This week’s passages

Maggie Smith, 89, a scene-stealing British actor who won Oscars for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and “California Suite,” later enchanting audiences as a professorial witch in the Harry Potter juggernaut and as a sly dowager countess on the TV series “Downton Abbey,” died Friday at a hospital in London. Her family announced the death in a statement released by publicist Clair Dobbs but did not provide further details.

For most of her six decades in show business, Smith defined herself mainly as a theatrical actress, with memorable roles in London’s West End and on Broadway. A comedian of incandescent wit and a tragedian of cunning power, she portrayed both Oscar Wilde’s class-conscious Lady Bracknell and Shakespeare’s ruthlessly ambitious Lady Macbeth with spellbinding precision. Critics placed her in a pantheon of exalted “dames” of the stage, including Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Eileen Atkins, Joan Plowright and Judi Dench.

By the turn of the millennium, she had two Oscars, a Tony, two Golden Globes, half a dozen BAFTAs (British Academy of Film and Television Awards) and scores of nominations, adding four Emmys later. She was named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, the equivalent of a knighthood, in 1990. In a career that brought her many laurels, theater remained her greatest comfort — the medium to which she always returned.

Fredric Jameson, 90, who held sway as one of the world’s leading literary theorists for over 40 years, bringing his brand of rigorous, incisive Marxist criticism to topics as broad as German opera, sci-fi films and luxury hotel design, died Sept. 22 at his home in Killingworth, Conn.

Though he was very much an academic writer and never achieved the level of public awareness attained by some of his literary-theory confreres, like Slavoj Zizek and Harold Bloom, his work was as influential as theirs, if not more so. Jameson’s dense, intricate prose was not for the faint of heart, but his frequent, enjoyable insights into pop culture made the effort worth it for some readers. In “The Cultural Turn,” for example, he argued convincingly that “Star Wars” was a nostalgia film, aimed at satisfying longings among baby boomers for the sci-fi serials of their youth.

Benny Golson, 95, one of the jazz greats, a tenor saxophonist and composer of standards such as “Killer Joe” and “Along Came Betty,” died Sept. 21 at his home in Manhattan after a short illness, said Golson’s longtime agent, Jason Franklin.

Over his seven-decade musical career, Golson worked with some of the biggest luminaries in jazz, including Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton and John Coltrane. He built much of his reputation not as a performer but from his compositions, which also included “I Remember Clifford,” written in 1956 after trumpeter Clifford Brown, a friend, died in a car crash at age 25.

After stints in Gillespie’s big band and in drummer Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Golson co-founded The Jazztet in 1959 with flügelhorn master Art Farmer. The Jazztet disbanded in 1962, and Golson moved on to writing music for movies and television shows such as “Mannix,” “M-A-S-H” and “Mission: Impossible.” After a hiatus of more than a dozen years, Golson resumed playing the saxophone in the mid-1970s and launched a new version of the Jazztet with Farmer in 1982. He continued performing and writing music into his 90s.

Daniel J. Evans, 98, a moderate Republican who dominated Washington state politics as a three-term governor and a U.S. senator and who was repeatedly considered for the vice presidency, died Sept. 20 at his home in Seattle. Evans championed education, civil rights and environmental causes as Washington’s 16th governor from 1965-77. He served in the Senate, with some frustration, from 1983-89.

He was a mountain climber and skier, a master yachtsman, an eloquent speaker and was frequently mentioned as a potential running mate for Nixon, until he backed Nixon’s progressive rival, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York. He challenged many of the central causes of conservatives. He favored abortion rights, opposed a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget and argued that while “profligate spending” could lead to disaster, tax increases were sometimes necessary. Throughout his career, he formed alliances with Democrats. “I would rather cross the aisle than cross the people,” Evans said in his 1973 inaugural address, a mantra he would repeat throughout his life.

As governor, Evans increased aid for higher education and was instrumental in the creation of a state community college system. He also achieved laws for cleaner air, water and beaches and for the protection of endangered species. In 1970, Washington became the first state to create a Department of Ecology.

When urban riots convulsed the nation, Evans went into Seattle’s poor neighborhoods and set up centers to deliver state services. Using executive powers, he established the Washington State Indian Affairs Commission in 1967 and the State Women’s Council in 1971. In 1969, he named the first Black members to the boards of the University of Washington and Seattle Community College. He also endorsed nuclear power, tax reforms and abolition of the death penalty.

As a senator, Evans sponsored the million-acre Washington State Wilderness Act and legislation creating the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. He found the Senate frustrating and did not seek reelection. After leaving politics, Evans founded a Seattle-based political consulting firm and served on many corporate, cultural, civic and environmental boards. He was a regent of the University of Washington from 1993 to 2005 and president of the Board of Regents in 1996-97. In 1999, the university’s school of public affairs was named after him.

Kathryn Crosby, 90, who appeared in such movies as “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad,” “Anatomy of a Murder” and “Operation Mad Ball” before marrying famed singer and Oscar-winning actor Bing Crosby, died of natural causes Sept. 20 at her home in the Northern California city of Hillsborough.

Billy Edd Wheeler, 91, an Appalachian folk singer who wrote vividly about rural life and culture in songs like “Jackson,” a barn-burning duet that was a hit in 1967 for June Carter and Johnny Cash as well as for Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, died Sept. 16 in Swannanoa, N.C.

Otis Davis, 92, a runner who won two gold medals at the Rome Olympics in 1960, including a dramatic photo finish victory in world record time in the 400 meters, died Sept. 14 in hospice care in North Bergen, N.J.

Davis carried the Olympic torch at the 1996 Games in Atlanta and was named to the National Track & Field Hall of Fame in 2003. He was the first of eight gold medal winners in track from the University of Oregon, and his image appears outside Hayward Field, the university’s renowned track stadium.

Lucine Amara, 99, a soprano who sang for four decades with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, winning the admiration of the house’s most devoted buffs for her musicianship — and their gratitude for her uncanny ability to jump into almost any role when another performer was indisposed — died Sept. 6 at her home in Queens. She had heart and respiratory ailments, said her daughter, Evelyn La Quaif.

Amara, the American-born daughter of Armenian immigrants, debuted on the Met stage — or rather offstage, in the unseen role of the Celestial Voice — in the opening night performance of Verdi’s “Don Carlo” in 1950. She was 25 and would sing with the Met a total of 748 times, often in leading roles, before she took her final bow in 1991, at age 65, as Madelon in Umberto Giordano’s opera “Andrea Chénier.”

John A. Clements, 101, a pulmonary specialist whose research into one of the puzzles of human respiration revolutionized neonatal care with a treatment that saved thousands of premature infants from fatal oxygen deprivation, died Sept. 3 in Tiburon, Calif.