- Born
- Died
- Birth nameMargaret Taylor Rutherford
- Height5′ 5″ (1.65 m)
- Rare is the reference to Margaret Rutherford that doesn't characterize her as either jut-chinned, eccentric, or both. The combination of those most mundane of attributes has led some to suggest that she was made for the role of Agatha Christie's indomitable sleuth, Jane Marple, whom Rutherford portrayed in four films between 1961 and 1964 plus in an uncredited film cameo in The Alphabet Murders (1965). Rutherford began her acting career first as a student at London's Old Vic, debuting on stage in 1925. In 1933, she first appeared in the West End at the not-so-tender age of 41. She had made her screen debut in 1936 portraying Miss Butterby in the Twickenham-Wardour production of Hideout in the Alps (1936).
In summer 1941, Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit opened on the London stage, with Coward himself directing. Appearing as Madame Arcati, the genuine psychic, was Rutherford, in a role in which Coward had earlier envisaged her and which he then especially shaped for her. She would carry her portrayal of Madame Arcati to the screen adaptation, David Lean's Blithe Spirit (1945). Not only would this become one of Rutherford's most memorable screen performances - with her bicycling about the Kentish countryside, cape fluttering behind her - but it would establish the model for portraying that pseudo-soothsayer forever thereafter. Despite Rutherford's appearances in more than 40 films, it is as Madame Arcati and Miss Jane Marple that she will best be remembered.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Bill Takacs <kinephile@aol.com>
- SpouseStringer Davis(March 26, 1945 - May 22, 1972) (her death)
- ParentsWilliam Rutherford-BennFlorence Nicholson
- Playing eccentric characters
- Agatha Christie dedicated her 1963 Miss Marple novel, 'The Mirror Crack'd From Side To Side', to Rutherford "in admiration.".
- Her husband, Stringer Davis, portrayed Mr. Stringer in her four Miss Marple films and appeared with her in other films as well.
- She was the daughter of William Benn and Florence Nicholson. In 1883, nine years before her birth, her father murdered her grandfather. Her mother committed suicide when she was three years old and she was brought up by her aunt, Bessie Nicholson, in Wimbledon. After her aunt died, a small inheritance allowed her to join the Old Vic in repertory.
- Robert Morley said in a 1967 TV interview, "Although the profession is crowded with very nice people, she's always too nice, too soft, too much the perfect auntie. She's frightfully funny. She's a marvelous woman... a good woman.".
- Decided not to have children, despite having strong maternal feelings and a great love for children, out of fear that her children would contract mental illnesses, as she and her parents did. (Margaret battled depression throughout her life; her father murdered her grandfather and her mother committed suicide.).
- I hope I'm an individual. I suppose an eccentric is a super individual. Perhaps an eccentric is just off centre - ex-centric. But that contradicts a belief of mine that we've got to be centrifugal.
- You never have a comedian who hasn't got a very deep strain of sadness within him or her. One thing is incidental on the other. Every great clown has been very near to tragedy.
- [on co-starring with Alastair Sim in The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950)] I found doing the film a bit tiresome. Film actors are, by nature, more complicated than stage actors. Mr Sim is a brilliant actor but most competitive.
- [on her initial aversion to doing a Miss Marple movie] Murder, you see, is not the sort of thing I can get close to. I don't like these things that are just for thrills. I would far rather go without work. I do not like murder. It has an atmosphere I have always found uncongenial.
- How I would love to have been a great traditional actress like Bernhardt, Duse, or Ellen Terry. There have been so many parts I yearned to play.
- Chimes at Midnight (1967) - £8,000
- Murder Ahoy (1964) - £16,000
- Murder Most Foul (1964) - £16,000
- Murder at the Gallop (1963) - £16,000
- Murder She Said (1962) - £16,000
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