Mary Smith (EastEnders)

Mary Smith
EastEnders character
Portrayed by	Linda Davidson
Duration	1985–88
First appearance	5 March 1985
Last appearance	26 May 1988
Classification	Former; regular
Book appearances	EastEnders: Growing Wild
Family Father Chris Smith Mother Edie Smith Brothers Brendan Smith Gary Smith Sisters Bridey Smith Daughters Annie Smith

Theresa "Mary" Smith is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Linda Davidson.

Punk Mary was Walford's original wild child. She often made life difficult for herself due to her stubborn, defensive nature and she tended to feel that everyone around her was out to get her. In fact, Mary was her own worst enemy and most of her misfortune was down to her irresponsible behaviour and her inability to heed good advice.

Storylines

Mary arrived in Walford in March 1985 when she was housed in Reg Cox's old council flat (23b Albert Square), following his death. Before her arrival, Mary had been touring with a punk group. She had been sleeping with one of the members of the band, but was forced to quit when she fell pregnant. Mary was originally from Stockport, but she moved to London when she fell pregnant, as she wanted to escape her overbearing family who viewed Mary's choice of lifestyle with contempt.

Mary was the young, single mother of baby Annie, and she found bringing her daughter up extremely difficult. She had little money and virtually no experience, and her incapability to listen to anyone's advice meant that she would often make mistakes with her daughter's welfare. This was compounded by the fact that Mary couldn't read; Annie was nearly harmed when Mary gave her the wrong dosage of medication.

Mary was an incredibly irresponsible mother and almost everyone on the Square had a turn at looking after Annie at one time or another. Most took pity on Mary and were willing to help her out, which she regularly used to her advantage. Mary made an unlikely friendship with local busybody Dot Cotton, who would regularly be put upon to babysit for baby Annie whilst Mary went out to party or earn cash. Although Dot liked to preach to Mary, she was one of the few people that Mary listened to on Albert Square.

Strapped for cash, Mary found it difficult to provide for Annie, so her friend Sheena Menell talked her into becoming a stripper to earn some money, and she regularly danced for married shopkeeper Saeed Jeffery. One night when Mary was out stripping, she left Annie in the care of Sheena. Sheena left Annie alone while she went out with a client. Mary's neighbour, Sue Osman, found Annie before any harm could come to her, but Mary subsequently cut all ties with Sheena.

In February 1986, nurse Andy O'Brien took Mary under his wing and undertook the difficult task of teaching her to read. This backfired on him when Mary decided she was in love with him and even stopped stripping and dropped her punk image to impress him. Andy was forced to reject her advances, and an angst-ridden Mary spitefully told him where to stick his reading lessons and the following day her punk image was back.

However, without her stripping job, she was now penniless again. Nick Cotton, seeing her in a desperate state, then tried to coax her into becoming a prostitute. Mary declined, but her desperation for money made her question whether it would be such a bad idea after all. Luckily, Andy managed to put a stop to this by getting her a job working in a hospital canteen.

Mary later had a brief fling with the married Mehmet Osman, but he was only using her to win a bet with his brother Ali. After months of chasing, Mehmet finally managed to get Mary into bed and he triumphantly went to claim his winnings from his brother. However, Mary witnessed him gloating and she furiously vowed to get revenge. After sabotaging his car, she proceeded to make regular crank calls to his cab firm. Things then got worse for Mary when she lost her job at the canteen and once again she found herself desperate for money.

By December 1986, Mary was persuaded to turn to prostitution by Pat Wicks, who was being pimped by Mehmet. By early 1987, Mary had flung herself wholeheartedly into prostitution, much to the concern of everyone on the Square. Pat had a change of heart and started refusing to give Mary any more contacts, so Mary decided that she would find her contacts on her own. She started making regular trips to London and came home late one night covered in bruises and blood. Initially, Mary claimed that she had been beaten by the Walford attacker — a man who had assaulted several other women in the area — but she later confessed that she had been beaten by other prostitutes for trying to poach their clients.

Despite this, Mary refused to stop prostituting herself, even when the healthcare worker, Carmel Roberts, showed up and warned her that her baby might be taken away from her if she continued. Mary was furious and went on the rampage to find out who had reported her to Carmel. An anonymous letter from Dot Cotton put Sue Osman in the frame, and this led to Mary viciously attacking Sue in the café one night.

Mary was later arrested for soliciting, which left her with a huge fine. However, even this didn't stop her prostituting herself. Mary's unsocial hours meant that she was often forced to leave baby Annie alone at night whilst she went out to work the streets. This culminated in Annie nearly dying in a fire one night when she was left alone. Luckily for Mary, she was rescued by Arthur Fowler before she was harmed.

Eventually, Dot could no longer stand the maltreatment of Annie so she contacted Mary's parents, Chris and Edie Smith, who arrived in Walford and demanded to take Annie back with them to Stockport. Mary initially refused, but she eventually realised that her burnt-out flat was no place for a baby, so she begrudgingly allowed Annie to go.

In 1987, Mary began a relationship with Rod Norman; a good-hearted, scruffy, layabout who had a soft-spot for women in distress. Rod was a good influence on Mary and desperately tried to get her off 'the game' and back on the 'straight and narrow'. Rod was also instrumental in helping Mary regain custody of Annie. However, Social Services were now involved, as Mary's mother had decided to apply for full custody of Annie. Mary was frequently frustrated by the slow wheels of the Social Services machine, but Rod kept her going and even managed to get her a job as cleaner in The Dagmar winebar.

Still, Edie refused to give Annie back, so Rod tried a different tactic. He phoned Chris and told him that Mary was threatening to kill herself unless she got her baby. The lie worked and by the end of the year, Mary's father arrived on the Square bringing baby Annie back to an overjoyed Mary. Chris desperately tried to convince Mary to return to Stockport with him for a family Christmas. She refused, but on Christmas Eve, after getting extremely drunk, Chris snatched baby Annie and attempted to drive her back to Stockport with him, only to crash his car into a garden wall before he could leave. Annie survived, but Mary found it hard to forgive her father for his near-fatal mistake.

In 1988, Mary and Rod began to go through some problems, which eventually led to them splitting up. Mary began to go off the rails again, regularly taking drugs and begging around the Square for money to fund her habit. She began to neglect Annie again and even dumped her on Sue Osman while she disappeared for a week without informing anyone she was going. She later became an unwitting pawn in Simon Wicks's game to bed as many women as possible and was later hurt when he cruelly rejected her. Her father tried desperately to get her back on track, giving her a job as receptionist at his new haulage company. However, upon the arrival of her mother, Edie, Mary decided she was sick of her family's interference, and after vandalising her father's business with paint, she took Annie, jumped on a bus and left Walford, sticking up two fingers in the air as she went.

Creation and development

Mary Smith was one of the original twenty-three characters invented by the creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland and Julia Smith. Mary's original character outline as written by Smith and Holland appeared in an abridged form in their book, EastEnders: The Inside Story.

"Aged 19. Mary was brought up in Stockport. Her parents were Irish Catholics...Her father is a long-distance lorry driver....When she left school Mary could hardly read or write, she didn't learn because she didn't want to...She gave no trouble, no aggro, but no-one took any notice of her...Her mother nagged her about her soul...At 15 she went to a gig with a crowd of people from school and in one night her life changed...She fell in love with a band, a man and a culture. She had found her own religion...She became pregnant...Semi-literate, unskilled and at the same time ashamed...She couldn't go back to the oppressive society of her childhood, where everybody judged everybody and where she would be labelled, even by her own mother, as a 'loose woman'...She wouldn't have an abortion...She drifted into our area, and became one of the single parent families that congregate there...Will she be a survivor, or a loser?...Over the months she may develop a fear of authority...Maybe she will be forced to drift into a life of prostitution..." (page 56).^[1]

As Holland and Smith wanted a diverse cross-section from the East End community, it was decided that one of the main cast had to be a young, single mother, and as punk music was prominent in British culture at the time, they decided to use a punk image for the character.^[1] Holland and Smith decided to cast an unknown actress in the role. They chose Linda Davidson, who was the right age and had been brought up in northern England and therefore had an accent that would befit the character's background.^[1]

Mary was one of the most striking of the original characters, a lone mother with a small baby, who hid herself under punk makeup, was unable to read or write and was a northerner alone in a southern city.^[2]

One of the most controversial storylines the character was involved in was her dalliance with prostitution in 1987, although it did earn the programme a considerable amount of negative press at the time and was accused of promoting a negative association between single mothers and prostitution.^[1] The character of Mary lasted in the show for three years, and was eventually written out of the series when Linda Davidson decided to leave in order pursue other acting roles. On-screen, Mary left Walford the way she arrived, running away from her parents.

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Smith, Julia; Holland, Tony (1987). EastEnders - The Inside Story. Book Club Associates. ISBN 0-563-20601-2. 
2. ^ Brake, Colin (1995). EastEnders: The First 10 Years: A Celebration. BBC Books. ISBN 0-563-37057-2. 

External links

• Mary Smith at BBC Online