Once again, I must confess myself unable to find a screenshot from the thing I think of a person in first. However, due to internet issues at home, I’m actually writing this piece on Graham’s mother’s creaky ancient laptop, and that can’t be helping things. (When we left the apartment this morning, there were three Comcast trucks by the maintenance guy’s apartment, so hopefully, this will be resolved soon!) But I am choosing a relatively obscure actress this week, and I do remember her as a minor character in a relatively obscure production. There are two serious issues there that make it almost impossible to find the picture I want without doing more work than I feel capable of doing on this machine!
When I was a child, my family watched a lot of PBS. Oh, we had cable, but my mother was very into Educational Programming. Also Adaptations of the Classics, which is rather more relevant. I had already read the book, I think, which made me too snobbish to accept the Shirley Temple version, and so the only version I’ve ever been able to watch of A Little Princess is a miniseries from 1987. It went full-on Victorian, and one of the best aspects of it was the casting of Miriam Margolyes as Miss Amelia Minchin, the submissive and frankly sniveling sister of the owner of Miss Minchin’s school. (I can’t remember the owner’s name; see also “not a computer I want to do much research on.” And, of course, my copy of the book is at home.) She gets to have full-blown hysterics at the end and does a delightful job at it.
I wonder, in fact, if she’s better known to British audiences than American ones. She’s rather shortchanged in Harry Potter; the adaptations don’t give a lot for Professor Sprout to do. Not that Professor Sprout is hugely developed in the books, admittedly. And she’s a delight in Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, where she is Phryne’s perpetually scandalized Aunt Prudence. Though as the image above indicates, we knew her first as Sir Edmund Blackadder’s scandalized aunt Lady Whiteadder. She’s also done a lot of the standard British Prestige Television, appearing both as various historical figures and as characters out of Dickens and so forth.
Still, she’s just not in the same conversation as your Dame Helen Mirren and your Dame Judi Dench, or even your Imelda Staunton or your Julie Walters. She’s a British character actress, and the British seem to churn them out by the truckload. She’s always noticeable, though I must confess that at least part of that is her distinctive figure–the word that must be applied to her is “stout,” I think. Still, she also has a charming smile and a great screen presence beyond her physical appearance. Just because she’s one of the more obscure ones doesn’t mean she isn’t good.
I think that may be why I was so determined to write about her, honestly. Yes, we’ve covered some fine, notable figures here, and, yes, we will continue to do so. Award winners. Box office champions. With the way this year is going, there’s about a dozen people that I feel the need to get to before it’s out; I don’t even want to consider some of the obituaries that might be coming up this year! But while we’re talking about Jodie Foster and John Williams and even Christopher Walken, we must also leave room for people who aren’t quite as huge yet who leave their marks just as firmly. Fans of Miss Fisher–and if you haven’t seen it, you ought, because it’s delightful–would the show be as good with someone else cast as Aunt Prudence? Would any British actress of note been half so perfect as Professor Sprout? I ask you. So let’s take a moment for Miriam Margolyes; someone ought to.
