Margaret Rutherford

[ChristineCB]

Saturday morning, we watched Miranda (1948) and Margaret Rutherford has a few small scenes but she positively steals them. She's got the best line in the film.



As an older nurse in a clinic, Margaret's approached by a frustrated-looking young nurse who asks, "Is it natural for a wife to want to kill her husband?"



Margaret says, "Oh yes, dear. And some wives find it even more natural to do it."

[Steve Crook]

Saturday morning, we watched Miranda (1948) and Margaret Rutherford has a few small scenes but she positively steals them. She's got the best line in the film.



As an older nurse in a clinic, Margaret's approached by a frustrated-looking young nurse who asks, "Is it natural for a wife to want to kill her husband?"



Margaret says, "Oh yes, dear. And some wives find it even more natural to do it."

I agree, she steals every scene she's in. And does it effortlessly and beautifully.



Mucha as I like Glynis as Miranda, my favourite line is when Nurse Carey first sees Miranda in the bath and exclaims with glee "Oh good. I'd always believed in Mermaids."



Steve

[marker]

I can remember as a lad living in Brighton biking to a place called Barcombe Mills a local beauty spot by the river and who should come strolling along hand in hand with a chap but the great Margaret Rutherford, I ended up having a long chat to her, what a lovely lady and a great great actress

[donna]

I adored this actress, each role she took on had my in fits without her even trying, she was encouraged early on in her career to go for laughs because of her appearance often upsetting her leading ladies on stage, she was the cousin of Tony Benn.

[EHV_Emmetts]

she was the cousin of Tony Benn.

I didn't know that. Thanks for that info Donna.

[donna]

welcome Emmet, her father murdered her grandfather so she dropped his name Benn and took her mums name Rutherford, very interesting lady, she also with her husband adopted a young acotor in his twenties who went on to have a sex change operation done. and then wrote a biography on his life with Margaret in the 80s.

[EHV_Emmetts]

welcome Emmet, her father murdered her grandfather so she dropped his name Benn and took her mums name Rutherford, very interesting lady, she also with her husband adopted a young acotor in his twenties who went on to have a sex change operation done. and then wrote a biography on his life with Margaret in the 80s.

Goodness, I didn't know this either. Thanks Donna.



I liked Margaret Rutherford in 'I'm All Right Jack' - especially her scene with Irene Handle.

[DB7]

Miss Marple's final case: real-life crime mystery of late Oscar-winning actor



* Alan Travis

* The Guardian,

* Tuesday September 30 2008



She was an Academy Award-winning character actor best known in later life for her flamboyant screen portrayal of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple.



But after her death, Dame Margaret Rutherford became the victim of a crime mystery worthy of the spinster detective herself.



The case involved Rutherford's live-in companion, the disappearance of an Oscar, and a Fulham antiques dealer.



Rutherford, who played Miss Marple in four films between 1961 and 1964, appearing alongside her real-life husband, Stringer Davis, employed a down on her luck former soprano as a companion in her declining years.



Violet Lang-Davis lived at the couple's home in Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, before Rutherford died in 1972. Lang-Davis, then in her 60s, stayed on to look after Rutherford's widower and grew so close to him that they contemplated marriage. But he died in August 1973 before they could tie the knot.



He left a will which bequeathed everything to his wife, even though she was dead. All the silver, china and furniture the grande dame of the English stage and screen had accumulated in her career was due to pass to Stringer Davis's distant cousin William James Davis. Lang-Davis was left nothing.



As Detective Sergeant Paul Hunter of the Gerrards Cross police told the director of public prosecutions: "She then embarked on a series of actions designed to secure the inheritance of the late Mr Davis," according to a Whitehall file released this month at the National Archives.



She went to see her old priest in Brook Green, west London, Father Joseph Williams, who had agreed to marry her and Davis. She left a copy of a will naming herself as sole beneficiary while Williams was out visiting parishioners. An accompanying note asked him to act as an executor and to forward it to the Rutherford family solicitors.



At the same time she set about selling off the actor's possessions, including the Oscar and Golden Globe she won in 1964 as best supporting actress in The VIPs, a star vehicle for Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Lang-Davis approached a Fulham antiques dealer, John Harvey, telling him she was Rutherford's niece, and he paid her £1,013 in a mixture of cash and cheques for the valuables.



As befitted a dame of the British empire, the collection included dinner services by Copeland, Doulton and Minton, two matching pairs of solid silver candlesticks, a Meissen vase, a solid silver canteen of cutlery and a bottle of Courvoisier. Harvey sold everything except the Oscar (which he paid £30 for) and the Golden Globe, which he kept.



"I was desperate for money so I sold the Oscar and the Globe and one or two other items to Mr Harvey," Lang-Davis told Hunter, according to the newly released DPP file. "I was worrying about the items I had sold Mr Harvey. I decided to telephone the police and pretend there had been a burglary and some of the items had been stolen in the burglary."



In June 1974 Hunter launched a burglary investigation, but when his inquiries reached the Fulham antiques shop, Harvey told him about Lang-Davis. At first she tried to claim the antiques dealer had stolen the Oscar and Globe from her but under questioning admitted what she had done: "I sold all these things because I needed the money. I needed the money desperately in order to live." A handwriting expert proved the will a forgery.



In October 1975 Lang-Davis, then aged 63, was arrested and remanded in Holloway pending her trial at Reading crown court on charges of theft, criminal deception and forgery. But when the day of the trial arrived she did not appear, and a warrant for her arrest was issued but never executed.



The file does not explain this mystery, except to say that by this time Hunter had been seconded to Hong Kong, but it does contain one final twist.



In 1985 two of Rutherford's medals - her DBE and a Variety Club award - turned up for sale at Sotheby's. Hunter, back in Britain, impounded them. He knew Lang-Davis had not reported them stolen in the "burglary" and believed they were the first items she sold. He tried unsuccessfully to trace her. As a prosecutor in the DPP's office noted in 1985: "Lang-Davis, it would appear, never stood trial and is still at large."

[Tomwhisky]

In today's Daily Mail there is an article about a pending book about the wonderful Margaret Rutherford with a terrible story - most upsetting.

[howardmitchell]

id rather have fond memmories of her than read something negative !

i wont be buying it

[orpheum]

If you say that then you would nt want to read the biogs of many stars.For example both Terry-Thomas and JRJ both ended up in straightened and rather pathetic situations,but that does not detract fromtheir lives or works.

[CaptainWaggett]

name='howardmitchell']id rather have fond memmories of her than read something negative !

i wont be buying it

There's nothing negative about Rutherford in the review and the story (which has been published in previous books about her) relates to her parents not her directly.

[orpheum]

It is on order by my library and i am No 1 on the list.

[Moor Larkin]

I daresay people of the fragrant Ms. Rutherford's generation took upsetting news very much in their stride........



"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."

M. Rutherford

[Tomwhisky]

There's nothing negative about Rutherford in the review and the story (which has been published in previous books about her) relates to her parents not her directly.

Just a very sad story - I had not read anything about it before. I do avoid 'about' books generally, I do like to think of our old screen stars as being the charactors they portrayed rather than the real persons - I feel sure they (unless they write books about themselves, and are these really true?) would rather be private.

[Tomwhisky]

I daresay people of the fragrant Ms. Rutherford's generation took upsetting news very much in their stride........



"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."

M. Rutherford

She was a tough old lady, but the article made clear that the facts turned her into a depressive and I could understand why.

[Mark O]

It is on order by my library and i am No 1 on the list.

Same here, i don't think i've ever seen a pic of 'young' Margaret, hopefully there'll be some in the book which has had good reviews.

[film1967]

Hi all. I have just joined the forum. I wanted to contribute to the Margaret Rutherford thread as she is one of my favourite film stars. What I think is rather sad is that she couldn't really work towards the end of her life.



I have often thought had she lived a few years longer in better health she may have done a few TV interviews like Parkinson?? She died in 1972 just before chat shows really took off.

[scenesixty]

Hi all. I have just joined the forum. I wanted to contribute to the Margaret Rutherford thread as she is one of my favourite film stars. What I think is rather sad is that she couldn't really work towards the end of her life.



I have often thought had she lived a few years longer in better health she may have done a few TV interviews like Parkinson?? She died in 1972 just before chat shows really took off.

It's nice to remember Margaret for the immense pleasure she gave to trillions of cinema-goers, rather than the many dark tales told about her private life-black moods, depressions and so on. Many other stars had a similar backgrounds- Sellers, Hancock etc-ad infinitum. I still dissolve into laughter watching Mgt in 'Happiest Days Of your Life'. whatever her personal troubles may have been, it was made up for on the screen-perfect comic timing, and very, very entertaining!

[Harbottle]

I daresay people of the fragrant Ms. Rutherford's generation took upsetting news very much in their stride........



"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."

M. Rutherford

Sad early family life from what I have read previously, I don't know much about MR's private life. Wonderful photo there