CRONYN, HUME; AND TANDY, JESSICA

born July 18, 1911, London, Ont., Can. born June 7, 1909, London, Eng. died Sept. 11, 1994, Easton, Conn., U.S. husband-and-wife acting team who became known as the first couple of the American theatre. 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 in 1934 made his Broadway debut in Hipper's Holiday. His early Broadway career was marked by a number of successful character roles, among them those of Elkus in High Tor (1937) and Andrei in The Three Sisters (1939). In 1964 he received a Tony Award for an outstanding performance as Polonius in Hamlet, directed by John Gielgud. Cronyn starred in many films, including Brute Force (1947) and The Arrangement (1968). The many plays that he directed in New York City included Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (194950), Hilda Crane (1950), and The Egghead (1957). Tandy was the daughter of a traveling salesman and grew up in London. She studied acting at the Ben Greet Academy. She first appeared in London in The Rumour (1929) and in New York City in The Matriarch (1930). After playing dozens of increasingly complex roles, she won rave reviews and 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), The Birds (1963), and Butley (1973). Tandy was first married to the British actor Jack Hawkins, whom she divorced in 1940. She married Cronyn on September 27, 1942, becoming a naturalized American citizen in 1954. The couple appeared together on the stage in The Fourposter (1951), Madame, Will You Walk (1953), The Honeys (1955), A Day By the Sea (1955), The Man in the Dog Suit (1958), The Physicists (1964), A Delicate Balance (1966), Noel Coward in Two Keys (1974), and many of the standard classics. Their stage partnership culminated in The Gin Game (1977) and Foxfire (1982), each of which yielded Tandy another Tony Award. In 1994 the couple received the first-ever Tony Awards for lifetime achievement. They worked together on radio and television and made such motion pictures 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. She continued to appear to great acclaim in films such as Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) and Used People (1992). She received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1986 for her contributions to the arts. She continued to work for years after being diagnosed with cancer in 1990. 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).