System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!Hume Cronyn, Actor
July 18, 1911 - June 15, 2003
Canadian-born actor, director, producer and writer Hume Cronyn, died. Sunday, June 15, 2003 at his home in Fairfield, Connecticut. Cronyn died of prostate cancer He was 91.
Born on July 18, 1911, London, Ontario, Cronyn was one of five children of Hume Blake, a prominent financier and political figure. On his mother's side he was descended from the Labatt family of brewery fame.
He was educated at Ridley College in St. Catharines, McGill University, Montreal (pre-law); American Academy of Dramatic Arts, New York; and the Mozarteum, Salzburg, Austria (acting). At McGill, Cronyn was also an amateur boxer; he was nominated for the Canadian Olympic boxing team in 1932.
He made his theatre debut in 1931 as a paperboy in Up Pops the Devil. Cronyn made it to Broadway in 1934. His first important role was as the imbibing, jingle-writing hero of Three Men on a Horse, directed and co-written by George Abbott. In 1942, he married actress Jessica Tandy, a union that was to last until the actress' death in 1994. They worked together often on stage (The Fourposter, The Gin Game) and in films (Batteries Not Included). Cronyn made his screen debut as the armchair detective-neighbour in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Cronyn went on to take other film parts, both major and minor, appearing in numerous movies over the next 50 years, including: Phantom of the Opera (1943); The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946); People Will Talk (1951); Cleopatra (1963); There Was a Crooked Man (1970); and The World According to Garp (1982). He also collaborated on the screenplays for Hitchcock's Rope (1948) and Under Capricorn (1949).
Cronyn was often limited to unpleasant, weasely and sometimes sadistic characters in films. He was cast as ruthless, intelligent villains such as the Nazi collaborator in The Cross of Lorraine (1943) and the sadistic warden in Brute Force (1947).
Cronyn also tried his hand at writing and directing. In 1946, he directed a production of Tennessee Williams' Portrait of a Madonna, starring Tandy, and in 1950, on Broadway, Ludwig Bemelmans' Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. He co-wrote the television adaptation of The Dollmaker, starring Jane Fonda, in 1985. In the late 1970s, he and Tandy also began to appear in productions at the Stratford Festival in southwestern Ontario.
Seemingly indefatigable despite health problems and the loss of one eye, Cronyn remained gloriously active in films, television and stage into the 1990s, encapsulating many of his experiences in his breezy autobiography A Terrible Liar: a memoir (1991).
Cronyn’s acting was well recognized by his peers; he was nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actor for his performance in The Seventh Cross in 1944. In 1994 Cronyn and Tandy won the first Tony Award for lifetime theatrical achievement. Both he and Tandy were Emmy Award nominees in 1994 for their performances in Hallmark Hall of Fame: To Dance With the White Dog. Cronyn won the award for best actor in a miniseries or special for the CBS movie about an elderly man whose dead wife's spirit returns in the form of a dog. He won two other Emmys as well. He also won a Tony as supporting actor for playing Polonius in Hamlet, a 1964 production of Shakespeare's play directed by John Gielgud.
He was awarded the Order of Canada in 1974. And in 1999, Cronyn was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame, and travelled to Toronto for the ceremony.
Cronyn leaves his wife, children's writer Susan Cooper Cronyn, whom he married in 1996. He also is survived by a son, Christopher Cronyn of Missoula, Mont., daughters Tandy Cronyn of New York, and Susan Tettmer of Los Angeles and stepchildren Jonathan Grant and Kate Glennon, both of Scituate, Mass., eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
A private service is planned.
