Ah, Maggie, You Have Taken Your Leave Too Soon!

Ah, Maggie, like your brilliant colleague before you, Glenda Jackson, you have taken your leave too soon! Eighty-nine is too young (take it from one who knows firsthand…). I can’t bear the thought your work is finished.

Reading Dame Maggie Smith’s obituary in The New York Times*, it’s moving to find that redhead Maggie, as successful a film actress as she was—twenty-nine roles before her breakout in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie then another thirty-six appearances before becoming Minerva McGonagall (the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry’s “stern but fearless transfiguration teacher”*) in seven Harry Potter films—she relished being able to walkabout in America and her native Britain barely raising an eyebrow.

Oh, she mentioned, “A lot of very small people kind of used to say hello to me, and that was nice…one boy asking, ‘Were you really a cat?’”

Then in 2010 she became Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham. Characterized by “withering imperiousness,” she lit up Downton Abbey for fifty-two episodes. That was the end of her walkingabout.

“It’s ridiculous,” she said. “I’d led a perfectly normal life until Downton Abbey. Nobody knew who the hell I was.”*

In 2013 on the CBS News program “60 Minutes,” the subject of celebrity came up. “…when it was suggested that she had no interest in celebrity, Ms. Smith said: “Absolutely none. I mean, why would I?”*

All the while versatile Maggie Smith was appearing in films and on television she was also on the stage both in New York and London. In 1990, my fortunate husband saw her in the satirical comedy written for her by Peter Shaffer, “Lettice and Lovage.” In praise of her performance, Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times**, “Miss Smith’s personality so saturates everything around her that, like the character she plays, she instantly floods a world of gray with color. This is idiosyncratic theater acting of a high and endangered order, not to be confused with the actress’s tightly minimalistic film work.”

I can’t bear it. I will never see Maggie Smith on the stage.

But I’ll not complain. I have so loved watching her—first and foremost for me—in A Room with a View, Tea with Mussolini…and of course The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Happily a treasure trove of Dame Maggie movies awaits. She’s credited with eighty-six (you’ll find the list on IMDb***).

Thus Bill and I have launched our own Maggie Smith Film Festival. Because it occasioned her second Oscar award (the first, 1970, was for her incomparable Miss Jean Brodie), we opened with California Suite. It was fun but felt Neil Simon’s dialogue was the best part. Last night we watched 1967’s The Honey Pot with Rex Harrison (skip this one—too complicated, disappointing). The future promises Othello (with Lawrence Olivier), Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing, Evil Under the Sun, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Sister Act (Whoopi Goldberg), The Secret Garden (a favorite book of my childhood), Washington Square, Murder by Death (another Neil Simon script), Ladies in Lavender (Judi Dench), Quartet (Dustin Hoffman), and likely her last, The Miracle Club (Kathy Bates). I expect our festival will run at least a year.

Maggie Smith was not only extraordinarily versatile in her acting, she also had the rare gift for blending in…becoming one among many. In a number of the films I’ve mentioned, she was one of an ensemble cast. Melding seamlessly with other fine talents—not to mention egos–requires generosity of spirit and a caring heart. How many ensemble movies were there on, say…no, I won’t name the name I was thinking of…Maggie wouldn’t like that.

But—and I have the feeling this would amuse her–practically the one thing I have most appreciated about watching film of this extraordinary human being was not her talent, not her skill…but her aging. (I’ve written about this before.****) To me, Violet Crawley’s rivulets of wrinkles spoke more expressively of her character than any zinger she may have zinged. That a woman of a certain age was happy to let her certain age show without touches of tape or stitchery was most impressive to me.

Thus I am doing likewise. I have no interest in covering up. I mean, why would I?

*The New York Times, September 28, 2024.
** The New York Times, March 26, 1990.
***IMDb.com (Internet Movie Database)
****New Wrinkles…and A Tasty Disappointment (May 23, 2024)