British actress Glynis Johns who played Winifred Banks, the matriarch of the film Mary Poppins (1964), died this Thursday in the city of Los Angeles at the age of 100. Johns was born in the South African city of Pretoria in October 1923. In 1973, she won a Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance as Desiree Armfeldt in the Broadway musical A Little Night Music. She was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for The Sundowners (1961) and a Golden Globe for Best Actress for The Chapman Report (1963).
However, her role best known to the general public was that of the matriarch in Mary Poppins, the Walt Disney musical in which she shared the screen with Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke and played the mother of Jane and Michael Banks. Her role as a women's suffrage advocate who hires the services of a magical nanny, Mary Poppins, to care for her two children, earned her a Laurel Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Johns was the oldest actress in the Disney Legend Awards, Disney's hall of fame that recognizes those who have contributed the most to the company. Following her death, her Mary Poppins co-star, Dick Van Dyke, becomes the oldest actor in the Disney Legend Awards.
