This celebrates the 55th anniversary of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie but also its star Dame Maggie Smith, who died at the end of 2024 and recently would have celebrated her 90th birthday. Born in Ilford, Essex to a Scottish mother (from Glasgow) and English father who taught at Oxford University, where she made her acting debut, her acting career began at the Oxford Playhouse, eventually progressing to the National Theatre with Olivier, and she made her film debut in 1956, becoming one of the world’s prominent actresses across all forms, winning an Oscar & BAFTA for Jean Brodie in 1969 and an Oscar for California Suite 1978, but she will amongst many performances be remembered for Othello with Olivier 1965, A Room with a View 1985 (won BAFTA), A Private Function 1985 (won BAFTA), The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne 1989 (won BAFTA), Richard III with McKellen & Broadbent 1995, Tea with Mussolini 1999 (won BAFTA) with Judi Dench, Joan Plowright & Cher, and Gosford Park 2001, The Lady in the Van 2015, as well as the formidable Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter series and as the equally irrepressible Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey. She was awarded the Fellowships of the British Film Institute & BAFTA (plus Lifetime Achievement), holds the record for the highest number of Evening Standard acting awards, and had honorary degrees from St Andrew’s, Bath and Cambridge Universities and an honorary fellowship at Mansfield College, Oxford. She was made a Dame in 1990 and a Companion of Honour by the Queen in 2014, having won 50 acting awards and being nominated 108 times and she is one of the few to win the triple crown for acting on film stage and TV. She has a star on the London Avenue of Stars and passed away at hospital in Chelsea from her home in Richmond, SW London. The film was based on the book and play by Muriel Spark and focuses on the lead character Jean Brodie as played by Smith, who is a liberated and unconventional teacher at an Edinburgh girls’ school, who also lives eccentrically for her time in the 1930s, teaching them of love beyond romance, politics and art in her aspiration to make them the “crème de la crème”. It also starred Dame Celia Johnson as the headmistress with whom Brodie is in conflict, Gordon Jackson, Pamela Franklin and Robert Stephens, whom Smith married during the film, and it was shot at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire and on location in Edinburgh.
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