Joan Plowright - 28 October 1929 – 16 January 2025

I think it was all the hullabaloo over dear David Lynch dying that I must have missed the death of another legend in British Theatre, Dame Baroness Olivier, Joan Plowright

Joan Plowright and Daniel Massey in The Entertainer (1960)

in which she also starred opposite her husband to be Sir Laurence Olivier (noting the 24 year age difference - she played his daughter to Sir Laurence's Archie Rice character )

Curiously I was more a fan of hers than of his . . . . . I enjoyed some of his film work perhaps most notably opposite Michael Caine in Sleuth and was suitable inspired by the work in Marathon Man but the theatre work was spoiled for me by playing opposite Dame Maggie Smith (Desdemona) in Othello in black face!! Dreadful!

She appeared  most recently (well 2018) with the other British dames in conversation which frankly was a delight despite her (their) afflictions (she was almost blind towards the end and suffered from the same affliction as my own dear Mother, another Joan, with macular degeneration) 

Tea with The Dames

(featuring Dame Joan, Dame Eilen Atkins, Dame Maggie Smith and Dame Judi Dench)

 

we are of course all in love with all four!

Maggie Smith

 

Lest we forget that Dame Maggie was a stunner when she was young and pretty much all her life in various ways!

We were lucky enough to see her in Alan Bennet’s play ‘The Lady In The Van’ and she was simply mesmerising (noting it took three actors to play Bennet in order to keep up! 😉)

More on Dame Maggie . . . . . . Richard Burton and Michael Caine had warnings to fellow actors!!

Richard Burton complained that in Anthony Asquith’s 1963 film The VIPs, she didn’t merely steal a big scene with him, “she committed grand larceny”. 

After making the 1978 Neil Simon film California Suite with her (for which Smith won her second Academy Award), Michael Caine is reported to have phoned Michael Palin, who was to be her co-star in the 1982 film The Missionary. 

“Watch her,” Caine reportedly warned. “She’ll have that scene from under your feet.”