Departures

Glynis Johns

One of the last grande dames of Hollywood’s golden age, Johns died Jan. 4 at age 100. Johns earned notoriety as a child in her native U.K. as a stage actor and ballerina. By the 1940s she earned roles in more than a dozen British films before starring in American films too, appearing alongside Jimmy Stewart and Jackie Gleason. In 1964, Johns played doting wife and women’s activist Mrs. Banks in the Walt Disney classic Mary Poppins, lending her husky vocals to the song “Sister Suffragette.” She won a 1973 Tony Award for her role in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, where she sang “Send In the Clowns.”

Donald Wildmon

Wildmon, a family values campaigner who denounced the declining morals of a nation, died Dec. 28. He was 85. In 1977 the Mississippi native and Methodist pastor organized the National Federation for Decency, a campaign against crude and prurient U.S. television programming. With 700 volunteers across 16 states, Wildmon’s group—later renamed the American Family Association—monitored TV shows and organized a boycott in 1978 that led Sears to stop advertising on Charlie’s Angels and Three’s Company. In the ’80s, Wildmon’s organization pressured 7-Eleven to stop selling pornography. Over time, AFA expanded to radio, eventually broadcasting on dozens of American Family Radio stations.

—To read 2023 News of the Year Departures for late December, visit wng.org/2023_deaths