{"id":1646,"date":"2024-10-20T00:53:19","date_gmt":"2024-10-20T00:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/?p=1646"},"modified":"2024-10-20T00:53:19","modified_gmt":"2024-10-20T00:53:19","slug":"dame-maggie-smiths-oxford-beginnings-mansfield-mcgonagall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/?p=1646","title":{"rendered":"Dame Maggie Smith\u2019s Oxford beginnings, from Mansfield to McGonagall"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Oscar-winning<\/p>\n

\u2018I remember being so frightened and thinking \u201cif it rains I won\u2019t have to do it\u201d. But we kind of went on \u2013 I think \u2013 in the rain, anyway.\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It is difficult to imagine the two-time Academy Award winner as she must have appeared to audiences of the Oxford University Dramatic Society\u2019s 1952 production of\u00a0Twelfth Night<\/em>. Slightly soggy and very scared, 18 year-old \u2018Margaret Smith\u2019 (as she is listed in the programs) made her first ever reviewed performance as Viola in the Shakespearean comedy at Mansfield College Gardens.<\/p>\n

But in spite of the weather, and her nerves, Smith\u2019s performance was a huge success: \u2018I was much struck by the simple sincerity of her acting,\u2019 stated a reviewer for the\u00a0Oxford Mail,\u00a0<\/em>\u2018she approximates very nearly to the Viola of our dreams.\u2019<\/p>\n

And so began Dame Maggie\u2019s path to global fame: four years later she was on Broadway; three years after that she received her first Academy Award nomination for\u00a0Nowhere To Go\u00a0<\/em>(1958). Now nearly a month since the news of the actress\u2019 death, aged 89, we can reflect on Smith\u2019s extraordinary career and her connections to the city that started it all.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The Smith family moved to Oxford when Maggie was four years old: a result of her father\u2019s work with the University\u2019s School of Pathology. When she left Oxford High School at 16, Smith began training at the Theatre School connected to the Oxford Playhouse (her parents had refused to let her go to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts for fear of London\u2019s wild influences). Here she would often get involved in student productions with the University. At the time, Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), as well as many of Oxford\u2019s colleges, didn\u2019t admit female members so were forced to recruit women from elsewhere. It was an opportunity that Dame Maggie relished.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Smith performed with the University College Players in Hilary Term of 1953, playing the female lead, Consuela, in Leonid Andreyev\u2019s\u00a0He Who Gets Slapped First.\u00a0<\/em>Univ remained all-male until 1979, but Peter Bayley (former English Fellow at the college) remembered Dame Maggie\u2019s\u00a0performance\u00a0even then as \u2018striking\u2019.<\/p>\n

Though international stardom drew Dame Maggie away from Oxford in the late 1950s, she remained tied to the city \u2013 and the University \u2013 for all of her life. Smith would return to Oxford again, famously, for the filming of the\u00a0Harry Potter<\/em>\u00a0films, taking on the role of the iconic Professor McGonagall (the role she is perhaps most famous for amongst students today).<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

She was, allegedly,\u00a0the only actor that J.K Rowling specifically requested. But though Smith enjoyed the fame afforded to her later in life by the\u00a0Potter\u00a0<\/em>franchise and her success in\u00a0Downton Abbey<\/em>, she famously stated in an\u00a0interview\u00a0with the\u00a0Evening Standard<\/em>\u00a0that \u2018it wasn\u2019t what you\u2019d call satisfying. I didn\u2019t feel like I was acting in those things.\u2019 It was Smith\u2019s formidable versatility over an almost century-long career that has secured her place as a British national treasure.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Dame Maggie was also a long-standing patron of the Oxford Playhouse, and was given the\u00a0Bodley Medal\u00a0by the Bodlein Libraries in 2016 for her services to the performing arts. In 2017 she was awarded an honorary fellowship by Mansfield College, paying homage to that first rainy performance of\u00a0Twelfth Night<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In her\u00a0conversation\u00a0with Baroness Helena Kennedy QC (former head of Mansfield), Smith recalled that her 1952 co-stars took bets on the future of the cast during rehearsals: according to them, \u2018I was the one who was the least likely to do anything\u2019. Seventy-two years, a Damehood, and countless accolades later, it is safe to say that they couldn\u2019t have been more wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018I remember being so frightened and thinking \u201cif it rains I won\u2019t have to do it\u201d. But we kind of went on \u2013 I think \u2013 in the rain, anyway.\u2019\u00a0 It is difficult to imagine the two-time Academy Award winner as she must have appeared to audiences of the Oxford University Dramatic Society\u2019s 1952 production […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU.avif",576,613,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU-150x150.avif",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU-282x300.avif",282,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU.avif",576,613,false],"large":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU.avif",576,613,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU.avif",576,613,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU.avif",576,613,false],"jnews-360x180":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU-360x180.avif",360,180,true],"jnews-750x375":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU-576x375.avif",576,375,true],"jnews-1140x570":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU-576x570.avif",576,570,true],"jnews-120x86":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU-120x86.avif",120,86,true],"jnews-350x250":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU-350x250.avif",350,250,true],"jnews-750x536":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU-576x536.avif",576,536,true],"jnews-1140x815":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU.avif",576,613,false],"jnews-360x504":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU-360x504.avif",360,504,true],"jnews-75x75":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU-75x75.avif",75,75,true],"jnews-350x350":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU-350x350.avif",350,350,true],"jnews-featured-750":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU.avif",576,613,false],"jnews-featured-1140":["https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU.avif",576,613,false]},"author_info":{"display_name":"Newssoccer","author_link":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Blog<\/a>","tag_info":"Blog","comment_count":"0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/VWNF4CJL7ZDHXOLMERNF34T6LU.avif","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1648,"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646\/revisions\/1648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}