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Old crone, are you of stone? Oh, no, I'm flesh and bone
I had a time-sensitive errand to run on foot this evening and I made it into Davis Square in under fifteen minutes, which used to be much closer to my normal speed. I record it to remind myself of a body that works no matter how I feel about it.
I have ordered the challah for Rosh Hashanah; this weekend is for baking the honeycakes. Hestia attempted to taste the Caesar salad I made for dinner tonight even before I put the anchovies on.
I must have seen Maggie Smith first in Hook (1991). I had no way of knowing that she was so much younger than the character she played with the frail and slightly weird beauty of the ink-washed illustrations of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906) I had grown up perusing in my own grandparents' house, the most haunting and most magical part of the film for me without fairy dust or flight because she had lived inside the story and not lost it. Being in a Spielberg movie, it was probably the least tart characterization she ever turned in onscreen, but she could still upend a man's life by just turning a page, although she did rather more in Travels with My Aunt (1972) where I most recently saw her, a flightily wily one-time grande horizontale breezing into the placid dahlia-bounded existence of Alec McCowen like a henna-haired ten on the Beaufort scale. In between she seemed to be in everything and it seemed only reasonable that she should go on being so, whether that meant stealing half a caper of early computer hacking or demolishing Ivor Novello. This thing where the landscape keeps sliding away is difficult. What a geologic imprint she leaves.
I have ordered the challah for Rosh Hashanah; this weekend is for baking the honeycakes. Hestia attempted to taste the Caesar salad I made for dinner tonight even before I put the anchovies on.
I must have seen Maggie Smith first in Hook (1991). I had no way of knowing that she was so much younger than the character she played with the frail and slightly weird beauty of the ink-washed illustrations of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906) I had grown up perusing in my own grandparents' house, the most haunting and most magical part of the film for me without fairy dust or flight because she had lived inside the story and not lost it. Being in a Spielberg movie, it was probably the least tart characterization she ever turned in onscreen, but she could still upend a man's life by just turning a page, although she did rather more in Travels with My Aunt (1972) where I most recently saw her, a flightily wily one-time grande horizontale breezing into the placid dahlia-bounded existence of Alec McCowen like a henna-haired ten on the Beaufort scale. In between she seemed to be in everything and it seemed only reasonable that she should go on being so, whether that meant stealing half a caper of early computer hacking or demolishing Ivor Novello. This thing where the landscape keeps sliding away is difficult. What a geologic imprint she leaves.
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Nobody sounded like her.
*hugs*
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It was an understandable assumption to make!
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My mother showed me that movie! I was in high school. And then I went to see Tea with Mussolini (1999) at the Lexington Flick because I was beginning to experiment with watching movies for myself rather than as social or familial activities and there Maggie Smith was, too.
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Re: aged with makeup - someone on twitter posted a photo of her in her 50s, made up to look elderly, and said that it was so well done that she looked younger ever after, as she aged in real life.
We saw A Room with a View when it came out, at the Somerville Theater.
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I still can't believe Maggie Smith and Christopher Lee were never in a film together. Christopher Lee just turned up in a Powell and Pressburger that
Re: aged with makeup - someone on twitter posted a photo of her in her 50s, made up to look elderly, and said that it was so well done that she looked younger ever after, as she aged in real life.
She certainly aged less fragilely, which is neat.
We saw A Room with a View when it came out, at the Somerville Theater.
I would love to see A Room with a View at the Somerville Theatre.
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*hugs*
Nine
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I've loved her since The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which was formative for me. I love her acidulous spinsters and withering dowagers. Now I need to rewatch A Room with a View, Gosford Park, A Private Function, The Lady in the Van and her Alan Bennett monologue, Bed Among the Lentils, which is heartrending and hilarious and a masterclass in acting.
I so wish I had seen her on stage.
Nine
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She transmuted.
I've loved her since The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which was formative for me. I love her acidulous spinsters and withering dowagers. Now I need to rewatch A Room with a View, Gosford Park, A Private Function, The Lady in the Van and her Alan Bennett monologue, Bed Among the Lentils, which is heartrending and hilarious and a masterclass in acting.
Thank you for the link: I've read The Lady in the Van, but I've never seen "Bed Among the Lentils."
I so wish I had seen her on stage.
*hugs*
in her prime
Degrees of
>>Accepted the Best Actress Oscar in 1969 on Maggie Smith's behalf for Ms. Smith's performance in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). Ms. Smith was in London on Academy Awards night, and Ms. Ghostley filled in since the two actresses had previously starred together on Broadway in "New Faces of 1956."<<
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0315933/trivia/?ref_=nm_dyk_trv
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This is a beautiful beautiful eulogy for a grand artist and lady.
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Thank you.
*hugs*
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Nice!
(I also love Alec McCowen in that movie. It made me realize he could have played Bilbo: the homebody discovering himself as a trickster.)
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Hah. In Stalag VIII-B, he played Viola.
Accepted the Best Actress Oscar in 1969 on Maggie Smith's behalf for Ms. Smith's performance in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). Ms. Smith was in London on Academy Awards night, and Ms. Ghostley filled in since the two actresses had previously starred together on Broadway in "New Faces of 1956."
I associate Alice Ghostley with New Faces of 1952 more than anything else, but I'd had no idea that New Faces of 1956 even existed until I saw it mentioned in Maggie Smith's obituaries. There's an original cast recording!