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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 me,' she will say to Hume. 'I'm getting there.' But they both end up with equally powerful characterizations."
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.
"Well, you are!" he insists. "You love acting, you love your garden, you love reading, and you love your children. But your focus is that of a performer, whereas there are a lot of things I like doing. I've been a producer, a director and a sometime writer. I think Jess is a better actor than I am, but there are things I can do that she can't. I'm more at home in * television and film than she is, for example. Now I'm going to say something good about us. I think we have marvelously and totally coincidentally been a wonderful team. I think I complement Jess, and I know Jess complements me."
At various points during their marriage, the career of one has zoomed ahead of the other's. Has there ever been any envy or resentment? "No!" they both answer. "I rejoice in Hume's successes," says Tandy. "We're not really in competition. I mean, I can't play his parts, and he can't play mine -- though he tries to sometimes."
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 in 1989, has given her a megadose of Hollywood penicillin. Although she has played character parts in several outstanding films over the years, The Desert Fox and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds among them, until now she has never had the recognition in Hollywood that the theater world has accorded her for more than 40 years. Movie producers all but ignored her extraordinary range and talent.