Word: cronyn
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Tandy notes, "you pay a price for being separated," and they clearly prefer working together, despite the sparks that sometimes ensue. "There is a tension that can build up," says Cronyn. "Sometimes I've been helpful to Jess, but sometimes I've been a pain in the ass, and she will say, 'Leave me alone! Let me do it my way! I can't play your part; don't you try to play mine.' We work differently. When Jessie gets her teeth into something, she is totally obsessed by it. We will go home at night after a rehearsal...
...Cronyn, by contrast, goes to what many actors would call ludicrous lengths to research a part, taking endless notes in the process. "It's fascinating to watch them work," says Susan Cooper, who together with Cronyn wrote the script for Foxfire, another of the Cronyns' major Broadway successes. "Hume starts from the outside, with how a character looks and acts, and then goes inside. Jessica starts from the inside and then goes out. She feels around between the lines and is more inclined not to want an image of her character until she is through. 'Be patient with...
Besides being their most severe critics, the Cronyns are also their strongest supporters. "Jessie, I think, is the definitive actress," says Cronyn. He is about to say something more, but she flusters him by raising her left leg high in the air and shouting Wheeeee! in mock celebration of such high praise...
Earlier this year, Tandy, who is 80 and suffers from angina, took sick during their annual vacation in the Bahamas and was briefly hospitalized. "I was terribly worried about her," says Cronyn. "We don't have a telephone in the house. Until this year I thought it was a blessing. But in the past few weeks, we really could have used one." She soon recovered, and these days Tandy is almost bubbly, vivacity itself. The best medicine for any actor is a hit, and Driving Miss Daisy, which received nine Oscar nominations, more than any other picture released...
...Cronyn, who is 78, was also born in London -- London, Ont., that is -- but his family was as rich as Tandy's had been poor. His father was one of Canada's most prominent businessmen, as well as a Member of Parliament; his mother was a Labatt, as in Labatt's beer. After making a brief bow to family sensibilities by attending McGill University, he headed south in the early '30s, to Manhattan, where he studied acting. The great George Abbott gave him his first big break and taught him the rough-and-tumble art of farce, an athletic, physical...