Petrifying: Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). Directed by Ronald Neame, it features Gareth, his grandson
Downton Abbey producer Gareth Neame follows in the footsteps of his father, grandfather and great-grandmother, a silent-movie star
A
t he Royal Command Performance of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1969, my late grandfather Ronald Neame (1911-2010) was admonished by the Duke of Edinburgh. As the film’s director, he had been instructed only hours earlier to cut a scene deemed to be unsuitable. The scene in question involved the actor Robert Stephens, in the role of art master Teddy Lloyd, and three of Miss Brodie’s girls admiring a sketch of a nude male torso. It wasn’t the image that was thought inappropriate, 14 The Oldie July 2021
but Stephens’s dialogue which involved the words ‘pectoral muscles’. ‘Do you think we’re all children?’ barked the Duke as he passed my grandfather in the receiving line. Brodie is one of the most celebrated films in Ronnie Neame’s long and illustrious career as a director, producer, writer and cinematographer. In one of her most memorable performances, Maggie Smith received her first Academy Award. The film also marked my first foray into showbusiness. Another featured painting was of Teddy’s family: to expose
his obsession with Jean Brodie, his wife and five children all resemble her. The children are depicted in descending order of age with me at the end sitting on a potty. As the producer of Downton Abbey, I have a working connection with Dame Maggie that continues over half a century later. But the Neame film dynasty doesn’t begin with Ronnie Neame; rather with his parents. His mother was Ivy Close (1890-1968), the Edwardian beauty queen who won the Daily Mirror’s 1908 competition to find the world’s most
PICTORIAL PRESS /ALAMY
My film family’s greatest hits
