Leonard Bernstein, recently appointed musical director of the New York Philharmonic, wrote two songs for the production. The play toured in Tel Aviv in 1958. She continued with several other forgettable plays, and her last production was Dear Liar by Jerome Kilty, which opened and closed in 1960. Although Cornell was constantly performing, she took a three-year absence from 1955 to 1958 while she recovered from a lung operation. Additionally, with the exception of The Constant Wife, box office receipts were lagging even when she received excellent reviews. Tours continued to sell out, but even those began to fail as the decade bore on. By the end of the 1950s, the C. & M.C production company was finished. She did find time in 1954 to be narrator for the film The Unconquered, the life story of her friend Helen Keller. Starting in the 1940s, however, she began to collect tributes from various theatrical organization and colleges and universities, which bestowed her with honorary degrees and awards. Radio Cornell made her radio debut May 6, 1951, on Theatre Guild on the Air. The program featured the first broadcast of George Bernard Shaw's Candida. On April 13, 1952, she appeared in Florence Nightingale, also on The Theatre Guild on the Air. Retirement McClintic died on October 29, 1961 of a lung haemorrhage, shortly after the couple had celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. As he had always directed Cornell in every production since their marriage, she decided to retire from the stage altogether. She sold her residences and bought a house on East 51st Street in Manhattan, next door to Brian Aherne and down the street from Margalo Gillmore. Since all three were cast members of Barretts, East 51st Street became known as Wimpole Street. Cornell also bought an old building on Martha's Vineyard known as The Barn and made additions to it, and restored the 300-year-old Association Hall on the island. For her 80th birthday party in 1973, an assistant put together a tape of birthday greetings from Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, and Ralph Richardson, among many other actors whom she had known. The tape runs for seven and a half hours. She died of pneumonia on June 9, 1974 at The Barn in Tisbury, Massachusetts. On acting and the theatre Cornell served on the Board of Directors of The Rehearsal Club. The club was a place for young actresses to stay