GLENDA JACKSON: MORE THAN A TOUCH OF CLASS

May 9, 1936 - June 15, 2023

Winner of two Academy Awards for Best Actress, a two-time BAFTA winner, and the distinguished recipient of a Golden Globe, Emmy, and Tony Award. The late, great Glenda May Jackson (Ms. Jackson, if you're nasty) was indisputably one of the preeminent actors of my generation. 

And a lifetime personal favorite. 

What I wrote about Glenda Jackson in 2014: 

“Blessed with a mellifluous voice and an articulate beauty that radiates strength, intellect, and a fleshy sensuality, Jackson is Old Hollywood star-quality without the lacquered veneer. Her performance as Gudrun Brangwen [in Ken Russell's Women in Love - 1969], certainly one of the more complex, emotionally paradoxical characters in literature, is almost wily. Throughout the film, she wears the look of a woman in possession of a secret she dares you to find out.”

When I started this blog in 2009, Jackson had already been retired for sixteen years (if serving for 23 years as a member of British Parliament can be called retirement). At the time, what with a substantial amount of her film and television work unavailable on VHS or missing in action on DVD at the local Blockbuster, I recall devoting a great many paragraphs to venting my spleen about how profoundly I missed her and how sorely her brand of grown-up intelligence was lacking in the adolescent male fantasy/franchise-driven cinema of the first decade of the 21st century. 

Their chemistry was electric. My favorite of all Jackson's co-stars.
Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed made three films together.
Women in Love (1969) - The Triple Echo (1972) - The Class of Miss MacMichael - 1978

I've been in thrall of Glenda Jackson since my teens. Though initially, due to the “mature” nature of her early films, mine was an infatuation formed on what I’d read, not seen. Since I wasn’t yet in high school when Women in Love premiered in the US in 1970 and only of “rated-GP” age when her subsequent R-rated films—The Music Lovers and Sunday, Bloody Sunday—came out the following year, no small part of the Glenda Jackson mystique for me was that she was this highly acclaimed, Oscar-winning darling of the arthouse and hard-to-please critics, who made movies that my parents thought were too controversial and adult for me to see. I was hooked!

In Glenda Jackson's first film, she was an uncredited extra in Richard Harris's This Sporting Life. In her last feature film before assuming her duties as MP in 1992, Richard Harris was her co-star. In King of the Wind, Jackson plays Queen Caroline to Harris' King George II in a dual cameo for this star-studded children's film. Said Jackson to a journalist during filming: “I’m only doing it for the money. I’ve never been paid so much for doing so little in my life.” 

With her movies off-limits to me, through the initial stages of my infatuation, Glenda Jackson was just this striking woman with the Vidal Sassoon bob, razor-sharp cheekbones, wry mouth, and no-nonsense gaze looking back at me from issues of Sight & Sound, Film Quarterly, and Films in Review at the library. But in the era of the "flower child" and the perennial waif (Mia Farrow, Goldie Hawn, Leigh Taylor-Young), Glenda Jackson represented a screen commodity in short supply during Hollywood's youthquake panic...she was a grown woman. 

Glenda Jackson never played the ingenue. Straight out of the gate, 

she tackled demanding roles of unsettling emotional forcefulness   

"Now, every time there's a role for a nut case who takes her clothes off, they say 'Call Glenda Jackson'"
Chicago Times - 1971 (Jackson, on wearying of playing neurotics)

In the films of the late '60s, a confluence of the youth counterculture, the sexual revolution, eased censorship, and pushback against the feminist movement brought about the rise of the “buddy flick” and the “alienated young man" movie. The result: the marginalization or complete erasure of the grown woman from movie screens. In its place, and the emergence of “the girl”…the showy, supplicant, supportive, subordinate, sexually-available girl. 

"Women aren't integral to films except as sex-objects. The woman is always a soothing balm or irritating scourge to the man whose story is the main thrust of the film."  - Glenda Jackson in 1989

TELL ME LIES: A FILM ABOUT LONDON (1968)
Jackson appeared in the film adaptation and original 1966 stage production of Dennis Cannan's anti-war exercise in experimental theater, "US," directed by Peter Brook for the Royal Shakespeare Company. 

But Glenda Jackson was no girl; everything about her communicated “grown-ass woman” and “force to be reckoned with.” Ill-suited for standing on the sidelines, retreating into the background, or diminishing herself for the sake of a male co-star (I still have memories of 5' 8" Swiss actor Marthe Keller having to slouch and contort herself to appear shorter than co-stars Dustin Hoffman [Marathon Man 5' 5"] and Al Pacino [Bobby Deerfield 5' 6"), when you saw Glenda Jackson in a movie, she stood out as the individual whose story you wanted to know more about. 

                                       NEGATIVES (1968)                    Severinfilms.com
In this precursor to Women in Love, Jackson portrays one half of a role-playing couple
 who finds herself having to fight for dominance once the duo becomes a trio 

Harboring few illusions about herself or her career (which she regarded as work, not stardom maintenance), both onscreen and in interviews, Jackson radiated a grounded self-sufficiency that frustrated journalists accustomed to writing about women through the traditional gendered prisms of glamour, sex appeal, love life, and fashion.

In those days, it seemed impossible for any critic to write about Glenda Jackson at any length without using at least one of the following words (invariably as a negative): steely, challenging, hard, intellectual, direct, dominating…you get the point. In some circles, her bluntness earned her the nickname "Stonewall" Jackson.

Glenda Jackson made two films with Peter Finch. For Sunday, Bloody Sunday, she received her second Best Actress Oscar nomination. For The Nelson Affair (known as Bequest to the Nation in the UK), Jackson caused a PR furor by openly telling the press that she thought she was terrible in it

It took a while, but once critics adapted to the (shocking!) notion that there was nothing extraordinary about a woman exhibiting the same strengths traditionally lauded in men, they came to appreciate that Jackson’s resilience was just one aspect of her broadly dimensional range as an actor. The warmer shades of Jackson’s palette—affection, grief, longing, loneliness—are on affecting display in several of her films, particularly Stevie, The Return of the Soldier, and The Turtle Diary.

Personally, I liked Jackson's toughness. She emerged from the British New Wave (the post-war cultural era of "kitchen sink realism" that was dubbed the Angry Young Man movement), and I remember thinking at the time that it would be very cool if she became known as British Cinema’s “Angry Young Woman.”

Glenda Jackson's acerbic intensity made her a natural choice for portraying
 domineering authoritarians. As for this proclivity leading to roles as nuns...
well, that's something you'll have to take up with the authors of these works.

Considering how coming across as likeable or pleasant didn't appear to rank high in her concerns when choosing movie roles, in many ways, Glenda Jackson's success contradicted every standard once considered essential for a woman to become an international star in motion pictures at the time. There was far too much intelligence behind her eyes for me to feel Jackson could ever be entirely convincing as a giggly, superficial character, but she nevertheless built up an impressively versatile resume of roles in her career. Speaking to that point in 1974: "People see me as profane one time, regal the next, funny, insane, demure...I want to keep it that way."  

THE BOY FRIEND (1971)
If avant-gardist Peter Brook of the RSC is considered the most influential director of Glenda Jackson's theatrical work, then Britain's enfant terrible, Ken Russell, is the director most closely associated with her film career.  She and Russell collaborated on five feature films and one TV movie from 1969 to 1992

Given my adolescent fondness for films that were too adult for me, the irony isn’t lost that my first glimpse of Glenda Jackson on the big screen was in the only G-rated movie Ken Russell ever made: the charming 1920s musical The Boy Friend. Showcasing a previously untapped flair for comedy, Jackson’s uncredited cameo as an egotistical stage star benefited from a meta quality that may not be appreciated today. Jackson was a major star at the time, known for her simple lifestyle, seriousness, and indifference to celebrity. Seeing cinema's biggest and most down-to-earth dramatic star in comically over-the-top diva mode was a delightful surprise.  This brief glimpse left me wanting more.

Make Mine a Double
Glenda Jackson's one-woman British Invasion of Elizabeth I portrayals saw Elizabeth R premiere on TV screens in February 1972, and Mary Queen of Scots open in theaters the following month.

Happily, I didn’t have to wait long; a few months after the US release of The Boy Friend, PBS Masterpiece Theater aired Jackson’s six-part miniseries on Queen Elizabeth I, Elizabeth R, for which she earned two Emmys. Spanning 45 years in the monarch’s life, the BBC series gave Jackson the opportunity to delve deeply into the character and portray such a broad array of emotions; each week was like a 90-minute crash course in Glenda Jackson 101. If I was only infatuated with Glenda Jackson before, Elizabeth R made certain I was now in love.

Though the humor and appeal of the legendary British comedy team of Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise is utterly lost on me, Glenda Jackson's June 3, 1971, appearance as Cleopatra on The Morecambe and Wise Show was instrumental in altering the Grand Tragedian trajectory of her career. Jackson's then-uncharacteristic comedic outing caught the attention of A Touch of Class director Melvin Frank, leading to her being offered her first "average woman" role and her first comedy. 

"All men are fools! And what makes them so is having beauty like what I have got."
Jackson appeared on The Morecambe & Wise Show four more times over the years. And in 1978, she got to legitimately portray the Queen of the Nile in Peter Brook's production of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra for the RSC. 

A Touch of Class marked a series of firsts for Glenda Jackson: her first film with American co-stars, her first romantic comedy, and her first mainstream hit. And it marked one significant “second": it garnered Jackson her second Academy Award win for Best Actress. 

The Jackson/Segal spark failed to ignite in the anemic Lost and Found, but by then, the formula established in A Touch of Class—contrast comedy rooted in Jackson's starchy “Britishness” butting up against boyish, Yankee schlubbiness—would be repeated to considerably better effect in her two films with Walter Matthau.

Glenda Jackson and Walter Matthau shared an irresistible onscreen chemistry in House Calls that reminded me of peanut brittle ice cream: smooth, sweet, but with a bite. Offscreen, they maintained a mutual admiration society that led Jackson to accept Matthau's personal invitation to join him in Salzburg and take on an absolutely nothing role in the spy comedy Hopscotch. It's just the sort of empty "girlfriend" part that Jackson had spoken out against countless times. She herself called the character she played "a cipher," going on to say, "It was money for old rope. I played her with my usual mid-Cheshire accent, but I hardly look on it as a major contribution."

The Muppet Show - 1980
Glenda as Black Jackson, the heartless pirate captain who takes over
The Muppet Show in what I think is one of the best episodes in the series

Glenda Jackson’s success as a romantic comedy foil had the added benefit of making many of her earlier films more accessible on cable TV and in the revival theater circuit. Finally, I was able to catch up on all the Glenda Jackson films I missed as a kid, and with the advent of home video, I was able to follow her career forward and backward simultaneously.

THE MAIDS - 1975

THE ROMANTIC ENGLISHWOMAN - 1975    d. Joseph Losey

HEDDA - 1975        d. Trevor Nunn

THE INCREDIBLE SARAH - 1976

STEVIE - 1978

H.E.A.L.T.H. - 1980          d. Robert Altman

THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER - 1982

AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH (aka GIRO CITY) - 1982

TURTLE DIARY - 1985

BEYOND THERAPY - 1987      d. Robert Altman

BUSINESS AS USUAL - 1988

SALOME'S LAST DANCE - 1988        d. Ken Russell

THE RAINBOW - 1989      d. Ken Russell

THE SECRET LIFE OF ARNOLD BAX -1992
A biographical TV film directed by Ken Russell. It's fitting that, in this, their final collaboration, Glenda Jackson and Ken Russell (making a rare appearance in front of the cameras) play lovers. 

This headline is from 1971

Glenda Jackson declaring in interviews that she was about to quit was an annual occurrence since the start of her career. She followed through when she turned 55. Jackson's political career as a Member of Parliament spanned from 1992 to 2015. She was 78 when she resigned, and I was certain she would retire for good. I should have known better.

53 years after making her Tony-nominated Broadway debut in Marat/Sade in 1965, 81-year-old Glenda Jackson made a triumphant return to Broadway in Three Tall Women, winning her 1st Tony Award. She returned the following year, assuming the title role of Shakespeare's King Lear.  

MOTHERING SUNDAY - 2021
At age 84, in her first feature film in 32 years

1975                                        2023 

Glenda Jackson's final film role was in The Great Escaper, which reunited Jackson with her co-star from The Romantic Englishwoman, Michael Caine. She was 86, and Caine, who is still with us as of this writing, was 90.

To me, Glenda Jackson will always be “The woman who didn’t ask permission." 

When I think of her, the first things that come to mind are her beautiful speaking voice (a journalist aptly called it a "stainless steel voice"), her expressive mouth, and the almost magical way she seemed to take command of every scene. Even when she was silent. 

Oh, and I also think of her as the person who introduced me to the word "pusillanimous"! (House Calls)

I truly admire how, through her work, she continually challenged societal constraints. And in the way she lived, she made all the "don'ts" and "can'ts" related to gender and age completely irrelevant. 

Most of all, I remain inspired by her brilliance as an actor and how she utilized her gifts—her determination, sensitivity, intelligence, and bravery—to illuminate the darker aspects of the human experience, never hesitating to confront the unpleasant and difficult.

Truly one of the greats, and one-of-a-kind.

Click HERE

To see clips from Glenda Jackson's films on the Le Cinema Dreams YouTube Channel

AWARDS

Maggie Smith - Why did we come, Sidney?

Michel Caine - Because it’s free, darling.

Maggie Smith - Glenda Jackson never comes. She’s nominated every goddamn year!

                                                                         Neil Simon’s California Suite (1978) 

In any discussion of Glenda Jackson, it must be understood that any emphasis on awards and accolades comes entirely from the biographer, in this case, me. Jackson, though pleased and always so graciously thankful, was notoriously detached from the whole prize-winning aspect of acting; insisting that awards can be "given," but because acting is not a horse race, they cannot be "won."

Winning Her First Best Actress Academy Award in 1971 at age 33

Winning Her First Best Actress Tony Award in 2018 at age 81

Best Actress Oscar-nominated four times (wins in Bold): 

Women in Love, Sunday Bloody Sunday, A Touch of Class, and Hedda 

Jackson attended the Oscar ceremonies only once (April 8, 1975), as a presenter handing the Best Actor Oscar over to the draw-dropping choice of Art Carney (over Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, and Albert Finney).

Years later, she had this to say about watching the 1979 Oscar telecast:  

“I felt ashamed of myself for watching. No one should have a chance to see so much desire, so much need for a prize. And so much pain when [it] was not given ... I felt disgusted with myself. As though I were attending a public hanging.”  

I love that. But as I've always felt, Glenda Jackson was a very classy lady.

I think this is a high school graduation photo

"I've won all of the prizes. Every single one. They're all here, in the attic somewhere. 

It was inevitable. The task was impossible. But it was... Wonderful."

 Mothering Sunday (2021) 

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2025