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Jessica Tandy, 1909-1994: She Performed in More Than 100 Plays and Movies |
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The actress is best known for winning an Academy Award in 1989
for her part in the movie ''Driving Miss Daisy.'' Transcript of radio
broadcast: |
VOICE ONE:
I'm Shirley
Griffith.
VOICE
TWO:
And I'm
Rich Kleinfeldt with the Special English program, People in America. Today, we
tell the story of Jessica Tandy who died in nineteen ninety-four. She won many
awards for her acting during the almost seventy years she performed.
(MUSIC)
VOICE
ONE:
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Jessica
Tandy in "Driving Miss Daisy" |
Jessica
Tandy probably is best known for winning an Academy Award in nineteen
eighty-nine for the movie "Driving Miss Daisy. " She was the oldest
person to have won the award. But for many years, she had received praise for
her great performances.
Tandy
appeared in more than one hundred stage shows, twenty-five movies and on many
television programs during her sixty-seven years of acting. Most of her
performances were in the United States, although she did not become an American
citizen until nineteen fifty-four.
VOICE
TWO:
Jessica
Tandy was born in London, England in nineteen-oh-nine. Her father died when she
was twelve years old. Her mother taught and took other jobs at night to make
extra money for her three children.
Jessica's
older brothers showed an interest in the theater. They would put on shows in
their London home. Jessica said later that she was terrible in all of them. But
she said taking part in those plays as a child created a desire in her to be
someone else.
VOICE
ONE:
Jessica
loved going to the theater. And she loved British writer William Shakespeare.
Years later, she acted in many of Shakespeare's plays, with great actors like
John Gielgud and Lawrence Olivier.
This
love of the theater led her to attend an acting school in nineteen twenty-four.
When she was eighteen years old, she performed in her first play. It was called
"The Manderson Girls." She did not earn enough money to pay for the
five different dresses she had to wear in the play. She solved the problem by
sewing them herself.
(MUSIC)
VOICE
TWO:
Jessica
Tandy always thought she was plain-looking. So did most theater professionals.
She said people in the theater knew she was a good actress, but did not believe
she was pretty enough to be a success. She noted that they said: "She is
plain but on the stage she looks all right. "
Pictures
of Jessica Tandy do not suggest that this is true. She just looked different
from the leading women actors of the day. Later, she said that it was good that
she was not considered pretty. She said she got more interesting parts that
way.
VOICE
ONE:
In
nineteen thirty-two, critics in London recognized her great acting skill in her
performance in the play "Children in Uniform." That part gave her
what she said was one of the moments she loved most in the theater. She said at
one performance, people watching were so moved they continued to sit quietly
when the play ended.
That
same year, she married actor Jack Hawkins. They had a daughter, Susan. Tandy
continued to work in the theater in London. By nineteen forty, her marriage was
ending. So she took her daughter and moved to the United States to escape World
War Two. In New York City, she met a young actor named Hume Cronyn. Two years
later they married and moved to Hollywood. By nineteen forty-five, they had two
children.
VOICE
TWO:
In
California, Hume Cronyn was getting good parts in movies. But Tandy was not.
She got only small parts, when she got them at all. She said the producers in
Hollywood did not take her seriously as an actress. She began to feel like a
failure.
Jessica
Tandy was considering not acting anymore. But then her husband did something
that changed her life. He gave her the lead part in a play he was directing in
Los Angeles. It was "Portrait of a Madonna" by Tennessee Williams.
She played a lonely woman. Critics praised her.
Tennessee
Williams came to Los Angeles from New York just to see her in the show. He said
later that he knew he had found the actress to play the lead in his new play,
"A Streetcar Named Desire. "
That
play opened in New York in nineteen forty-seven. Jessica Tandy, Marlon Brando
and Kim Hunter were the stars. It won a Pulitzer Prize and many other awards.
Tandy won the first of her four Tony awards for best actress in a play. One
director said that she was full of surprises. He said that she always did
things better than expected.
(MUSIC)
VOICE
ONE:
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Tandy and Cronyn in the play "The
Fourposter" |
During
the nineteen fifties, Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn began working together in
theaters in New York City. Their first appearance together in a major Broadway
theater was the hit play "The Fourposter. " Through the years, they
appeared together in nine other plays on Broadway, including "A Delicate
Balance," "The Gin Game" and "Foxfire. " Their last
Broadway appearance together was in "The Petition" in nineteen
eighty-six.
Tandy
also worked with her husband in local theaters across the United States. They
liked doing it because they had a chance to play parts in the older well-known
plays.
In
nineteen sixty-three, for example, Miss Tandy played Gertrude in Shakespeare's
"Hamlet," Olga in Anton Chekhov's "The Three Sisters," and
the wife of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman." She
also acted in plays in the Shakespeare festivals in Stratford, Connecticut and
in Stratford, Ontario, Canada.
VOICE
TWO:
Jessica
Tandy said she hated seeing herself in the movies. She said she never was as
satisfied making movies as she was working in the theater. But she thought it
was important to accept the acting jobs that were offered. It helped pay
expenses when she performed in small theaters for less pay.
Tandy
played Hume Cronyn's wife in four movies during the nineteen eighties,
including "Cocoon" and "Batteries not Included." In
nineteen ninety-two, she played an old woman in the movie, "Fried Green
Tomatoes. " But she never really thought of herself as a movie actress.
Perhaps that was because of her experience earlier when she was not accepted in
Hollywood.
Even
after her success in the play "A Streetcar Named Desire," Hollywood
producers did not choose her to be in the movie. Vivien Leigh replaced her in
the part of Blanche Dubois. Tandy said she was surprised when she won the
Academy Award for "Driving Miss Daisy." She said then that the
wonderful part she had made up for her lack of experience in movies.
(MUSIC)
VOICE
ONE:
Jessica
Tandy and Hume Cronyn were married for fifty-two years. During their years of
acting together, they won almost every cultural award possible. In nineteen
eighty-six, they won the Kennedy center lifetime achievement award. In nineteen
ninety, President George Bush presented the National Medal of Art to them. A
few months before she died, Tandy and Cronyn were honored with a special Tony
Award for their work in the Broadway theater.
Reporters
always were asking them how they were able to work so closely together for so
long. Tandy said they never discussed their work at home. She said they always
honored each other's ideas if they did not agree about something.
(MUSIC)
VOICE
TWO:
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Tandy and Cronyn together in the television movie
"Foxfire" |
Jessica
Tandy suffered from stage fright that became worse as she grew older. It made
her feel sick before a performance. Yet her husband said she was at her best
when she was working. She was in great demand as she grew older. Tandy took
good parts and bad ones. She always said a person is richer for doing things.
If you wait for the greatest part, you will wait a long time and your skills
will decrease, she said. You cannot be an actor without acting.
Tandy
was an actor until the end. She had problems with her eyes and her heart. Yet
they did not slow her down. In nineteen eighty-eight, she won an Emmy Award for
a television movie of the play "Foxfire. "
Three
years later, Jessica Tandy had a cancer operation. But she continued working.
She did not let her pain lessen the effectiveness of her performance. She
appeared in more television movies in the years before her death. And she made
several movies that were released after she died September eleventh, nineteen
ninety-four. She was eighty-five.
VOICE
ONE:
Jessica
Tandy said as an actor her job was getting the best out of what the writer
expressed in the play or movie. The critics said she did. They said she always
was able to show deep meaning in the people she played. One critic wrote that
she was such a good actor that only poets, not critics, should be permitted to
write about her.
(MUSIC)
VOICE
TWO:
This
Special English program was written by Nancy Steinbach and produced by Lawan
Davis. I'm Rich Kleinfeldt.
VOICE
ONE:
And I'm
Shirley Griffith. Listen again next week for another People in America program
on the Voice of America.