Maggie Smith

Rapscallion Magazine: National Treasure? Dame Maggie Smith was my step Godmother! (Well not quite but there is a rather tenuous link to this family myth)

Byharrymottram

Sep 27, 2024

By Harry Mottram: She may have been Dame Maggie Smith to the world of theatre, the movies and TV dramas but to me and my sister Sally she was our (sort of) step Godmother. Yes, it’s a rather tenuous link as although I’ve never met her, to me rather than a national treasure Maggie Smith is (or rather was) our step Godmother.

The link is actually through her second husband who was playwright (Alan) Beverly Cross who was mine and Sally’s Godfather at our Christening at St Gregory’s Church of England in Seaton in Devon. We lived on Harepath Hill above the town of Seaton and Beverly was chosen to be our Godfather because of a social connection linked to my father’s social circle which included the opera singer John Shirley-Quirk. I never quite got to the bottom of the group as these were London arts people far removed from East Devon although Sidmouth was some sort of connection through a school friend. Sadly my parents died many years ago so I’m not able to quiz them except at a séance.

Anyway, at the time Beverly Cross was married to Elizabeth Clunies-Ross who he divorced before marrying Gayden Collins in 1965 and then Maggie Smith after that marriage ended in divorce in 1975. I think the marriage to Maggie Smith prompted my mother to remind us Beverly Cross was our Godfather at our Christening in around 1958 or 1959 – I have a vague memory of leaving the church as a toddler surrounded by a group of grown-ups but no more than that. Sally was a babe in arms. So technically my family myth that Maggie Smith was our step Godmother was incorrect as at the time it would have been Elizabeth Clunies-Ross. She had been at university in Oxford with him – although according to the gossip columnists he always fancied Maggie from those days and had to get through another marriage before wedding her. I don’t really care as essentially based on my tenuous link Sally and I had three step Godmothers!

Dame Maggie Smith died on Friday 27th September, 2024, aged 89. She married Beverly in 1975 and they were a couple until his death in 1998. He was step dad to her two sons from her first marriage to Robert Stephens. Maggie Smith’s career is well known having appeared in the 1969 film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie which brought her international attention before toles in Noel Coward’s play Private Lives directed by John Guilgud and going on to appear alongsside Michael Caine in California Sweet and later Downton Abbey and Harry Potter.

Beverly is less well known but still had a highly successful career as a screenwriter and playwright. Movie hits included Half a Sixpence, Jason and the Argonauts and Genghis Khan. He also wrote one of the BBC episodes of The Six Wives of Henry VIII in 1970 – a repeat of which I saw on our black and white TV when a school boy. An event which prompted my mother to suggest I write to him – something I did – writing to the BBC – but I never received a reply. My sister said she managed to make a phone call to him sometime in the 1970s and briefly got through to him but the phone went dead.

And that dear reader is the sum of my tunous links to Dame Maggie Smith who died today: Friday 27th September, 2024, aged 89.