Tag Archives: Maggie Smith

The Lady in the Van on Audible

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51jkNj-OPEL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_   If you’ve missed Maggie Smith’s clever asides on Downton Abbey, her voice as The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett on Audible’s BBC radio adaptation will have you smiling. Maggie and I took a long walk together, as she enacted the role she made famous in Bennett’s witty play and recently in the movie version.

When I heard Maggie Smith revealing her character’s life with the nuns, who tried to break her spirit but never succeeded, and her escape from the asylum for a year and a day thereby freeing her to live on her own, I realized this homeless character who lived in a van in Bennett’s driveway, had a colorful past.

Bennett has gone on record to confirm the source of the story – the bag lady who actually lived in a van outside his garden.  Sadly, so many homeless now have changed the landscape here, not the lone lady in a van who slowly made her way down the hill to Bennett’s house.  When I first came years ago, I remember two homeless men living in the park – both had the same philosophical view of the world as Bennett’s character, and neither wanted the Christmas cookies nor the old quilt I offered.  Like the lady in the van, they were independent, self-reliant, and had wild stories to tell.  Times have changed, and now hundreds make camp on the sidewalks.  A few nights ago, the news scared residents with a stabbing and a murder between two homeless men in that same park.  Local residents now treat the homeless with fear and avoidance.

The story offered glimpses of humanity thorough the social worker who brought clean sheets and the emergency medical technicians who handled her with dignity and respect, never cringing at her shabby clothes or her smell.  And, of course, Bennett himself, who finally discovered her past – after she died – but always treated her well while she was alive.

Amazing how all came together for this story – the lady in the van living outside a writer’s window for fifteen years, a wry Englishman who has even taken on the Queen in his astute ramblings  (The Uncommon Reader), and the friendship of the writer and the famous actor who brought the play to life.

The Lady in the Van has a poignant message.

Related Review:   Smut 

 

 

Maggie Smith Favorite Reads

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According to her biographer, Maggie Smith is an avid reader.  I decided to check out two of her favorite authors – William Trevor and Brian Moore.

William Trevor

9780142003312_p0_v1_s192x300Although best known for his short stories, Irish author William Trevor’s novel The Story of Lucy Gault is among my favorites.   Now I have Trevor’s Love and Summer on my pile to read. Another Irish tale promising a good read:

“Ellie lives a quiet life in the small Irish town of Rathmoye until she meets Florian Kilderry, a young photographer preparing to leave Ireland and his past forever.  The chance intersection of these two lost souls sets in motion a poignant love affair that requires Ellie to make an impossible choice.”

Brian Moore

Another Smith favorite was Irish novelist, Brian Moore, whose books included “suspense, political upheaval, and moral chaos…”   The librarian recommended starting with The Black Robe – the story of a Jesuit missionary in the wilderness of seventeenth century Canada, and continuing with his last novel – The Magician’s Wife.

Read my review of The Story of Lucy Gault here.

 

Post Script: Maggie Smith Biography

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9781250081483_p0_v2_s192x300If you are a Downton Abbey fan, you may skip to Michael Covenly’s chapter 21 on “Harry Potter and Downton Abbey” in his biography of Maggie Smith.  As I revelled in the memory of the scenes recalled throughout the series and Maggie Smith’s role as the Dowager, I suddenly cringed when Covenly mistakenly identified Lady Edith as the youngest daughter of the Earl and Lady Cora.  Had he missed an agonized mother’s line at Sybil’s  deathbed – “My beauty, my baby…” ?  Was he only watching Maggie Smith scenes?

Nonetheless, the rest of the book documents Maggie Smith’s career with long summaries of her dramatic roles.  Covenly has more to say about her numerous roles than her life, and her resume is amazing, from Desdemona to Diana Barrie to Spielberg’s Wendy, and remember Mother Superior in Sister Act?  Throughout her career, Smith has earned six Oscar nominations (winning two), 16 BAFTA nominations (winning five) and seven Golden Globes (winning two). In 2003 she won an Emmy award for her lead performance in the TV movie My House in Umbria.

She supposedly had a long running feud with the great Laurence Olivier – sometimes on stage, and her first marriage  to fellow actor Robert Stephens, with whom she had two children, seemed to mirror a Noel Coward play.  In 1975 she married her old friend, writer Beverley Cross, who “she began to say she should have married in the first place” and stay married to him until his death in 1998.

Her audience today knows Maggie Smith for her more recent roles – the Dowager Countess, Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter series (Smith was instrumental in the casting of Daniel Radcliffe as Harry), or Muriel in the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and Covenly includes those in his book.  But he is also careful to remind the reader where Smith started, and reading about her journey makes her all the more amazing.

Covenly notes – “At all stages of her career, Maggie has, for the most part, remained curiously invisible to the public, She rarely appears in charity shows, seldom lends her name to committees or educational institutions…It is as if she hides away, nursing her gift, and then bursts forth in a new role…”  So, it is no wonder she barely gave an interview to the author.  The book reads like a complete catalogue of Maggie Smith’s performances but seems somewhat lacking on the personal side – except for the author’s suppositions and conclusions.

I enjoyed the book – after all, now I know more about where to look for Maggie Smith in past productions.  Covenly protects Smith’s mystique yet offers glimpses into who she might really be – and she comes across as “what you see is what you get.”

In looking for explanations of Covenly’s references, I came across a 2004 interview by Susan Mackenzie for The Guardian – neatly summing up Smith’s background and comic timing (Covenly claims Jack Benny, the master of comedic timing, commented on Smith’s facility with the delivery of a line).  The interview preceded both Harry Potter and Downton Abbey, but offers a good and short background to the complete biography.  You might want to read it to prepare…You Have to Laugh

 

 

The New Countess by Fay Weldon

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9781250028037_p0_v2_s260x420Fay Weldon completes her trilogy of British upstairs/downstairs society in The New Countess.  All the familiar characters are back, but if you’ve forgotten their assorted scandals and peccadilloes, as I had, Weldon fills in the back story.  The new countess does not emerge until the last chapter, when an accidental shooting at a hunting party conveniently wraps up the lives and stories of the three-book saga.

Maybe my expectations were too high but this final book was not as gripping or as fun as the first two.  Although I enjoyed the machinations of the various lords and ladies and the downstairs staff interventions and gossip, the story seemed stale.

In a recent interview with Carole Burns, Weldon proclaims the novel as dead:

“…the novel has become just entertainment.  Fifty or 60 years ago, the novel was the only way you had of finding out what was in other people’s heads.  You didn’t know anything other than what you read in fiction about how lives were for other people.  But now we have film and television, and the novel as a source of understanding and information is no longer really necessary.”

Maybe that’s the reason –  television – Downton Abbey is being broadcast where I live now, but I read the first two novels in that slough of downtime, awaiting the return of the Dowager Duchess played by  Maggie Smith.  Maybe watching has become more entertaining.

Review of First Two Books in the Trilogy

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Habits of the House and Long Live the King

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9781250026620_p0_v1_s260x4209781250028006_p0_v1_s260x420Like catching up on past seasons of Downton Abbey, Fay Weldon’s trilogy focusing on the Edwardian lifestyle of the British is best enjoyed in sequence, without too much waiting in between.  I finished reading Habits of the House, the first in the series, to meet Lord Robert, Earl of Dilberne and related characters who could be the cast of Downton, with only  Maggie Smith’s Dowager Duchess absent; then quickly moved on to Long Live the King, to attend the coronation of Queen Victoria’s heir, Edward, the new king and a friend of the 51BCoER5+qL._SY300_family.  The publication of the last book in the series – The New Countess – will be in December, with the possibility of a Dowager Dutchess finally in residence.   Downton Abbey, Season 4 begins in January – perfect timing.

The grand Edwardian lifestyle is in jeopardy, and only a marriage with a wealthy American looking for a title can save the British aristocrats from losing the estate, the horses, the servants, and everything else – and modernization lurks in the wings.  Sound familiar?  Fay Weldon, the creator of the beloved “Upstairs Downstairs” series, uses wry humor to poke at the sensibilities and politics of the privileged as well those “in service.”  At times, the lines are blurred and the lady’s maid can be more adamant in maintaining the class structure than the lady of the house. Nonetheless, Weldon carefully inserts her ongoing commentary on the strained politics (Churchill was just a start-up then), as she quietly ridicules the narrow-minded attitudes that can be as rigid as the whale-boned corsets of the times.

The historical references are instructive, and I found myself looking up the Boers War, Queen Victoria’s John Brown, the Vanderbilt connection, and, of course, the succession chart.  In the first two books, the Earl and his family carry on to the early 1900s, with changes in fashion, lifestyle, and politics.  The gossip, however, remains the sustaining and stabilizing force in the stories, along with those wonderfully convenient soap opera scenarios that twist the plot lines: a beautiful young girl saved from a fire becomes a princess instead of a nun and saves the King.

With a little bit of luck and a lot of good writing, all ends well in each of the first two books.  My expectations are high for the third book; if you are a fan waiting for the next season of Downton Abbey, Weldon’s trilogy will sustain you.