Dame Margaret Taylor Rutherford, DBE (11 May 1892 – 22 May 1972) was an English character actress, who first came to prominence following World War II in the film adaptations of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. In 1963 she won the best supporting actress Oscar as The Duchess of Brighton in The VIPs.

She is probably best known for her 1960s performances as Miss Marple in several films based loosely on Agatha Christie's novels.

Early life

Margaret Rutherford's father, William Rutherford Benn, suffered from mental illness. During his honeymoon he had a nervous breakdown and was confined to an asylum. He was eventually released on holiday and on 4 March 1883, he murdered his father, the Reverend Julius Benn, a Congregational church minister, by bludgeoning him to death with a chamberpot (Worcester Spode). Shortly afterwards, William tried to kill himself as well, by slashing his throat with a pocketknife. After the murder, William Benn was confined to the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Several years later he was released, reportedly cured of his mental affliction. He changed his surname to Rutherford, and returned to his wife, Ann (née Taylor).

Margaret Rutherford was born in 1892 in Balham, the only child of William Rutherford Benn and his second wife Florence, née Nicholson. Her father's brother Sir John Benn, 1st Baronet was a British politician, and her first cousin once removed is British politician Tony Benn. As an infant, Margaret Rutherford and her parents moved to India. She was returned to Britain when she was three to live with an aunt, a professional governess Bessie Nicholson, in Wimbledon, London, after her pregnant mother, Florence, committed suicide by hanging herself from a tree. Her father returned to England as well. His continued mental illness resulted in his being confined once more to Broadmoor in 1904.

Margaret Rutherford was educated at Wimbledon High School, and, from the age of about 13, at Raven's Croft School, a boarding school at Sutton Avenue, Seaford, where she is listed, aged 18, on the 1911 census.

Stage career

Rutherford worked as a teacher of elocution and then went into acting later in life, making her stage debut at the Old Vic in 1925, aged 33. Her physical appearance was such that romantic heroines were out of the question, and she soon established her name in comedy, appearing in many of the most successful British plays and films. "I never intended to play for laughs. I am always surprised that the audience thinks me funny at all", Rutherford wrote in her autobiography. Rutherford made her first appearance in London's West End in 1933 but her talent was not recognised by the critics until her performance as Miss Prism in the play The Importance of Being Earnest at the Globe Theatre in 1939. In 1941 Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit opened on the London stage at the Piccadilly Theatre, with Coward himself directing. Rutherford played Madame Arcati, the bumbling medium, a role which Coward had earlier envisaged for her.

Rutherford had a distinguished theatrical career alongside her film successes. Totally against type, she played the sinister housekeeper Mrs Danvers in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca at the Queen's Theatre in 1940. Her post-war theatre credits included Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest again at the Haymarket Theatre in 1946 and Lady Bracknell when the same play transferred to New York in 1947. She played an officious headmistress in The Happiest Days of Your Life at the Apollo Theatre in 1948 and such classical roles as Madame Desmortes in Ring Round the Moon (Globe Theatre, 1950), Lady Wishfort in The Way of the World (Lyric Hammersmith, 1953 and Saville Theatre, 1956) and Mrs Candour in The School for Scandal (Haymarket Theatre, 1962). Her final stage performance came in 1966 when she played Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals at the Haymarket Theatre, alongside Sir Ralph Richardson. Unfortunately, her declining health meant she had reluctantly to give up the role after a few weeks.

Film career

Although she made her film debut in 1936, it would be Rutherford's turn as Madame Arcati in David Lean's film of Blithe Spirit (1945) that would actually establish her screen success. This would become one of her most memorable performances, with her cycling about the Kent countryside, cape fluttering behind her. Interestingly, it would also establish the model for portraying that role forever thereafter. She was Nurse Carey in Miranda (1948) and Professor Hatton Jones in Passport to Pimlico (1949). She reprised her stage roles of the headmistress alongside Alastair Sim in The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950) and Miss Prism in Anthony Asquith's film adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest (1952).

More comedies followed, including Trouble in Store (1953) with Norman Wisdom, The Runaway Bus (1954) with Frankie Howerd and An Alligator Named Daisy (1955) with Donald Sinden and Diana Dors. Rutherford then rejoined Norman Wisdom in Just My Luck and co-starred in The Smallest Show on Earth with Virginia McKenna, Peter Sellers and Leslie Phillips (both 1957). She also joined a host of distinguished comedy stars, including Ian Carmichael and Peter Sellers, in the Boulting Brothers' satire I'm All Right Jack (1959).

In the early 1960s she became synonymous with Miss Jane Marple in a series of four films loosely based on the novels of Agatha Christie. Rutherford, then aged 70, insisted on wearing her own clothes for the part and having her husband appear alongside her. In 1963 Christie dedicated her novel The Mirror Crack'd : "To Margaret Rutherford in admiration". But Christie reportedly did not approve of the 1960s films as they portrayed Marple as a comedy character and were not faithful to the original plots. Rutherford reprised the role of Miss Marple very briefly for a 30 second uncredited cameo appearance in the 1965 film The Alphabet Murders.

In 1963 Rutherford won an Academy Award and Golden Globe as Best Supporting Actress for her performance as the absent-minded, impoverished, pill-popping Duchess of Brighton, the only light relief, in Terence Rattigan's The V.I.P.s, a film featuring a star-studded cast led by Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. She appeared as Mistress Quickly in Orson Welles' film Chimes at Midnight (1965) and was directed by Charlie Chaplin in A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren, which was one of her final films.

Rutherford was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1961 and a Dame Commander (DBE) in 1967.

Personal life

Rutherford married character actor Stringer Davis in 1945 and the couple appeared in many productions together. They were happily together until Rutherford's death in 1972. Davis adored Rutherford, with one friend noting: "For him she was not only a great talent but, above all, a beauty." Davis rarely left her side. He was private secretary and general dogsbody – lugging bags, teapots, hot water bottles, teddy bears and nursing Rutherford through periods of depression. These illnesses, often involving stays in mental hospitals and electric shock treatment, were kept hidden from the press during Rutherford's life. In the 1950s, Rutherford and Davis unofficially adopted the writer Gordon Langley Hall, then in his twenties. Hall later had gender reassignment surgery and became Dawn Langley Simmons, under which name she wrote a biography of Rutherford in 1983.

Death

Rutherford suffered from Alzheimer's disease at the end of her life and was unable to work. Davis cared for his wife devotedly at their Buckinghamshire home but she died on 22 May 1972, aged 80. Many of Britain's top actors, including John Gielgud, Robert Morley and Joyce Grenfell, paid tribute at a memorial service, where 90-year-old Sybil Thorndike praised her friend's enormous talent and recalled that Rutherford had "never said anything horrid about anyone".

Rutherford and Davis (who died in 1973) are interred at the graveyard of St. James's Church, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire.

Theatre performances

• A student at the Old Vic Theatre School, playing walk-ons and small parts in various shows, 1925–26
• Understudy for Mabel Terry-Lewis at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, 1928
• A season with the English Repertory Players at the Grand Theatre, Fulham, 1929
• Little Theatre, Epsom, 1930
• A season in rep at the Oxford Playhouse, 1930–31
• A season in rep in Croydon, 1931
• A season with the Greater London Players, 1932
• Mrs Read in Wild Justice at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, 1933
• Birthday (understudy to Jean Cadell and Muriel Aked), at the Cambridge Theatre, 1934
• Aline Solness in The Master Builder at the Embassy Theatre, Swiss Cottage, 1934
• Lady Nancy in Hervey House at His Majesty's Theatre, 1935
• Miss Flower in Short Story at the Queen's Theatre, 1935
• Mrs Palmai in Farewell Performance at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, 1936
• Aunt Bella in Tavern in the Town at the Embassy Theatre, Swiss Cottage, 1937
• Emily Deveral in Up the Garden Path at the Embassy Theatre, Swiss Cottage, 1937
• The Mother in The Melody That Got Lost at the Phoenix Theatre, 1938
• Bijou Furze in Spring Meeting at the Ambassadors Theatre, 1938
• Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Globe Theatre, 1939
• Mrs Danvers in Rebecca at the Queen's Theatre, 1940
• Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit at the Piccadilly Theatre, 1941
• ENSA tour of France and Belgium, 1944
• Queen of Hearts and White Queen in Alice in Wonderland at the Palace Theatre 1944
• Lady Charlotte Fayre in Perchance to Dream at the Golders Green Hippodrome, 1945
• Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, 1946
• Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Royale Theatre, New York, 1947
• Evelyn Whitchurch in The Happiest Days of Your Life at the Apollo Theatre, 1948
• Madame Desmortes in Ring Round the Moon at the Globe Theatre, 1950
• The title role in Miss Hargreaves at the Royal Court Theatre and New Theatre, 1952
• Lady Wishfort in The Way of the World at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, 1953
• White Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass at the Prince's Theatre, 1954
• Duchess of Pont-au-Bronc in Time Remembered at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith and New Theatre, 1954
• Mirabelle Petersham in A Likely Tale at the Globe Theatre, 1956
• Lady Wishfort in The Way of the World at the Saville Theatre, 1956
• Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest on UK tour (Dublin, Limerick, Belfast, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Eastbourne and Bournemouth), 1957
• The Happiest Days of Your Life and Time Remembered on tour of Australia, 1957
• Minerva Goody (Povis) in Farewell, Farewell Eugene at the Garrick Theatre, 1959
• Minerva Goody (Povis) in Farewell, Farewell Eugene at the Helen Hayes Theatre, New York, 1960
• Bijou Furze in Dazzling Prospect at the Globe Theatre, 1961
• The Marquise in Our Little Life at the Manoel Theatre in Valletta, Malta and the Pembroke Theatre, Croydon, 1961
• Mrs Candour in The School for Scandal at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, 1962
• Mrs Laura Partridge in The Solid Gold Cadillac at the Saville Theatre, 1965
• Mrs Hiedelberg in The Clandestine Marriage at the Chichester Festival Theatre, 1966
• Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, 1966

Filmography

• 1936 Talk of the Devil
• 1936 Dusty Ermine
• 1936 Troubled Waters
• 1937 Missing, Believed Married
• 1937 Catch as Catch Can
• 1937 Big Fella
• 1937 Beauty and the Barge
• 1941 Spring Meeting
• 1941 Quiet Wedding
• 1943 Yellow Canary
• 1943 The Demi-Paradise
• 1944 English Without Tears
• 1945 Blithe Spirit
• 1947 While the Sun Shines
• 1947 Meet Me at Dawn
• 1948 Miranda
• 1949 Passport to Pimlico
• 1950 The Happiest Days of Your Life
• 1950 Quel bandito sono io
• 1951 The Magic Box
• 1952 Curtain Up
• 1952 Miss Robin Hood
• 1952 The Importance of Being Earnest
• 1952 Castle in the Air
• 1953 Innocents in Paris
• 1953 Trouble in Store
• 1954 The Runaway Bus
• 1954 Mad About Men
• 1954 Aunt Clara
• 1955 An Alligator Named Daisy
• 1957 The Smallest Show on Earth
• 1957 Just My Luck
• 1959 I'm All Right Jack
• 1961 On the Double
• 1961 Murder, She Said
• 1963 Murder at the Gallop
• 1963 The Mouse on the Moon
• 1963 The V.I.P.s 1964 Murder Most Foul
• 1964 Murder Ahoy!
• 1965 Chimes at Midnight
• 1965 The Alphabet Murders
• 1967 A Countess from Hong Kong
• 1967 Arabella
• 1967 The Wacky World of Mother Goose