Margaret Rutherford
Margaret Rutherford was born in London on May 11th, 1892 and is the Movie Actress. At the age of 80, Margaret Rutherford biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
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Margaret Taylor Rutherford (11 May 1892 – 22 May 1972) was an Oscar-winning English actress of stage, television, and film, perhaps best known for her later career as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple.
She first rose to prominence in the film adaptations of Nol Coward's Blithe Spirit and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.
In her role as the Duchess of Brighton in The V.I.P. (1963), she received an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.
She was named Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1961 and Dame Commander (DBE) in 1967.
Early life
Rutherford's childhood was dominated by tragedies involving both of her parents. Florence Nicholson was born in Wandsworth, South London, by her father, writer and poet William Rutherford Benn. He suffered a nervous breakdown and was admitted to Bethnal House Lunatic Asylum one month after the marriage. He murdered his father, Reverend Julius Benn, a Congregational Church minister, by bludgeoning him to death with a chamber pot before slashing his own throat with a pocket knife at an inn in Matlock, Derbyshire, on March 4, 1883.
William Benn was declared insane and arrested to Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum following the inquest. On July 26, 1890, he was released from Broadmoor and rejoined with his wife, seven years later. He voluntarily dropped his surname.
Margaret Taylor Rutherford, William and Florence's only child, was born in 1892 in Balham, South London. Sir John Benn, Margaret's uncle, and her first cousin, Tony Benn, was a Labour politician and was deposed at the age of 40. The Rutherfords immigrated to Madras, India, but Margaret was returned to Britain when she was three years old to live with her aunt Bessie Nicholson after her pregnant mother hanged herself from a tree in Wimbledon, South London.
Margaret was told that her father died of a broken heart right away. She was shocked to learn that her father had been readmitted to Broadmoor Hospital in 1903, where he was under care until his death on August 1921. Her parents' mental disorders triggered a fear that she would die from similar illnesses, which haunted her for the remainder of her life. She suffered with bouts of depression and anxiety.
Margaret Rutherford was educated at Wimbledon High School (where a theatre space, the Rutherford Centre, is now named after her) and Raven's Croft School, a boarding school in Seaford, from the age of 13. While she was there, she discovered an interest in the theater and appeared in amateur dramatics. Her aunt paid for her to attend private acting lessons after she dropped out of school. Rutherford left a legacy that allowed her aunt Rutherford to enroll in the Old Vic School when she died. Rutherford called Aunt Bessie her "adoptive mother and one of the world's saints."
Personal life
Stringer Davis, a forty-six-year-old actor, remained in 1945, despite a courtship that lasted for 15 years. Davis' mother reportedly considered Rutherford an inappropriate match for her son, and their wedding was postponed until Mrs. Davis' death. The couple appeared in several productions together later on. Davis adored Rutherford, with one friend remarking: "For him, she was not only a natural performer but also a natural artist." The actor and former serviceman seldom left his wife's side, while Rutherford was mostly seen as both a private secretary and general dog body. Regardless of this, he nursed and aided her in the event of recurring debilitating depressions. During Rutherford's lifetime, these illnesses, which often involved stays in mental hospitals and electric shock therapy, were kept under wraps.
Rutherford and Davis unofficially adopted writer Gordon Langley Hall in the 1950s, then in his twenties, then in his twenties. Hall had sex reassignment surgery and then became Dawn Langley Simmons, who wrote a biography of Rutherford in 1983.
Stage career
Rutherford, a gifted pianist who first began teaching elocution and piano instruction, began teaching at the Old Vic in 1925, aged 33. She soon established herself in comedy, appearing in many of Britain's most popular plays and films as her "spaniel jowls" and large frame made the role of a romantic heroine unattainable casting. "I never meant to play for laughs." Rutherford wrote in her autobiography, "I am always amazed that the audience thinks me funny at all." Rutherford made her first appearance in London's West End in 1933, but her talent wasn't recognized until she appeared in John Gield's production of The Importance of Being Earnest at the Globe Theatre in 1939.
The Blithe Spirit of Nol Coward opened on the London stage in 1941 at the Piccadilly Theatre, with Coward directing. Audiences and commentators alike lauded Rutherford's lusty portrayal of the bumbling medium Madame Arcati, a role she had imagined for her. "The remarkable thing about Margaret Rutherford is that she can only move with her chin alone."
Mrs. Danvers, a sinister housekeeper in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca in 1940, was another theatrical success during the war years. Miss Prism appeared in The Importance of Being Earnest once more at the Haymarket Theatre in 1946 and Lady Bracknell when the same play was transferred to New York City in 1947. In The Happiest Days of Your Life (1948), she appeared in The Happiest Days of Your Life (Globe Theatre, 1954) and Mrs. Candour in The School for Scandal (Haymarket Theatre, 1962). She appeared in The Rivals at the Haymarket Theatre in 1966, with Sir Ralph Richardson as Mrs. Malaprop. Because of her declining health, she was forced to leave the position after a few weeks.
Film career
Rutherford played Madame Arcati in David Lean's film of Blithe Spirit (1945), which established her in films, despite making her film debut in 1936. Her dazzling appearance, cycling around the Kent countryside on a sunny day, set the tone for portraying her role later. She was Nurse Carey in Miranda (1948) and Professor Hatton-Jones in Passport to Pimlico (1949), one of the Ealing Comedies. In Anthony Asquith's film version of The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), she reprised her stage appearances as the headmistress alongside Alastair Sim (1950) and Miss Prism (1952).
More comedies followed, including Castle in the Air (1952) with David Tomlinson, Trouble in Store (1953), with Norman Wisdom (1954), with Frankie Howerd and An Alligator Named Daisy (1955) with Donald Sinden and Diana Dors. Rutherford appeared with Norman Wisdom in Just My Luck (1957) and co-starred in The Smallest Show on Earth with Virginia McKenna, Peter Sellers, and Leslie Phillips (both 1957). In the Boulting Brothers' parody I'm All Right Jack (1959), she appeared alongside Ian Carmichael and Peter Sellers.
Miss Jane Marple appeared in a series of four George Pollock films loosely based on Agatha Christie's novels in the early 1960s. Marple was depicted in the films as a vibrant figure, honorable but bossy, and eccentric. Marion Shaw and Sabine Vanacker's book Reflecting on Miss Marple (1991) said that the emphasis on the "dote element in the story" in the story meant nothing more than "the quietness and sharpness" that was admired in the books. The actress, who was then in her seventies, insisted on wearing her own clothing for the role and had her husband appear alongside her. Christie dedicated her book "To Margaret Rutherford in homage" in 1963, though the novelist was also concerned about the films' failures from her original plots and playing dramatic scenes for laughs. Miss Marple appeared in a brief, uncredited cameo in the 1965 film The Alphabet Murders, Rutherford reprised her role.
Rutherford was the only comedy relief in The V.I.P.s (1963), which was based on a screenplay by Terence Rattigan. Maggie Smith, Elizabeth Taylor, and Richard Burton lead a star-studded cast. She was nominated for her work at the Academy and Golden Globe Awards for Best Supporting Actress. At the time, she set a record for the oldest woman and earliest female to win an Oscar.
She appeared in Orson Welles' film Chimes (1965) starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren, one of her last films, and was directed by Charlie Chaplin in A Countes from Hong Kong (1967). She began working on The Virgin and the Gypsy (1970), but Fay Compton took her place, but she was forced to be replaced by sickness.