Dame is a term that shifts dramatically in the cross-Atlantic translation between Britain and the United States. Here it’s considered archaic, a throwback to film noir that taught us to associate it with some of cinema’s immortal screen goddesses – Lauren Bacall, Ava Gardner, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford. Ladies all, but each with a natural flint that, with the proper friction, could set a poor sap’s life on fire.
In Britain, Dame is a title equivalent to a knighthood, “properly a name of respect or a title equivalent to lady” in status, instructs Brittanica.com.
When we think of Dame Maggie Smith she fits that descriptor since, to the average American, she is Professor Minerva McGonagall from the “Harry Potter” movies or Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham on “Downton Abbey.” By the time those films and hit series came around, Smith had worn her Dame Commander of the British Empire title for many years, having been appointed in 1990.
In the days since Smith’s death was announced on Friday, Sept. 27 at the age of 89, appreciation for her wide contributions to the dramatic arts, theater and cinema has flowed freely.
So too have the reminders by way of interviews conducted over the years that Smith was more dedicated to her craft than the explosion of attention she received after “Downton” became a worldwide hit, with her as its breakout star.
Smith was an “intensely private person,” according to her family’s statement in announcing her passing, and you only need to watch her 2013 “60 Minutes” interview with Steve Kroft to know that was true. Kroft’s conversational style hinged on approaching the more sensitive side of lighter topics with a big open smile as if to disarm.
Throughout that interview Smith fixed her gaze on a point to the right of the American’s confident grin, not to display a lack of confidence but, instead, a feeling of being done with projecting anything she didn’t wish to.
Kroft’s interview was part of a promotional tour for “Quartet,” the 2012 feature directed by Dustin Hoffman, and eventually gets to a piece of trivia that made my ears perk up – the film represents the first time in some 50 films that Smith used the F-word onscreen.
That wasn’t notable by itself. No, it was Hoffman’s response to being asked about it. He heartily laughs and says, “Well, Maggie, you’ve certainly said it in life! It’s one of her favorite words in life. It’s one of the main reasons I love her. She’s a sailor!”
Ergo, the UK’s beloved Dame was also our kind of dame. Perhaps that goes some way to explain her mass appeal later in life, expanded in no small way by “Downton” creator Julian Fellowes’ dead-on writing for the show.
Fellowes had a test run for “Downton” and Dame Maggie Smith’s abilities in 2001 via “Gosford Park,” directed by Robert Altman. That script cast her as Constance, Dowager Countess of Trentham, whose sense of humor sparkled beside other diamonds. "Smith, in particular, is wonderful here; she gets laughs with her light, squirrelly touch — you sometimes forget what a terrific comic actress she is," wrote Salon's former movie critic Stephanie Zacharek at the time.
In “Downton” Fellowes wrote all the best set-ups and punchlines for Violet, inspired by Smith’s near-flawless track record with crusting each phrase with the perfect sear. A pause, a huff, a wide-eyed look of horror at some utterance indicated a forced push into the unknown, including the famous query to the estate’s heir upon hearing his intent to take – horrors! – a job: “What is a 'week-end'?”
This is also a woman who chided her granddaughter that “vulgarity is no substitute for wit,” while proudly and without apology wielding her class-conscious vulgarity over her family and the servants.
An unspoken truth of adulthood is that we never stop finding new ways to define the person we want to be. That may be truer for women, who are forced to evolve their image of themselves as they mature in ways that men aren’t made to feel as acutely.
Thus the differentiation in relationship the filmgoer may see in the lower-case dame portion of Smith’s career and image, and her aristocracy era. Smith’s Jean Brodie is a woman of high expectations pressing her dark desires into impressionable young women; she likes danger in the way of someone who has flirted with it but has never been harmed.
The actor’s later roles in “Quartet,” 2011’s “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and others reflect a shedding of vanity and hang-ups that Violet couldn’t quite release, all honest reflections of aging. But so is Violet’s abandonment of her inner editor. If only we could all be so fast on the draw and clever in that time of our lives!
Smith is one of many grand Dames in film, of course. She joked in a British Film Institute conversation that Dame Judi Dench often snagged the plumiest roles before they came to her and other actors of her caliber.
But as her “Harry Potter” co-star Miriam Margolyes told the BBC, she had her own talent unlike anybody else’s: "a ferocity, a glint of mischief, delight, and tenderness, a remarkable all-round wizard. . . she was the wizard of ‘Harry Potter.’” A Dame, and a dame.
Between “Downton” and Professor McGonagall an adoring public saw in Smith an endlessly entertaining, tippling grandmother and that endearing teacher who balanced strictness with caring. If Violet Crawley seasoned her ripostes with a sense of knowing that comes from having broken a few rules herself – confirmed in the second “Downton” movie, by the way – that explained her charm.
To comprehend the breadth of Smith’s talent, along with the reasons she was, in life, referred to as caring, intimidating, imperious and gracious, all the things you’d expect of a Dame with a capital D, rewind to “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” the 1969 movie for which Smith’s performance earned her the first of her two Academy Awards.
Smith’s Miss Brodie fits the rebellious teacher script so popular in cinema, but in the worst sense. She presents herself as a role model to her pupils and succeeds for the wrong reasons, including manipulating a young girl into bed with a fellow teacher.
She veers off the prescribed material to inject a sense of rosy fantasy into her lessons, including romanticizing Spain’s fascist leader Francisco Franco along with Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini. Bragging that she’d mingled with Il Duce’s fascist forces, she tells her rapt students that on the occasion, “I wore my silk dress with red poppies, which is right for my coloring.”
But it’s her dreamy delivery of Alfred Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” that stops time, wraps it in gauze and conveys the full tragedy of a heroine yearning to be known and, yet, hidden away. In the moment of her undoing she says, melodramatically to one of her favorites, “Sandy, I believe I am past my prime. I reckoned on my prime lasting until I was at least 50. Are you listening, Sandy?”
The “Miss Brodie” version of Smith, in character, can be best described as tailored, and that refers to more than simple costuming. Smith understood how her features cut into and through a role – wide eyes amply lidded, trenchant cheekbones, features that one might associate with snobbery.
Smith was not like that in life, although she was described as "spiky" according to those who worked with her, she admitted to being nervous before each take, which explains her devotion to precise delivery. (She also famously never watched "Downton Abbey," for which she won three of her four Emmys and one of her three Golden Globes.)
There’s a reason she and Michael Caine sold their shaky marriage for appearances believably enough to win Smith her second Oscar for 1978’s “California Suite,” in which she memorably replied to her queer husband’s assurance of discretion with, “Discreet? You did everything but lick his artichoke!”
But there’s a special knowing in Violet’s famous exchange with her daughter-in-law Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) when she says, unprovoked, “I’m so looking forward to seeing your mother again. When I’m with her, I’m reminded of the virtues of the English.”
But Cora’s mother is an American, says cousin Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens). “Exactly,” she replies, brightly and tightly.
Among the losses Smith frequently cited once her profile skyrocketed post- "Harry Potter” and exponentially more so with “Downton” was the disappearance of anonymity. She expressed woe at no longer being able to tour the stores or shop for groceries, which is both utterly normal and difficult to picture given her close association with the Dowager Countess.
“That's television for you,” she quipped to the highly beloved TV host Graham Norton on his show, to which he replied knowingly, “It’s common.”
Not as much as Americans, who Smith jovially admitted to taking pains to avoid in her walkabouts. "I don't go anywhere really where they can get at me,” she told Norton. “It's usually in museums and art galleries . . . so that limits things. I keep away from them. And Harrods I don't go near."
This too may be characteristic of a Dame, although pairing that with her unstuffy humor and refreshingly proletarian quick wit engendered in us a familiarity.
Asked to confirm her relationship with the top curse word by Kroft, Smith doesn’t deny it. “I don’t have any difficulty saying it,” she said. “It’s a word that’s frequently sprung to mind.”
Spoken like a Lady, and a dame . . . a rare kind of person of which there is now one fewer in the world.
