Actress Madeline Smith, known for her role as Bond girl Miss Caruso in Live and Let Die (1973), is now part of a stage tribute marking the centenary of comedian Kenneth Williams. The show, Kenneth Williams: A Centenary Celebration, is touring to honour what would have been his 100th birthday year.
A tribute to a comedy icon
Williams died in 1988 at age 62 from an overdose of prescribed painkillers, with an open verdict recorded at the inquest. His diary, with a final entry dated April 14 reading “Oh, what’s the bloody point?”, offered insight into his final days.
The diaries were collected into a book by journalist Russell Davies in 1993 and later inspired the stage show written by Mark Farrelly. For Smith, the production keeps Williams’s “unique personality” alive.
“His appeal is his high intelligence,” she says. “His quickness of mind, his extraordinary and unusual point of view. He gave so very, very much to comedy, which many have followed and tried to imitate, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. And his diaries are a day-by-day record of his thoughts and whims.”
Meeting Kenneth Williams
Despite appearing with Williams in Carry On Matron (1972), Smith never met him on set. She played expectant mother Mrs Pullitt in a scene with Hattie Jacques, Barbara Windsor and Joan Sims. However, she later encountered his sharp temper during a TV game show appearance.
“He came running up to me, and was extremely cross with me for wearing a white or light beige dress, that in those days would have flashed itself extraordinarily on camera,” she says. “He said how stupid I was, and he was absolutely right. And then later in the day, he came and apologised. That's the sort of a character he was, wildly eccentric. A one off, really.”
Career and challenges
Smith was also known for her beauty, which led to modelling for London fashion house Biba and roles in B-movies. She recalls being required to undress on camera, including in The Vampire Lovers (1970), with little choice in the matter.
“It was demanded of you,” she says. “I mean, in [1970 film] The Vampire Lovers, it was demanded of me seconds before I did the scene. I had no choice, there was nothing in the contract.” She adds that Roger Moore was a perfect gentleman when he unzipped her dress with his “magic watch”.
Despite the pressure, she has no regrets, crediting those roles with helping her rise from a shopkeeper’s daughter in Hartfield, Sussex to working with stars like Ava Gardner, Tony Curtis and Alec Guinness. She notes her generation had it easier than today’s actors, saying, “It’s almost impossible to get your foot in the door now and it was so easy in the 60s.”
Smith wound down her career in 1989 after the death of her husband, actor David Buck, from cancer at age 52. She raised their daughter alone and later studied for an English degree at Goldsmiths, University of London, calling it “fab” and saying, “They saved me from idiocy.”
Return to the spotlight
She returned to acting in 2011 with an episode of BBC One soap Doctors and has since made more TV appearances, though she notes a new type of typecasting. “What I don’t want now is to be constantly cast as people in retirement homes with dementia,” she says. “So having been asked to take my clothes off in the 60s and 70s, I’m now asked to be dying. It’s very limiting. But this show is an absolute joy.”
Kenneth Williams: A Centenary Celebration runs from November 18 to 28 in Hemel Hempstead, Romford, Eastbourne, Maidenhead, Stamford and central London, with more dates in the new year.
