The youngest of three siblings, Tandy was born in Geldeston Road in Hackney, London, to Harry Tandy and his wife, Jessie Helen Horspool.[1] Her mother was from a large Fenland family in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, and the head of a school for disabled children, and her father was a travelling salesman for a rope manufacturer.[2] She was educated at Dame Alice Owen's School in Islington.
Her father died when she was 12, and her mother subsequently taught evening courses to earn an income. Her brother Edward was later a prisoner of war of the Japanese in Asia.[3]
She entered films in Britain, but after her marriage to Jack Hawkins failed, she moved to the United States hoping to find better roles. During her time as a leading actress on the stage in London, she often had to fight over roles with her two rivals, Peggy Ashcroft and Celia Johnson.[5] In the following years, she played supporting roles in several Hollywood films.
Like many stage actors, Tandy also worked in radio. Among other programs, she was a regular on Mandrake the Magician[6] (as Princess Narda), and then with her second husband Hume Cronyn in The Marriage[7] which ran on radio from 1953 to 1954, and then segued onto television.
However, it was her colourful performance in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), as an aging, stubborn Southern Jewish matron, that earned her an Oscar.[11]
She received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her work in the grassroots hit Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) and co-starred in The Story Lady (1991 TV film, with her daughter Tandy Cronyn), Used People (1992, as Shirley MacLaine's mother), television film To Dance with the White Dog (1993, with Cronyn), and Camilla (1994, with Cronyn). Nobody's Fool (1994) proved to be her last performance, at the age of 84.
Personal life and death
Tandy and Hume Cronyn, 1988
In 1932, Tandy married English actor Jack Hawkins and together they had a daughter, Susan Hawkins.[12] Susan became an actress and was the daughter-in-law of John Moynihan Tettemer, a former Passionist monk who authored I Was a Monk: The Autobiography of John Tettemer, and was cast in small roles in Lost Horizon and Meet John Doe.[13]
Tandy and Hawkins divorced in 1940. She married Canadian actor Hume Cronyn in 1942.[12] Prior to moving to Connecticut, she and Cronyn lived for many years in nearby Pound Ridge, New York, and they remained together until her death in 1994. They had two children, daughter Tandy Cronyn, an actress who co-starred with her mother in the TV film The Story Lady, and son Christopher Cronyn. Tandy became a naturalised citizen of the US in 1952.
In 1990, Tandy was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and she also suffered from angina and glaucoma. Despite her illnesses and advancing age she continued working. On September 11, 1994, she died at home in Easton, Connecticut, at the age of 85.[4][14][15]
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