91Èȱ¬

She’s the doyenne of British acting, with appearances in big and small screen juggernauts like Harry Potter and Downton Abbey making her an international household name.

Now, one of Dame Maggie Smith’s earliest Shakespearean performances to be captured on film, which was thought lost forever, has been painstakingly restored after unexpectedly turning up in a library in Washington.

Dame Maggie's 1967 portrayal of the playful debutante Beatrice in the cheerful Much Ado About Nothing is thought to be the earliest British television broadcast of the whole play. But the screen version of the famed National Theatre production by Italian director Franco Zeffirelli was assumed a lost treasure missing from the 91Èȱ¬’s archives. That was until a copy was discovered in the Library of Congress in Washington DC in 2010, fortunately having been loaned to PBS, America’s public broadcasting channel.

Robert Stephens as Benedick and Janina Faye as a Mermaid

...not everyone had embraced Zeffirelli’s exuberant production

The restoration of Much Ado About Nothing was completed by 91Èȱ¬ Archive Development in a collection of programmes from the 50s and 60s which were screened earlier this year at London’s Barbican, shedding light on the early years of drama on TV.

Even more intriguingly for the actresses’ fans, Dame Maggie’s Beatrice is seen opposite her future husband Robert Stephens’ Benedick, completing one of Shakespeare’s most successful pairings. The actors were married a few months later.

But not everyone had embraced Zeffirelli’s exuberant production with its brass bands and Sicilian statues that burst into life. His irreverent interpretation of the play had caused one of the theatrical furores of the mid-60s.

The production also features early appearances from other acting greats including a youthful Michael Gambon as a watchman and Christopher Timothy as a server alongside an emerging Derek Jacobi as Don Pedro.

Derek Jacobi as Don Pedro and Frank Finlay as Dogberry

All four had appeared two years earlier in Othello, another National Theatre production captured for the screen at the famous Shepperton Studios in which Smith impressed as Desdemona opposite Laurence Olivier in the title role.

Speaking in the Radio Times at the time of the initial broadcast, Alan Cooke, who adapted Shakespeare’s play for television said the actors spent more than three weeks in rehearsal ahead of the recording following the run at London’s Old Vic theatre.

"Paradoxically, one needed to change a great deal to make it come out the same,” Cooke said. “The original was a very two-dimensional production; I tried on television to create the feeling of being among a performance going on."