DAME MAGGIE SMITH (1934 - 2024) - A Tribute

The outpouring of public affection since the announcement of the passing of Dame Maggie Smith has been significant and heartfelt. Maggie, revered by her peers as much as her viewing public, somehow touched us deeply with her waspish comedic skills and also her ability to reach the very core of a character which would have us close to tears.  It was a rare skill honed playing opposite her friend Kenneth Williams and also the theatre greats such as Edith Evans and most significantly Sir Laurence Olivier, into whose original National Theatre company she was invited.

With a career that started in 1952, we have had an incredible 70 years of brilliant performances on stage and screen.  Her stage appearances - mostly lost to time with no recordings available - are the stuff of theatre legend.  I myself was lucky to see the Dame several times giving breathtaking performances of comedy and tragedy.  The first occasion was in 1993 when she accepted the iconic role of Lady Bracknell in The Importance Of Being Earnest at the Aldwych Theatre. A dazzling display of looks and gestures made her instantly a harridan without having to go over the top with the role, and in the process raising gales of laughter from the audience by the merest gesticulation or glare. (Incidentally working with Maggie in this play was described as "the worst experience I've ever had in the business" by Richard E. Grant - Maggie could be formidable off stage as well.)  Later I saw her in Edward Albee's Three Tall Women and A Delicate Balance,  Alan Bennett's Talking Heads and The Lady In The Van.  Masterclasses in stage performances.  I met the Dame several times at stage doors,  she was much as I expected friendly but slightly aloof.  She always had the aura of someone who stood outside the usual celebrity circus.  Celebrity was for lesser mortals.

DMS as Lady Bracknell in The Importance Of Being Earnest (1993)

 Dame Maggie's screen career started in 1955 with an appearance on the BBC's Sunday Night Theatre and from there moved into movies (1958's Nowhere To Go marked her first significant big screen role) and eventually reached the stratosphere as an Hollywood A-lister.   Her two Best Actress Oscars demonstrated her command of the big screen.  Her flouncy and fascist brainwashing of young girls in The Prime Of  Miss Jean Brodie shows both sides of the Smith arsenal: comedy and drama. The irony of winning an Oscar playing an actress nominated for an Oscar in 1978's California Suite was not lost on anyone,  Maggie's backbiting with her on screen husband played by Michael Caine is screen magic.  There are so many performances that rate a mention:  her lovelorn Miss Mead in the The VIPs (1963) trying to protect her employer (Rod Taylor) with whom she is secretly in love,  haughty social climber Joyce Chilvers forced to aquire a black market pig due to post-war rationing in Alan Bennett's magnificent  A Private Function (1984) and her scene stealing Constance Trentham in Julian Fellows' Gosford Park (2001),  a prototype for her role as the Lady Grantham in the phenomenon that is Downton Abbey (2010 - 2022).

For students of Dame Maggie Smith, wishing to enjoy her range and her power on screen,  I have a recommended list of five screen appearances that perhaps you might go and search out in tribute to Maggie and all she brought to drama and comedy throughout her career.

THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (1969)

 

Maggie's first Oscar win and a blazing performance of manipulation and folly. Although Maggie employs her full comic arsenal as teacher Jean Brodie in 1930s Edinburgh, it is her chilling romanticising of the Fascist movement that is at the heart of the movie. Playing opposite her then real life husband Robert Stephens as the art teacher Teddy Lloyd with whom she is having an affair,  Jean's cosy world is brought to a halt when her loyal pupil Sandy spills the beans about the lessons leading to the final showdown with Celia Johnson.  Maggie Smith's command of the screen has never been greater,  and although some critics felt Maggie's comedy dilutes her politicial teachings, it does show how charismatic Jean Brodie is that her girls will follow her every word. 

 

THE LONELY PASSION OF JUDITH HEARNE (1987)

 

For my money perhaps Maggie's greatest screen performance is as the Irish spinster Judith Hearne,  forced by circumstance to live in a run down boarding house run by Mrs. Rice and her troublesome layabout son Bernard.  Its here Judith meets Rice's brother James Madden (Bob Hoskins),  back from America with tales of high living and investment opportunities.  He comes to believe Miss Hearne may have some money to invest in his American diner fantasies.  Maggie's study of the introverted Judith Hearne, who longs for romance and is easy prey for the fast talking Madden,  tugs at the heartstrings.  Its a perfect study of longing and dreams,  and of course when things take a turn for the worse it is devastating to Miss Hearne as her gentle romance with Madden is the one thing that is stopping her from sinking.  Its hard to concieve that Maggie was never nominated for an Oscar for this role,  as the film company (struggling with mounting debts) simply forgot to enter the movie for consideration by the Oscar panel. If there is one Maggie Smith performance I could keep with me, it would be this one.

TALKING HEADS:  BED AMONG THE LENTILS (1988)

 Alan Bennett's celebrated series of monologues under the umbrella title of Talking Heads have become televison classics.  No more so than this entry for Maggie Smith as vicars wife Susan who is tired of the "fan club" as she calls them,  a group of devoted church goers who worship her husband Geoffrey as much as the Almighty.  To ease her burden, she takes to the bottle and is found buying wine at a grocers run by a young Asian named Ramesh.  It turns into an unlikely affair.  Maggie's weary performance hits every beat spot on,  all of Bennett's little comedic gems are given full utterance as Susan's tragic tale unfolds.  The quiet calm when it is revealed Susan's alcoholism has been cured thanks to her husband and Church circle (so they think) is unrelentingly bleak.  A truly brilliant search of the human condition.

 SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER (1993)

An adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play set in the deep south of America, 1936.  Maggie plays matriach Violet Venable whose son Sebastian is killed on a trip to Spain.  Sebastian's cousin Catherine arrives at the villa with the shocking story of how Sebastian met his fate, and Violet tries to get the doctor to perform a lobotomy in order to stop her telling her story.  Sebastian was a predatory homosexual who used Catherine to procure his victims, and fell foul of a grizzly fate.  Violet will stop at nothing to stop this story getting out.  Maggie is surrounded by a top notch cast in Richard Eyre's classy BBC production - Natasha Richardson as Catherine, Rob Lowe and Richard E. Grant all fawn around Violet as she spits fire against her neice. Maggie's southern drawl finds the dragon in the ailing Violet and it is a fascinating portrait of a deluded woman protecting the reputation of her only off spring. 

 

THE LADY IN THE VAN (2015) 

Maggie had played Alan Bennett's celebrated anti hero, the tramp lady Miss Shepherd in the 1999 West End stage production.  It took a further sixteen years before the director Nicholas Hytner and Bennett could bring Miss Shepherd to the big screen. The eccentric Camden resident who Bennett allowed to park her delapidated Bedford van in his drive is now something of a literary folk hero thanks to Bennett's memoir detailing the trials of living with her on a day to day basis.  The film delves into Miss Shepherd's surprising and colourful history, revealing the event which sent her over the edge, and living in squalid circumstances.  Maggie was born to play this role. Shepherd's tetchy personality which masked an underlying vulnerability is Maggie's forte. She illuminates the light and shade of Miss Shepherd's world brilliantly, and rightly brought Maggie Smith much acclaim, as the original stage performance had done.  Its not the perfect movie but Maggie's performance within it certainly is.

 

Just five performances which for me have stood out as being Maggie at her on screen peak, but there is no such thing as a poor Maggie Smith performance.  She brings a skill and a class to some movies which frankly need her to lift them from bathing in the average.  But when she is paired with material that is equal to her talent, she soars like a virtuoso. There are so many more I could nominate:  Mabel Pettigrew in Memento Mori, Lady Hester Ransom in Tea With Mussolini,  Daphne Castle in Evil Under The Sun,  Aunt Augusta in Travels With My Aunt...   As much national treasures as the Crown Jewels themselves.   Most of them are available via streaming or physical media,  I urge you to go and check some of them out.  Dame Maggie Smith may have left us but she has also left us a performance portfolio the equal to the greatest of 20th and 21st century thespians. Sleep well, Dame Maggie and thank you.

Rob Cope