Date of Birth

7 June 1909, Stoke Newington, 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 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 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 otherdebuts 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 Un tramway nommé désir (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 La septième croix (1944). In the film Les vertes années (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 Les oiseaux (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), Le monde selon Garp (1982), Cocoon(1985) and Miracle sur la 8ème rue (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 Miss Daisy et son chauffeur (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 Beignets de tomates vertes (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 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, Un homme presque parfait (1994) and Camilla (1994), were released posthumously.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net 

Filmographie

1932 : The Indiscretions of Eve : Maid
1938 : Murder in the Family : Ann Osborne
1938 : Glorious Morning (TV)
1939 : Fiat Justitia (TV)
1939 : Fox in the Morning (TV) : Barbara Scott
1944 : The Seventh Cross : Liesel Roeder
1944 : Blonde Fever : Diner at Inn
1945 : La Vallée du jugement (The Valley of Decision) : Louise Kane
1946 : Les Vertes Années (The Green Years) : Kate Leckie
1946 : Le Château du Dragon (Dragonwyck) : Peggy O'Malley
1947 : Ambre (Forever Amber) : Nan Britton
1948 : A Woman's Vengeance : Janet Spence
1950 : Les Amants de Capri (September Affair) : Catherine Lawrence
1951 : Le Renard du désert (The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel) : Frau Lucie Marie Rommel
1954 : The Marriage (série TV) : Liz Marriott
1957 : Alfred Hitchcock Présente - The Glass Eye (série TV) : Robert Stevens
1958 : The Light in the Forest : Myra Butler
1959 : The Moon and Sixpence (TV) : Blanche Stroeve
1962 : Aventures de jeunesse (Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man) : Mrs. Adams
1963 : Les Oiseaux (The Birds) : Lydia Brenner
1974 : Butley : Edna Shaft
1981 : Honky Tonk Freeway : Carol
1981 : The Gin Game (TV) : Fonsia Dorsey
1982 : Le Monde selon Garp (The World According to Garp) : Mrs. Fields
1982 : La Mort aux enchères (Still of the Night)(?): Grace Rice (j'lai vu mais m'en rappelle plus)
1982 : Best Friends : Eleanor McCullen
1984 : Les Bostoniennes (The Bostonians) : Miss Birdseye
1985 : Cocoon** : Alma Finley
1987 : Foxfire (TV) : Annie Nations
1987 : Miracle sur la 8ème rue (Batteries not included) * : Faye Riley
1988 : Une femme en péril (The House on Carroll Street) : Miss Venable
1988 : Cocoon, le retour (Cocoon: The Return)** : Alma Finley
1989 : Miss Daisy et son chauffeur (Driving Miss Daisy)*** : Daisy Werthan
1991 : The Story Lady (TV) : Grace McQueen / Granny Goodheart
1991 : Beignets de tomates vertes (Fried Green Tomatoes)*** : Ninny Threadgoode
1992 : Used People : Freida
1993 : To Dance with the White Dog (TV) : Cora Peek
1994 : Camilla : Camilla Cara
1994 : Un homme presque parfait (Nobody's Fool) *** : Miss Beryl Peoples
 
Théâtre
1947 : A Streetcar Named Desire (Un tramway nommé Désir): Blanche Du Bois
 
Distinction / Récompenses
1948 : Tony Award comme meilleure actrice pour le premier rôle dans la pièce de Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire (Un tramway nommé Désir), mise en scène à Broadway par Elia Kazan, où elle incarne Blanche DuBois face à Marlon Brando.
1989 : Oscar de la meilleure actrice dans Miss Daisy et son chauffeur