who planned to direct the film with wife Jessica Tandy starring. Cronyn then sold the script to RKO, which assigned Sheridan Gibney to rewrite it. Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 112-114. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007. Inducted to Canada's Walk of Fame in 1999. Acted with the Montreal repertory Company while still a student at McGill. He and wife Jessica Tandy partnered on screen in 13 movies between 1944 and 1994, usually playing a couple: The Seventh Cross (1944), Blonde Fever (1944), The Green Years (1946), The Moon and Sixpence (1959), Honky Tonk Freeway (1981), The World According to Garp (1982), Cocoon (1985), *batteries not included (1987), Foxfire (1987), Cocoon: The Return (1988), The Story Lady (1991), To Dance with the White Dog (1993) and Camilla (1994). He met wife Jessica Tandy in 1940 and they married in 1942. During the shooting of There Was a Crooked Man... (1970) Cronyn was diagnosed with optic cancer which required the removal of an eye. Although this news upset director Joseph L. Mankiewicz very much, Cronyn was more than willing to work longer hours to complete his scenes and make him available for the necessary surgery. He was awarded the 1971 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Distinguished Performance for his performance in the play, "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial," at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, California. He was awarded the 1985 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Distinguished Performance in Leading Role for the play, "Foxfire" at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, California. He was nominated for a 1978 Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for Best Actor in a Play for "The Gin Game" on Broadway in New York City. Personal Quotes (5) The whole business of marshaling one's energies becomes more and more important as one grows older. To act you must have a sense of truth and some degree of dedication. [he one rule he follows as an actor] If you're doing the devil, look for the angel in him. If you're doing the angel, look for the devil in him. [on why he asked to be released from his MGM contract] I remember beginning to realize that I was never going to do anything in California, but be another useful character actor, and that could continue that career indefinitely if I were prepared to. [on working with Hitchcock] It was all cut in his head. You shot from the angle he wanted shot, with the result that very little film ended up on the floor. You really felt that you were in the presence of someone who was a real master of the craft.

Jessica Tandy Born June 7, 1909 in Stoke Newington, London, England, UK Died September 11, 1994 in Easton, Connecticut, USA (ovarian cancer) Birth Name Jessie Alice Tandy Height 5' 4" (1.63 m) A beloved, twinkly blue-eyed doyenne of stage and screen, actress Jessica Tandy's career spanned nearly six and a half decades. In that span of time, she enjoyed an amazing film renaissance at age 80, something unheard of in a town that worships youth and nubile beauty. She was born Jessie Alice Tandy in London in 1909, the daughter of Jessie Helen (Horspool), the head of a school for mentally handicapped children, and Harry Tandy, a traveling salesman. Her parents enrolled her as a teenager at the Ben Greet Academy of Acting, where she showed immediate promise. She was 16 when she made her professional bow as Sara Manderson in the play "The Manderson Girls", and was subsequently invited to join the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Within a couple of years, Jessica was making a number of other debuts as well. Her first West End play was in "The Rumour" at the Court Theatre in 1929, her Gotham bow was in "The Matriarch" at the Longacre Theatre in 1930, and her initial film role was as a maid in The Indiscretions of Eve (1932). Jessica married British actor Jack Hawkins in 1932 after the couple had met performing in the play "Autumn Crocus" the year before. They had one daughter, Susan, before parting ways after eight years of marriage. An unconventional beauty, she was passed over for leading lady roles in films, thereby focusing strongly on a transatlantic stage career throughout the 1930s and 1940s. She grew in stature while enacting a succession of Shakespeare's premiere ladies (Titania, Viola, Ophelia, Cordelia). At the same time, she enjoyed personal successes elsewhere in such plays as "French Without Tears", "Honour Thy Father", "Jupiter Laughs", "Anne of England" and "Portrait of a Madonna". And then she gave life to Blanche DuBois. When Tennessee Williams' masterpiece "A Streetcar Named Desire" opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, Jessica's name became forever associated with this entrancing Southern belle character. One of the most complex, beautifully drawn, and still sought-after femme parts of all time, she went on to win the coveted Tony award. Aside from introducing Marlon Brando to the general viewing public, "Streetcar" shot Jessica's marquee value up a thousandfold. But not in films. While her esteemed co-stars Brando, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden were given the luxury of recreating their roles in Elia Kazan's stark, black-and-white cinematic adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Jessica was devastatingly bypassed. Vivien Leigh, who played the role on stage in London and had already immortalized another coy, manipulative Southern belle on celluloid (Scarlett O'Hara), was a far more marketable film celebrity at the time and was signed on to play the delusional Blanche. To be fair, Leigh was nothing less than astounding in the role and went on to deservedly win the Academy Award (along with Malden and Hunter). Jessica would exact her revenge on Hollywood in later years. In 1942, she entered into a second marriage, with actor/producer/director Hume Cronyn, a 52-year union that produced two children, Christopher and Tandy, the latter an actor in her own right. The couple not only enjoyed great solo success, they relished performing in each other's company. A few of their resounding theatre triumphs included the "The Fourposter" (1951), "Triple Play" (1959), "Big Fish, Little Fish (1962), "Hamlet" (he played Polonius; she played Gertrude) (1963), "The Three Sisters (1963) and "A Delicate Balance." They supported together in films too, their first being The Seventh Cross (1944). In the film The Green Years (1946), Jessica, who was two years older than Cronyn, actually played his daughter! Throughout the 1950s, they built up a sturdy reputation as "America's First Couple of the Theatre." In 1963, Jessica made an isolated film appearance in Alfred Hitchcock's classic The Birds (1963). Low on the pecking order at the time (pun intended), Hitchcock gave Jessica a noticeable secondary role, and Jessica made the most of her brittle scenes as the high-strung, overbearing mother of Rod Taylor, who witnesses horror along the California coast. It was not until the 1980s that Jessica (and Hume, to a lesser degree) experienced a mammoth comeback in Hollywood. Alongside Hume she delighted movie audiences in such enjoyable fare as Honky Tonk Freeway (1981), The World According to Garp (1982), Cocoon (1985) and *Batteries Not Included (1987). In 1989, however, octogenarian Jessica was handed the senior citizen role of a lifetime as the prickly Southern Jewish widow who gradually forms a trusting bond with her black chauffeur in the genteel drama Driving Miss Daisy (1989). Jessica was presented with the Oscar, Golden Globe and British Film Awards, among others, for her exceptional work in the film that also won "Best Picture". Deemed Hollywood royalty now, she was handed the cream of the crop in elderly film parts and went on to win another Oscar nomination for Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) a couple of years later. Jessica also enjoyed some of her biggest stage hits, earning two more Tony Awards for her exceptional work in "The Gin Game" (1977) and "Foxfire" (1982). Both co-starred her husband, Hume, and both were beautifully transferred by the couple to television. Diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1990, Jessica bravely continued working with Emmy-winning distinction on television. She died of her illness on September 11, 1994. Her last two films, Nobody's Fool (1994) and Camilla (1994), were released posthumously. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / [contact link] Spouse (2) Hume Cronyn (27 September 1942 - 11 September 1994) ( her death) ( 2 children) Jack Hawkins (22 October 1932 - 2 January 1940) ( divorced) ( 1 child) Mother of Susan Hawkins with Jack Hawkins and Tandy Cronyn and Christopher Cronyn with Hume Cronyn. Grandmother of actress Katherine Cronyn. 1990: Chosen by People magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the world. She won a Tony Award in 1978 for "The Gin Game". She won a Tony Award in 1948 for "A Streetcar Named Desire". Starred (with husband Hume Cronyn) as Liz Marriott on NBC Radio's "The Marriage" (1953-1954). 1989: She became the 12th performer to win the Triple Crown of acting. Oscar: Best Actress, Driving Miss Daisy (1989); Tonys: Best Actress-Play, "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1948) and Best Actress-Play, "The Gin Game" (1978) and Best Actress-Play, "Foxfire" (1983); Emmy: Best Actress-Miniseries/Special, Foxfire (1987). Has won four Tony Awards: in 1948, as Best Actress (Dramatic) for "A Streetcar Named Desire," an award shared with Judith Anderson for "Medea" and Katharine Cornell for "Antony and Cleopatra"; as Best Actress (Play) in 1978 for "The Gin Game" and in 1983 for "Foxfire"; and in 1994 a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement shared with her husband, Hume Cronyn. She also received Tony Award nominations in 1971 as Best Actress (Featured Role - Play) for "Rose" and in 1986 as Best Actress (Play) for "The Petition.".