Jessica Tandy
Birth : 1909-06-07, London, England
Death : 1994-09-11
History
Jessie Alice "Jessica" Tandy (June 7 1909 – September 11 1994) was an English - American stage and film actress.
She first appeared on the London stage in 1926 at the age of 16, playing, among others, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's King Lear. She also worked in British films. Following the end of her marriage to Jack Hawkins, she moved to New York, where she met Canadian actor Hume Cronyn. He became her second husband and frequent partner on stage and screen.
She won the Tony Award for her performance as Blanche Dubois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948, sharing the prize with Katherine Cornell (who won for Antony and Cleopatra) and Judith Anderson (for the latter's portrayal of Medea). Over the following three decades, her career continued sporadically and included a substantial role in Alfred Hitchcock's film, The Birds (1963), and a Tony Award-winning performance in The Gin Game (playing in the two-character play opposite her husband, Cronyn) in 1977. She, along with Cronyn was a member of the original acting company of The Guthrie Theater.
In the mid 1980s she enjoyed a career revival. She appeared opposite Hume Cronyn in the Broadway production of Foxfire in 1983 and its television adaptation four years later, winning both a Tony Award and an Emmy Award for her portrayal of Annie Nations. During these years, she appeared in films such as Cocoon (1985), also with Cronyn.
She became the oldest actress to receive the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), for which she also won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Fried Green Tomatoes (1991). At the height of her success, she was named as one of People's "50 Most Beautiful People". She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1990, and continued working until shortly before her death.
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Self (archive footage)
Interviews and photos about the play on Broadway
Self (archive footage)
This is a lovely documentary that pays tribute to the career of star Jessica Tandy, as the filmmakers recall what it was like to work with this marvelous actress. This featurette is fairly short, but it offers fine insight, history and heart
Daisy Werthan (archive footage) (uncredited)
Behind the scenes of the making of Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
Beryl Peoples
Sully is a rascally ne'er-do-well approaching retirement age. While he is pressing a worker's compensation suit for a bad knee, he secretly works for his nemesis, Carl, and flirts with Carl's young wife Toby. Sully's long- forgotten son and family have moved back to town, so Sully faces unfamiliar family responsibilities. Meanwhile, Sully's landlady's banker son plots to push through a new development and evict Sully from his mother's life.
Camilla Cara
Freda Lopez, an aspiring musician, travels with her husband to the beautiful beaches of Georgia where she befriends Camilla, an odd and exotic elderly woman who plays the violin. When the two embark on a journey together, Camilla reclaims a lost love and makes peace with herself and her son, while Freda discovers inner resources she never knew she had.
Cora Peek
When Sam Peek's beloved wife, Cora, dies, a white dog suddenly materializes as his new companion and confidant.
Freida
At her husband's funeral, Pearl, Jewish mother of two divorced and antagonistic daughters, meets an old Italian friend of her husband, whose advice years previously had stopped the husband leaving home. For 23 years he, now a widower, has secretly loved Pearl...
Ninny Threadgoode
Amidst her own personality crisis, southern housewife Evelyn Couch meets Ninny, an outgoing old woman who tells her the story of Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison, two young women who experienced hardships and love in Whistle Stop, Alabama in the 1920s.
Grace McQueen
When Grace comes to live with her daughter and son-in-law, she is eager to find a way to be useful in the community. She loves to read stories to children, and decides to read one on public access television. The response is so strong that a large company hears about it and offers her a television series. Her life becomes complicated as she is forced to make some serious decisions. Through it all, Grace is able to help a young mother realize that time is the most valuable gift she could give to her daughter.
Self
A celebrity benefit for The Actors' Fund of America, featuring music, songs, dance and comedy.
Daisy Werthan
The story of an old Jewish widow named Daisy Werthan and her relationship with her black chauffeur, Hoke. From an initial mere work relationship grew in 25 years a strong friendship between the two very different characters in a time when those types of relationships where shunned.
Alma Finley
The reinvigorated elderly group that left Earth comes back to visit their relatives. Will they all decide to go back to the planet where no one grows old, or will they be tempted to remain on Earth?
Miss Venable
Emily Crane is fired after refusing to give names to a 1951 House Un-American Activities Committee, and takes a part-time job as companion to an old lady. One day her attention is drawn to a noisy argument being conducted largely in German in a neighbouring house, the more so since one of those involved is her main senator prosecutor. Starting to look into things, she gradually enlists the help of FBI officer Cochran who was initially detailed to check her out. Just as well when things turn nasty
Faye Riley
In a soon to be demolished block of apartments, the residents resist the criminal methods used to force them to leave so a greedy tycoon can build his new skyscraper. When tiny mechanical aliens land for a recharge, they decide to stay and help out.
Annie Nations
Annie Nations and her husband Hector loved their life together in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but when Hector dies, Annie has to decide if she can handle the wilderness on her own.
Alma Finley
When a group of trespassing seniors swim in a pool containing alien cocoons, they find themselves energized with youthful vigor.
Lydia Brenner (archive footage) (uncredited)
A non-stop roller coaster ride through the scariest moments of the greatest terror films of all time.
Miss Birdseye
A bored lawyer and a suffragette vie for the attention of a faith healer's charismatic daughter.
Eleanor McCullen
When a professional couple, who have lived and worked together for many years, finally decide to marry, their sudden betrothal causes many unexpected difficulties. They soon find that being married is often quite different from being "best friends."
Grace Rice
When one of his patients is found murdered, psychiatrist Dr. Sam Rice is visited by the investigating officer but refuses to give up any information. He's then visited by the patient's mistress, Brooke Reynolds, whom he quickly falls for despite her being a likely murder suspect. As the police pressure on him intensifies, Rice decides to attempt solving the case on his own and soon discovers that someone is trying to kill him as well.
Mrs. Fields
A struggling young writer finds his life and work dominated by his unfaithful wife and his radical feminist mother, whose best-selling manifesto turns her into a cultural icon.
Carol
Ticlaw, a small town in Florida, has only one attraction: a safari park. The government constructs a freeway that passes near Ticlaw, but decides not to put an exit into the town. The people of Ticlaw, leaded by its Mayor, will do anything in order to convince the governor to alter the project.
Fonsia Dorsey
Set in an old folks home, senior citizen Weller Martin (Hume Cronyn) has the disease of Old Age, meets an old woman named Fonsia Dorsey (Jessica Tandy) who's diabetic. They both discuss issues such as society, the hospitals, money, families, and the folks home where they live, over a game of Gin Rummy. Fonsia has never played before so Weller teachers her. Instantly she goes on a winning streak, making it very hard for Weller not to lose his temper. But he does. Both put out an excellent performance with a lot of swearing!
Edna Shaft
Butley is set in Queen Mary’s College, London and focuses on two English instructors, Ben Butley, a middle-aged former T. S. Eliot expert whose life is now in a shambles, and his protégé, Joey, a homosexual. With both Joey and his wife leaving, Butley faces a life alone, fighting back with wit, obscenity and booze.
The brutes and the belles. The gadflies and the good ol' boys. The taboos and the profound truths. They're all part of a tennessee state of mind -- a realm of places, personalities and ideas. Williams is front and center for this exploration, reading from his works, placing them in the context of his life, and serving as guide in visits to his career-shaping refuge in New Orleans and his later-day writing quarters in Key West. Also, dramatizations by distinguished actors -- including Jessica Tandy, Broadway's original Blanche DuBois, in a recreation of her A Streetcar Named Desire triumph -- give flesh-and-bone immediacy to some of the writer's famed works. In his own words. In his own places. The resilient character and memorable characters of one of our greatest writers reside in Tennessee Williams' South.
Lydia Brenner
Chic socialite Melanie Daniels enjoys a passing flirtation with an eligible attorney in a San Francisco pet shop and, on an impulse, follows him to his hometown bearing a gift of lovebirds. But upon her arrival, the bird population runs amok. Suddenly, the townsfolk face a massive avian onslaught, with the feathered fiends inexplicably attacking people all over Bodega Bay.
Mrs. Helen Adams
Young and restless Nick Adams, the only son of a domineering mother and a weak but noble doctor father, leaves his rural Michigan home to embark on an eventful cross-country journey. He is touched and affected by his encounters with a punch-drunk ex-boxer, a sympathetic telegrapher, and an alcoholic advanceman for a burlesque show. After failing to get a job as reporter in New York, he enlists in the Italian army during World War I as an ambulance driver. His camaraderie with fellow soldiers and a romance with a nurse he meets after being wounded propel him to manhood.
Blanche Stroeve
A staid, dull Englishman abruptly deserts his wife and children to become a painter in the South Seas.
Mrs. Martin
The Christmas Tree is a 1958 Hallmark Hall of Fame made-for-television film that was broadcast on NBC on December 14, 1958. It is based on the short story "An Affair at the Inn" by Charles J. Finger. A number of stars in short skits, including Carol Channing and Cyril Ritchard on skates.
Myra Butler
A young white man who spent his whole life raised by a Native American tribe is sent to live with his true family and must learn to fit in with the people he was taught to hate.
The story takes place entirely in a bedroom dominated by a couple's four-poster bed, taking them through fifty years of marriage, through happiness and sorrow, through good times and bad, through childbirth, parenthood, and the eventual sadness from the absence of their children. In the end, they face the future together, while remembering their past.
Frau Lucie Marie Rommel
The life and career of Erwin Rommel and his involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler.
Catherine Lawrence
An industrialist and a pianist meet on a trip and fall in love. Through a quirk of fate, they are reported dead in a crash though they weren't on the plane. This gives them the opportunity to live together free from their previous lives. Unfortunately, this artificial arrangement leads to greater and greater stress. Eventually the situation collapses when they come to pursue their original, individual interests without choosing a common path.
Janet Spence
A cheating husband is charged in the poisoning death of his invalid wife, in spite of other women and suicide also being suspected.
Nan Britton
Amber St Clair, orphaned during the English Civil War and raised by a family of farmers, aspires to be a lady of high society; when a group of cavaliers ride into town, she sneaks away with them to London to achieve her dreams.
Kate Leckie
An orphaned young boy is guided by his great-grandfather and strives to go to university to become a doctor. However, the boy's harsh grandfather stands in his way.
Peggy O'Malley
For Miranda Wells, moving to New York to live in Dragonwyck Manor with her rich cousin, Nicholas, seems like a dream. However, the situation gradually becomes nightmarish. She observes Nicholas' troubled relationship with his tenant farmers, as well as with his daughter, to whom Miranda serves as governess. Her relationship with Nicholas intensifies after his wife dies, but his mental imbalance threatens any hope of happiness.
Louise Kane
Mary Rafferty comes from a poor family of steel mill workers in 19th Century Pittsburgh. Her family objects when she goes to work as a maid for the wealthy Scott family which controls the mill. Mary catches the attention of handsome scion Paul Scott, but their romance is complicated by Paul's engagement to someone else and a bitter strike among the mill workers.
Restaurant Patron
Peter (Philip Dorn) and Delilah (Mary Astor) are a married couple running a roadside café in Nevada. Their stable partnership turns rocky, though, with the arrival of the sultry Sally (Gloria Grahame), a waitress who catches Peter's wandering eye. Delilah strikes back by hiring Sally's boyfriend (Marshall Thompson) as a waiter. Sally is initially dismissive of Peter's advances, but when he wins $40,000 in a lottery, she quickly pounces, turning on the charm and eyeing the easy life.
Liesel Roeder
In Nazi Germany in 1936 seven men escape from a concentration camp. The camp commander puts up seven crosses and, as the Gestapo returns each escapee he is put to death on a cross. The seventh cross is still empty as George Heisler seeks freedom in Holland.
Ann Osborne
After a wealthy woman is killed, her extended family all fall under suspicion of murder.
Maid
An Earl loves a girl who models for shop window dummies.
