Jessica Tandy

Hollywood's Snub

Jessica Tandy won the Oscar for Best Actress at age 80. It was in 1990 for her role in Driving Miss Daisy. Until that March night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, many producers considered her a reliable supporting actress or a relic of the New York stage. But the truth is that Tandy had spent decades waiting for a break that Hollywood systematically denied her.

She was born in London in 1909. She started performing on British stages before turning twenty. Her ambition pushed her to cross the Atlantic in search of greater challenges. In New York, she found the role that was meant to bring her lasting fame and that turned out to be her greatest professional disappointment.

Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire with her in mind. Tandy opened the play on Broadway in 1947 alongside a young Marlon Brando. She won the Tony Award, and critics were won over by her Blanche DuBois. But when Hollywood decided to film the movie in 1951, studio executives preferred Vivien Leigh. They argued that Tandy wasn't famous enough to sell tickets.

She never complained about the studios' neglect.

She married Hume Cronyn in 1942. They became one of the most enduring couples in the industry and worked together on countless projects. At times, her husband's shadow seemed longer in the credits. Tandy took on small parts in films such as The Birds in 1963. Alfred Hitchcock used her to bring the touch of British coolness the movie needed. She didn't need big monologues to steal the scene from the stars of the day.

A Comeback in Her Eighties

The industry usually sidelines actresses once they turn fifty. Tandy broke that rule out of sheer exhaustion with the system. In 1985, she appeared in Cocoon, and audiences discovered that this woman with the piercing gaze had an electric energy. And so the scripts she had once been denied began to arrive.

Filming Driving Miss Daisy in 1989 was the definitive turning point. She was paid a fraction of her male co-stars' salaries, yet she took the statuette home. That award made her the oldest person to win in that top category.

The industry apologized to her too late.

In 1991 she filmed Fried Green Tomatoes while battling ovarian cancer that she kept hidden from almost everyone. She kept working because acting was her only way of making sense of life. She sought neither the press's sympathy nor grand tributes while she was alive.

Her last appearance on the big screen was in Ni un pelo de tonto, released in 1994. In that production, she shared the bill with Paul Newman under the direction of Robert Benton. She died at her home in Easton that September, the same year.

Her professional filmography includes more than 60 titles across film and television.