Hume Cronyn
Born July 18, 1911, London, Ontario, Canada
Died June 15, 2003, Fairfield, Connecticut (cancer)

Jessica Tandy
Born June 7, 1909, London, England
Died September 11, 1994, Easton, Connecticut (ovarian cancer)

Cronyn and Tandy were a husband-and-wife acting team who became known as the “first couple of the American theatre.”

During the Christmas season of 1939 a touring company from England arrived at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario for a production of Charles the King. The play starred a 30-year-old actress named Jessica Tandy.

She would go up and down Richmond Street learning her lines and would then duck into St. Pauls and have a quiet moment to herself before going back to the theatre.

Three years later, Tandy married an actor who was the great grandson of a bishop who had once preached at the cathedral that had given her that quiet moment. Thirty-four years later, the couple opened the Grand's 75th season with a two-person show, The Many Faces of Love.

   

The two came from very different backgrounds. Cronyn grew up in wealthy circumstances, the son of a Canadian member of Parliament. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and made his Broadway debut in 1934.

Cronyn starred in many films and directed numerous plays in New York City. His first film role came when Alfred Hitchcock cast him in the movie Shadow of a Doubt. His performance was a comic masterpiece and it was the beginning of a brief association between the two men. Cronyn would later adapt the screenplays for Hitchcock's Rope and Under Capricorn.

Tandy was the daughter of a traveling salesman and grew up in London. She studied acting at the Ben Greet Academy.

After playing dozens of increasingly complex roles, she received critical acclaim for her creation of Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), for which she received a Tony Award in 1948. Her film appearances were varied and included The Desert Fox (1951) and The Birds (1963).

Tandy was first married to the British actor Jack Hawkins, whom she divorced in 1940. The two had a daughter, Susan Hawkins. Tandy married Cronyn on September 27, 1942, and she became an American citizen in 1954.

The couple appeared together in innumerable stage productions. Their partnership culminated in The Gin Game (1977) and Foxfire (1982), each of which yielded Tandy another Tony Award.

The couple received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1986 for their contributions to the arts.

In 1994 the Cronyns received the first-ever Tony Award for lifetime achievement.

They worked together on radio and television and made motion pictures such as The Seventh Cross (1944), The Green Years (1946), The World According to Garp (1982), Cocoon (1985) and its sequel Cocoon: The Return (1988), and Batteries Not Included (1987).

Tandy earned both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for her performance in Driving Miss Daisy (1989). At age 80, she was the oldest person ever to have won an Oscar. Although diagnosed with cancer in 1990, she continued to appear to great acclaim in films such as Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Used People (1992), and Nobody's Fool (1994).

Cronyn won an Emmy Award for leading actor in the television play Age-Old Friends (1990), and he continued to appear frequently on television throughout the 1990s. His later motion pictures include The Pelican Brief (1993) and Marvin's Room (1996). Cronyn's memoir, A Terrible Liar, was published in 1991.

Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy were married from 1942 until her death in 1994. Virtually inseparable in life, they often worked together on stage and on screen. To fully understand their special relationship, you have to see the 1994 film, Camilla (released the year Jessica Tandy died). At an age when most people have long retired, Hume pushed on.

It is impossible to consider what sort of an impact Hume Cronyn may have had in the world of business. What is certain is that the world of theatre, television and film has been greatly enriched by a life devoted to an excellence rarely practiced in these days when instant fame and fortune seem more important than the work itself. But then, Hume Cronyn has been warmly rewarded by the applause of the people who have been lucky enough to see him and the love of the people who were lucky enough to have worked with him.

After Tandy's death in 1994 he married author Susan Cooper, his longtime playwriting partner. Hume Cronyn died on June 15, 2003. Susan continues to live in their home in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Tandy and Cronyn had three children: Christopher Cronyn (born in 1943), Tandy Cronyn (born in 1945), and Susan Hawkins, Tandy's daughter by a previous marriage.

The Family in 1952

With Christopher & Tandy, about twenty years later