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Maggie Smith was a constant in the life of producer Robert Fox for half a century. She could “make grown men cry,” says Fox, because “if you weren’t 100 percent on top of your game, you were dead in the water, and she was right.”
Fox produced Dame Maggie in some of her greatest stage hits from Peter Shaffer’s Lettice and Lovage to David Hare’s The Breath of Life, in which she and her best friend, Judi Dench, shared top billing at London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket.
Dame Judi got the No. 1 dressing room. “But Maggie wasn’t fussed because she joked that Judi, she’d say, “had all those people in from Surrey to see her, so she needs the space.’ She wasn’t at all unhappy about it. She’d watch all of Judi’s guests troop in to see her. She’d say: ‘Look, there they go. Don’t come and see me. And she knew the reason they weren’t coming to see her,” Fox says.
“They were too frightened to go and see Maggie, that’s why,” explains Fox.
But they still loved her.
Maggie Smith, who died Friday at 89, was a creature of the theatre, says Fox.
She was one of the theatre gods along with other greats of her generation including Dame Judi, Dame Eileen Atkins, Dame Joan Plowright — those four often were inseparable — and Dame Vanessa Redgrave.
But, Fox says, “There’s Judi, Ian [McKellen] and her. That’s it.”
There are other greats, but those three are the “top tier,” attests Fox.
Quite rightly, Dame Maggie’s family — while acknowledging the success of her work on Downton Abbey and the Harry Potter films — want people to know that the stage was her first love, and where she shone brightest.
Her last performance on stage was in Christopher Hampton’s A German Life at the Bridge Theatre in 2019, where she played a woman who had worked with Joseph Goebbels’ Nazi ministry of propaganda. Those who saw it would have witnessed the piercing clarity of an artist still able to mesmerize after a lifetime stealing scene after scene on stage — and screen.
The stage was her kingdom. It’s where she achieved her greatest professional triumphs. Consider her Broadway debut in New Faces of 1956 at the old Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The show was the last gasp of vaudeville.
“It’s incredible that her career stretches as far back as the last days of vaudeville,” says Fox. “It shows she could do anything. She could do tragedy, comedy, the classics — everything.”
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Dame Maggie was a conduit to a different era. She played Lady Plyant in As You Like It at the Old Vic and was playful and witty. There’s lively footage of her performance on YouTube. A year later, in 1960, Laurence Olivier saw her in The Double-Dealer at the Old Vic, where she was to play Desdemona opposite Olivier in Othello. After that, she did a string of roles from Myra Arundel in Hay Fever to Masha in Three Sisters.
But a fierce rivalry grew between Smith and Olivier, which saw the actress exiling herself, along with husband Robert Stephens, to work in theatre in Canada.
Upon their return to London, she starred in a comedy that the producer Michael White enticed her to do called Snap. It being about venereal disease, the show’s original title had been Clap. By all accounts, Smith soared in the show.
Fox, as White’s assistant, would drive the star to and from the theatre. “I just sort of generally held her hand, and it was both terrifying and enthralling because she could be sharp. She was also irreplaceably the best.”
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The producer worked with her on several productions including an ill-fated 1993 revival of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, in which Smith starred as the imperious Lady Bracknell with Richard E. Grant as Algernon Moncrieff, Alex Jennings as John Worthing, Margaret Tyzack as Miss Prism and Richard Pearson as The Rev. Canon Chasuble.
Except for Jennings, Tyzack and Pearson, Smith loathed everything else to do with the production, from Nicholas Hytner’s direction to Bob Crowley’s sets.
When asked at the time, by this reporter, whether she would take the show to Broadway, she responded witheringly: “Broadway! I wouldn’t take this to Woking!”
”She hated it,” Fox says.
Asked how her displeasure manifested itself, Fox says: “You just knew. She didn’t have to say anything — it was just present and terrifying. It was just the disdain with which she looked at you, the sort of, ”Oh, really?” But then the other side of her was fabulous and charming and delightful. But when she was cross, oh my God. Everyone knew, the entire theatre would be living in dread. She didn’t need to shout. She didn’t really need to say anything. It was so clear.”
Fox says that the star knew exactly what she was doing, “but it was mainly to do with the fact that she was a total perfectionist. And if people didn’t live up to her standards, they just got it in the neck,”
He stressed, however, that it was always about the work.
“I never knew anyone more dedicated,” he says. “When she was in the theatre, literally her whole day was about that night, her performance with the company. There was nothing else in her life. She wasn’t whipping it up at lunchtime. She was working, and she always had her script on the dressing room table. It was always there, and she was always studying it. It was just incredible self-discipline combined with unbelievable talent.”
When Karel Reisz was hired to direct her in the original London production of Three Tall Women, there was a clash because she felt he was not physically up to it. Smith also felt exposed as the star, and that freaked her out.
Reisz could sense her disapproval and he withdrew, knowing that it would be too physically and emotionally difficult for him to remain. Anthony Page replaced him as director.
Fox would not discuss Reisz’s involvement with Three Tall Women. However, he noted that she always sought support from a director. “And you have to be physically and mentally on top of your game, otherwise you’re dead in the water Her theatre instincts were just incredible; she just knew more than all of us,” says Fox.
But she always — almost always — forgave. When Alan Bennett wrote The Lady in the Van for her, SMith wanted Nicholas Hytner to direct her in it. She was over what happened between them with The Importance of Being Earnest.
She also starred in the movie version of The Lady in the Van, also directed by Hytner.
When filmmaker Peter Yates directed her in a play, Smith could see that she was terrified of her. She would watch him arrive for rehearsals, and he’d be wearing a green corduroy suit. Within his hearing, she’d say: “Oh, here comes the Jolly Green Giant.”
But she was utterly professional. “She never missed a show in any of my productions,” says Fox.
There was a standard Maggie Smith contract where she would have a guarantee every week against a substantial piece of the gross till recoupment, which would go up post-recoupment. “She never asked for a share of profit,” says Fox.
“She was proper, she was the real thing. Her generation understood that everybody had to do OK. Whereas now, with all the agents, in America particularly, it’s all about the star has to take everything home,” Fox tells us.
Maggie Smith gave her all to the theatre and in a way she could mold theatre to suit her more than she could film or television.
When she did do screen work, it primarily was because of the company of other actors, which she loved. She reveled in the in and outs of the business and shared gossip she’d heard from Hollywood and New York with fellow castmates.
Once, at a reception at the National Theatre, Smith walked over to me, and I began to cower as she looked me in the eye and smiled. I thought she was going to admonish me about something I’d written. Instead, she said: “Read that thing in your column. I’m always pleased when you spell my name right” and winked as she strolled away.
She was always lovely to me after that, to my face at any rate.
Fox says that Maggie Smith wasn’t after the limelight. You rarely saw her in any of the theatre-world restaurants in the West End.
Fox says she loved to sit at home reading book after book.
And she’d love to visit for Sunday lunch. Fox would serve roast chicken and all the trimmings.” She wasn’t a fussy eater. Although if you really wanted to impress her, she loved caviar. That was her big treat.
“Caviar and champagne, that was her thing — not all the time, but that’s what she enjoyed,” he says.
He hadn’t spoken to her for six months. “She didn’t want to speak for the past half a year. She obviously saw her family, but she was not wanting to communicate because she was very ill. I sent her texts which I know she read.
“She was a giant. A giant of the theatre foremost. It’s going to be a tough time for those she loved, and I know she and Judi loved each other. And she loved Joan, and she loved Eileen. And of course she loved her family, her children and her grandchildren.
“She loved her work, and she gave her life to it,” Fox says. “That’s why audiences loved her.”
