HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JESSICA TANDY
(June 7, 1909 - September 11, 1994)

"Everything this actress does is so pure and right that only poets, not theatre critics, should be allowed to write about her."
          Frank Rich, The New York Times, Nov. 12, 1982

Born in London, she spent most of her 67-year career in the United States.  She appeared in over 100 stage productions and had more than 60 roles in film and TV.

She made her professional debut on the London stage in 1927, at the age of 18. During the 1930s, she appeared in a large number of plays in London's West End, playing Ophelia, opposite John Gielgud's legendary Hamlet and Katharine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V.  

After her first marriage to actor Jack Hawkins ended, she moved to New York in 1940, where she met Canadian actor
Hume Cronyn who became her second husband in 1942  and her frequent partner on stage and screen. While Hume found work on the west coast as a character actor and occasional screenwriter, she was under contract to Twentieth Century-Fox and found few opportunities. After five years of relative inactivity in minor film roles, she was hungry for work. In the summer of 1946 Cronyn, who held under option several early works by Tennessee Williams, directed his wife in a Los Angeles Actor's Laboratory Theatre production of the playwright's one-act play Portrait of a Madonna.  Hollywood audiences cheered and her success led directly to her being cast as Blanche DuBois in the 1947 Broadway production of Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire. Her performance established her as a preeminent actress of the American stage.  The play was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and she received her first Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award.

She worked frequently with her husband and their joint appearance in Jan de Hartog's two-character play
The Fourposter in 1951 established them firmly in the public mind as a performing duo. They shared a Commoedia Matinee Club Bronze Medallion for their work in the play.
The developing Off-Broadway theatre gained immeasurable stature when Tandy and Cronyn joined the new Phoenix Theatre in 1953 and they repeated their performances in The Fourposter at reduced salaries for the New York City Center's popularly priced revival series in 1955.
Their most significant and far-reaching contribution was their decision to join Tyrone Guthrie's Minnesota Theatre Company in Minneapolis for its entire season. They were the first major American stars to join a regional theatre on a full-time basis.  They returned to the Guthrie Theatre in 1965, when Ms. Tandy appeared as Ranyevskaya in The Cherry Orchard, Lady Wishfort in The Way of the World, and the Mother-in-Law in The Caucasian Chalk Circle. During the summer of 1982 she played there in a pre-Broadway trial of Foxfire, written by Susan Cooper and Hume Cronyn.  Opening at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on November 11, 1982,  Ms. Tandy's portrayal of Annie Nations, an elderly mountain woman, confronting a changing world while reassessing her own past, was hailed as a consummate achievement.  She received her third Tony Award; the second Tony Award was for her performance in D. L. Coburn's The Gin Game costarring with Hume Cronyn. Their performance was described by Jack Kroll of Newsweek as "professionalism  raised to the level of incandescence."

At Tennessee Williams's memorial service, the most moving moment for many was when she stepped to the front of the stage, pushing aside the waiting microphone and transformed herself again into Blanche DuBois, performing a monologue, which she had done thirty-four years before.

Some of the many films in which she appeared include: The Birds (1963), Butley (1972),
Honky Tonk Freeway (1981) for which David Denby wrote "Jessica Tandy, eyes glittering with the love of performing after more than 50 years in show business, steals the movie in a small role as an alcoholic lady driving to a retirement home with her husband (Hume Cronyn, of course)." (New York, 1981).

She became the oldest actress to receive the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Driving Miss Daisy (1989). She also won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe. At the height of her success, she was named one of People's
"50 Most Beautiful People".

Tandy and Cronyn were both inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 1979. There are too many awards to mention but perhaps the most prestigious was when she received the 1986 annual award by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for "artistic achievement as a performer."

Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn in The Fourposter (1951)