Laying out to filth
Certain actresses are renowned for their wit, and very few come wittier than Maggie Smith. It is not so much that she deals in polished, highly quotable aphorisms, as did Mrs Patrick Campbell, say, or Coral Browne. With Maggie, it is her slightly jaundiced and highly critical way of looking at the world that both makes her funny and characterises her acting.
She cannot help being funny. Harold Clurman once said she thinks funny. She enjoys nothing more, when in the right mood and perhaps with a glass of champagne to hand, than a good calumniating gossip. 'Laying people out to filth,' she calls it.
When Maggie went to New York in 1990 with Peter Shaffer's Lettice and Lovage, an all-dancing, all-singing black entertainment, Queen Esther and her Gospel Singers, moved briefly into the Longacre , the theatre which backed on to her own. She was furious at having her backstage peace and calm shattered by the frantic, noisy and ecstatic Praise-the-Lording going on next door.
Executives of the Shubert organisation, who owned both theatres, were summoned to a matinée performance. After much rubbing of hands and beating of chests, they came up with what they hoped would be a satisfactory solution. Apologising for not having thought of it before, they said that they had some wonderful thick black velours which they could string around the back wall of both theatres, thus insulation Maggie and Co against Queen Esther and her exultant congregation.
Maggie went off for a break and returned to the theatre for her evening performance. The company manager met her with the good news: 'I think you'll be very pleased, Dame Maggie. We've hung all the blacks.'
'Well, I don't think there was any need to go that far,' replied Maggie.
There are two version of a jovial altercation with Ronald Harwood, author of Interpreters, in which Maggie appeared with Edward Fox. Even her closest friends have to judge very carefully when is the right moment to call backstage and visit Maggie. Harwood was impervious to such niceties and was always popping into the dressing rooms of the Queen's to jolly along the actors in a play that had not been a resounding success.
Eventually, Maggie had had enough, and when Harwood put his head round her door yet again, he promptly had it snapped off. 'Hello, Ronnie,' inquired Maggie coldly, 'and what are you up to now?'
'Struggling with a new play, darling,' Harwood replied. Maggie paused and inspected her nails. 'Aren't we all?' she twanged.
The other version suggest that Harwood replied to Maggie's question with 'Trying to finish a new play, darling.' To which Maggie impatiently snapped: 'Try finishing this one first.'