Glenda Jackson RIP

I am sorry to hear that Glenda Jackson has died. She was 87.

One of my earliest memories of secondary school was being taken, with the rest of my history class, to the New Picture House in St Andrews to watch a special screening of Mary, Queen of Scots, the 1971 historical drama in which Jackson played Elizabeth I.

I remember it because it was mid morning and it was nice to be out of school.

Also, and I may be wrong because it's a long time ago, the film was quite violent in parts, although the violence may have been off screen and left to our teenage imaginations.

The reviews at the time were mixed, and I'm not sure how historically accurate it was, but that didn't seem to bother our teachers!

Either way, it was Jackson’s performance that left the biggest impression and I had completely forgotten, until I looked it up, that Mary Stuart was played by Vanessa Redgrave.

If you include her famous appearance on the Morecambe & Wise Show in 1971, playing Cleopatra, followed by another appearance on the 1972 Christmas Show, watched by half the nation, it’s fair to say that Glenda Jackson played a small but not insignificant part in my childhood.

Astonishingly, despite winning two Oscars, she gave up acting to become a Labour MP from 1992 to 2015 and, although I didn't share her socialist politics, I admired the fact that she stuck to her beliefs and remained a maverick to the last.

Incredibly, after stepping down as an MP at the age of 79, she returned to acting and enjoyed further success playing a gender blind Lear in King Lear, among other roles.

I was aware of course that she was a smoker and we did invite her, once or twice, to Forest events, but she didn’t bite which was a pity because I would have loved to have met her, fearsome reputation or not.

As for the New Picture House in St Andrews, where I first saw Jackson on screen, it wasn't new at all.

It opened in 1934 and was 'new' only in comparison to the Cinema House on the other side of the road. That opened in 1913, hence the ‘New’ Picture House.

Today the New Picture House is the only cinema in St Andrews because the Cinema House closed in 1979 before being demolished and replaced by a block of flats.

I knew you’d be interested.

Update: ‘Chain-smoking and often barbed, she tolerated no fools. "No-one does scorn like Jackson," said one shell-shocked interviewer.’ (Glenda Jackson obituary, BBC)