Biography for
Jessica Tandy More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

7 June 1909, London, England, UK

Date of Death

11 September 1994, Easton, Connecticut, USA (ovarian cancer)

Birth Name

Jessie Alice Tandy

Height

5' 4" (1.63 m)

Mini Biography

A beloved, twinkly blue-eyed doyenne of stage and screen, actress Jessica Tandy's career spanned nearly six and a half decades. In that course of time she enjoyed an amazing film renaissance at the age of 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 Harry Tandy, a traveling salesman, and Jessie Helen Horspool. 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 with slightly stern-eyed and sharp, hawkish features, 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 wasn't 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 ("Streetcar" notwithstanding) during her twilight years, 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 TV. Diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1990, Jessica bravely continued working with Emmy-winning distinction on TV. 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 / gr-home@pacbell.net

Spouse

Hume Cronyn	(27 September 1942 - 11 September 1994) (her death) 2 children
Jack Hawkins	(22 October 1932 - 2 January 1940) (divorced) 1 child

Trivia

Mother of Susan Hawkins with Jack Hawkins and Tandy Cronyn and Christopher Cronyn with Hume Cronyn.

1990: Chosen by People magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the world.

1990: Diagnosed with cancer.

She won a Tony Award in 1978 for "The Gin Game".

She won a Tony Award in 1948 for "A Sreet Car 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) (TV).

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."

Broadway producer Lee Shubert convinced her to change her name from Jessie to Jessica during her early stage years.

1974: She earned a law degree.

1990: She and husband Hume Cronyn were both awarded the American National Medal of the Arts by the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington. DC.

At age 81, she is the oldest winner of a Best Actress Oscar for her role as Daisy Werthan in Driving Miss Daisy (1989).

Won a 1993 Special Tony Award (New York City) lifetime achievement award.

Personal Quotes

[joking reference to her husband, Hume Cronyn] When he's late for dinner, I know he's either having an affair or is lying dead in the street, I always hope it's the street.

I must say, if I had known at the beginning of my life that this is where I would get to, I would have said, "Not possible. Not possible."

I'm most comfortable on the stage. Because of the nature of film and television, you'll very often do the climactic scene on the first day and the other parts weeks later. It's hard to remember exactly what state you were in. It's easier when you start at the beginning and go through to the end. Any new project, new play, new film, you're really starting from square one every time. You can't be sure enough of yourself to say, "Well, this is just a piece of cake." It's not like that at all -- not for me.

Anything in your life that can parallel something in the life of a character that you're playing is of great value because you can really feel all of those things and know what it would be like.

[1950] Jack Hawkins is a wonderful actor, but a rotten husband!

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