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Jessica Tandy Reported Fine After Collapse

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Times Staff Writer

Actor Hume Cronyn is the first to say that “there are very, very few occasions” when he overrules his actress-wife, Jessica Tandy.

Wednesday was one of them.

Tandy, 76, collapsed Tuesday night on stage at the Ahmanson Theater during the first act of the play “Foxfire,” and was rushed to Good Samaritan Hospital.

On Wednesday, Cronyn, her co-star, recalled rushing over to his wife after she had fainted, toppling head-first from a stool.

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“She has a glorious black eye as a result” of the fall, believed caused by taking too much medication for a heart problem, the actor-playwright said in a telephone interview.

A hospital spokeswoman said Tandy was in “fine” condition.

When his wife came to, Cronyn said, she wanted to go on with the performance.

“ ‘Just give me a few minutes and we’ll go on,’ ” he recalled her saying as the house lights went on and a translucent curtain went down.

But instead, after about a 30-minute delay, which included examinations by several doctors who were in the stunned audience, Tandy was hospitalized.

The show went on with Cronyn, 74, continuing in his role, while understudy Myvanwy Jenn took over for Tandy.

The internationally acclaimed actress, who has won a Tony award for her role as the old mountain woman in the play, which also stars Keith Carradine, told her husband at the hospital Wednesday that she wanted to make the evening performance. But Cronyn’s answer was that she should rest, at least until Friday, which means that Tandy will also miss today’s matinee and evening performances.

“There are very, very few occasions when she is overruled by her husband, but this is one of them,” Cronyn said.

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He described his wife as being in good spirits--”rudely cheerful.”

For a number of years, Cronyn said, Tandy has been on medication for a coronary problem, atrial fibrillation, in which the normal rhythmical contractions of the heart’s chambers are interrupted by twitchings. She takes daily medication to correct the problem, he said.

“Sometimes she forgets,” Cronyn said. “Sometimes medications get out of balance.”

And Tuesday night, after the curtain went up, he said, she “felt unwell” and took a massive dose of medicine “on an empty stomach” which, in turn, caused her blood pressure to drop.

“I was wondering whether she was going to make it or keel over,” he said. Then she fainted.

Her heart, however, “is strong as an ox’s,” Cronyn said.

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