My first
introduction to Agatha Christie’s “Miss Marple” was not via the books or the
BBC and ITV tv series shown in America on PBS - but from the four British films
from the early 1960s starring Margaret Rutherford (she also appeared as Miss
Marple in an uncredited cameo in THE ALPHABET MURDERS).
Some Miss
Marple trivia:
* While it
was thought Agatha Christie did not approve of Rutherford’s portrayal of
Marple, Christie dedicated her novel THE MIRROR CRACK'D "To Margaret
Rutherford in admiration".
* Joan
Hickson, who starred as the retired school teacher in the 1984 to 1992 BBC series,
played a housekeeper in the first film in which Margaret Rutherford played
Marple.
* Before she updated the Marple retired school
teacher detective character to modern day Jessica Fletcher, Angela Lansbury was
Jane Marple in the 1980 film THE MIRROR CRACK’D, whose cast included Rock
Hudson, Liz Taylor, Kim Novak, Tony Curtis and Pierce Brosnan. And Helen Hayes assumed the role in two tv
movies.
But this post
is about Margaret and not Jane.
Margaret
Rutherford was also known for her performance as Grand Duchess Gloriana XIII in
THE MOUSE ON THE MOON (in the original THE MOUSE THAT ROARED the role was one
of several played by Peter Sellers) and for her 1963 best supporting actress
Oscar turn as The Duchess of Brighton in THE VIPs.
Rutherford
went into acting rather late in life, making her stage debut at the Old Vic in
1925 at age 33. She achieved West End
prominence as Miss Prism in THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST at the Globe
Theatre in 1939. In 1941 she was the
bumbling medium Madame Arcati in Noel Coward's BLITHE SPIRIT at the Piccadilly
Theatre, a role which Coward wrote for her (I saw Beatrice Lilly as Madame
Arcati on Broadway in a musical version titled HIGH SPIRITS that also starred
Tammy Grimes and Robert Woodward, tv’s original EQUALIZER). She was also in the film adaptations of THE
IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST and BLITHE SPIRIT.
She was
appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1961 and was
raised to Dame Commander (DBE) in 1967.
What makes
Margaret Rutherford a topic for discussion is not her professional career but
her personal life and family history.
Her father,
William Rutherford Benn, suffered from mental illness. During his honeymoon he had a nervous
breakdown and was confined to an asylum.
In March of 1883, after being released on holiday, he bludgeoned his
father, Congregational minister Julius Benn, to death with a chamber pot. He later tried to kill himself by slashing
his throat with a pocketknife. Benn was
confined to the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Several years later he was released,
reportedly cured of his mental affliction.
He changed his name to Rutherford and returned to his wife Ann.
Margaret
Rutherford was born in 1892 in Balham, the only child of William Rutherford
Benn’s second wife Florence. As an
infant Margaret and her parents moved to India.
She returned to England when she was three to live with an aunt in
Wimbledon after her pregnant mother committed suicide by hanging herself from a
tree. Her father also returned to
England and was confined once more to Broadmoor in 1904.
She married
character actor Stringer Davis in 1945 and the couple appeared in many
productions together, including all the Marple movies and THE MOUSE ON THE
MOON. They were happily together until
Rutherford's death. Davis nursed
Rutherford through periods of depression, often involving stays in mental
hospitals and electric shock treatment.
In the 1950s, Rutherford and Davis unofficially adopted the writer
Gordon Langley Hall, then in his twenties.
Hall later had a sex-change operation and became Dawn Langley Simmons,
under which name she wrote a biography of Rutherford in 1983.
Rutherford
suffered from Alzheimer's disease at the end of her life and was unable to
work. She died on May 22, 1972, at age
80.
TAFN