Maggie once more, and although he was married to another Oxford contemporary, Elizabeth Clunies-Ross, he declared himself ‘absent without leave’, and reported devotedly to the stage door of the Old Vic in order to renew his lifetime’s mission of courtship.
– 5 –
West End Calling, Screen Testing
The reappearance of Beverley Cross was to have a decisive effect on Maggie’s career. His rock-like imperturbability complemented her anxiety and defensiveness. Until his death in 1998, as Maggie made her way through the early and middle ages of her fame and career, Beverley’s companionship was the essential safety net for the high-wire tension of her performing style.
Beverley’s mother, Eileen Dale, was a dancer and actress who claimed to have been pestered at the stage door of the Hippodrome by a ‘frightfully dull’ man called Evelyn Waugh (their brief correspondence is lost). She also appeared in the London premières of
Our Town
and
A Streetcar Named Desire
(she played Eileen Hubbel in Laurence Olivier’s 1949 production headed by Vivien Leigh, Renée Asherson and Bonar Colleano). In 1936, when Beverley was five, Eileen married George Cross, a theatrical manager of such stars as Godfrey Tearle and Jack Buchanan, and later a long-serving house manager of the Ambassadors Theatre.
Beverley attended the naval college at Pangbourne during the war, joined the army and then postponed his arrival in Oxford by taking a berth in the Norwegian merchant navy. After Oxford, he joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, but was discouraged from developing his acting career by a remark of John Gielgud, in whose production of
Much Ado About Nothing
he played Balthazar: ‘You’ll never make an actor; you wear your doublet and hose like a blazer and flannels.’ He stopped acting almost immediately and wrote two novels, some television plays and
One More River
. His varied writing credits include two Tommy Steele musicals, two Richard Rodney Bennett operas and the new version of
The Scarlet Pimpernel
for Donald Sinden, directed by Nicholas Hytner at Chichester and Her Majesty’s in 1985. In the late 1950s, he was one of the first recipients of the new Arts Council playwriting awards, for each of his first two plays,
One More River
at Liverpool and
Strip the Willow
at the Nottingham Playhouse. But the fashion in new playwriting was moving away from Beverley’s style of work towards the rougher, working-class prescriptions for British society delivered by John Osborne, Arnold Wesker and the angry brigade at the Royal Court.
The link between the old West End order to which Beverley aspired and the new Court generation was Laurence Olivier. While his presentation of Beverley’s
One More River
enjoyed a modest run at the Duke of York’s and then the Westminster, Olivier himself was starring in Ionesco’s
Rhinoceros
at the Royal Court, where he had scored one of the greatest successes of his career as Archie Rice in John Osborne’s
The Entertainer
. Olivier, still married to Vivien Leigh, was appearing opposite Joan Plowright, with whom he was in love. When
Rhinoceros
, directed by Orson Welles, transferred to the Strand Theatre, Olivier’s affair was reported in the newspapers and Plowright was compelled to leave the production because of the uproar – and, it was alleged, gastroenteritis. Plowright stayed on at the Court and made the biggest splash of her career as Beatie Bryant in Arnold Wesker’s
Roots
. Guess who stepped into the Ionesco?
Maggie Smith took over as Daisy to Olivier’s Berenger on 8 June 1960 for a six-week run. The show was the hottest ticket in town; it was said to be harder to get into than
My Fair Lady
. Other London hits of the moment included Donald Pleasence in Harold Pinter’s
The Caretaker
at the Duchess, Paul Scofield in Robert Bolt’s
A Man for All Seasons
(as it happens, the first play I saw on the London stage) at the Globe, Alec Guinness in Terence
– 5 –
West End Calling, Screen Testing
The reappearance of Beverley Cross was to have a decisive effect on Maggie’s career. His rock-like imperturbability complemented her anxiety and defensiveness. Until his death in 1998, as Maggie made her way through the early and middle ages of her fame and career, Beverley’s companionship was the essential safety net for the high-wire tension of her performing style.
Beverley’s mother, Eileen Dale, was a dancer and actress who claimed to have been pestered at the stage door of the Hippodrome by a ‘frightfully dull’ man called Evelyn Waugh (their brief correspondence is lost). She also appeared in the London premières of
Our Town
and
A Streetcar Named Desire
(she played Eileen Hubbel in Laurence Olivier’s 1949 production headed by Vivien Leigh, Renée Asherson and Bonar Colleano). In 1936, when Beverley was five, Eileen married George Cross, a theatrical manager of such stars as Godfrey Tearle and Jack Buchanan, and later a long-serving house manager of the Ambassadors Theatre.
Beverley attended the naval college at Pangbourne during the war, joined the army and then postponed his arrival in Oxford by taking a berth in the Norwegian merchant navy. After Oxford, he joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, but was discouraged from developing his acting career by a remark of John Gielgud, in whose production of
Much Ado About Nothing
he played Balthazar: ‘You’ll never make an actor; you wear your doublet and hose like a blazer and flannels.’ He stopped acting almost immediately and wrote two novels, some television plays and
One More River
. His varied writing credits include two Tommy Steele musicals, two Richard Rodney Bennett operas and the new version of
The Scarlet Pimpernel
for Donald Sinden, directed by Nicholas Hytner at Chichester and Her Majesty’s in 1985. In the late 1950s, he was one of the first recipients of the new Arts Council playwriting awards, for each of his first two plays,
One More River
at Liverpool and
Strip the Willow
at the Nottingham Playhouse. But the fashion in new playwriting was moving away from Beverley’s style of work towards the rougher, working-class prescriptions for British society delivered by John Osborne, Arnold Wesker and the angry brigade at the Royal Court.
The link between the old West End order to which Beverley aspired and the new Court generation was Laurence Olivier. While his presentation of Beverley’s
One More River
enjoyed a modest run at the Duke of York’s and then the Westminster, Olivier himself was starring in Ionesco’s
Rhinoceros
at the Royal Court, where he had scored one of the greatest successes of his career as Archie Rice in John Osborne’s
The Entertainer
. Olivier, still married to Vivien Leigh, was appearing opposite Joan Plowright, with whom he was in love. When
Rhinoceros
, directed by Orson Welles, transferred to the Strand Theatre, Olivier’s affair was reported in the newspapers and Plowright was compelled to leave the production because of the uproar – and, it was alleged, gastroenteritis. Plowright stayed on at the Court and made the biggest splash of her career as Beatie Bryant in Arnold Wesker’s
Roots
. Guess who stepped into the Ionesco?
Maggie Smith took over as Daisy to Olivier’s Berenger on 8 June 1960 for a six-week run. The show was the hottest ticket in town; it was said to be harder to get into than
My Fair Lady
. Other London hits of the moment included Donald Pleasence in Harold Pinter’s
The Caretaker
at the Duchess, Paul Scofield in Robert Bolt’s
A Man for All Seasons
(as it happens, the first play I saw on the London stage) at the Globe, Alec Guinness in Terence
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