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.
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