Truly Miss Marple, the Curious Case of Margaret Rutherford - True Story

[Music] the actress Margaret Rutherford died 40 years ago in the 1960s her quirky and truly original characterization of the world's most successful amateur sleuth Miss Marple made her an internationally admired British icon she became the epitome of the English Lady Margaret Rutherford's real-life however was much more eccentric and gripping than any storyline the queen of crime Agatha Christie could ever have dreamt of [Music] now you saw that didn't you do you think anyone will believe us [Music] margarit certainly had enormous charisma she was unique I mean the the wouldn't ever be another like her there couldn't be well she was a remarkable woman she was always very very kind person very kind to me she was like an old aunt [Music] there was quite serious side to her and deep deep down as he she knew her worth [Music] she was quite eccentric she was otherworldly she was naturally funny but wasn't trying to be funny that's the way she was being very straightforward and articulating she remembered to use her consonants and still managed to make everybody laugh she had this is enormous charm which I think came from her inbuilt goodness she wasn't tall slim and beautiful blonde at any stage in her life she achieved what she achieved purely on the basis of her acting talent a woman has been strangled I saw it strangled yes turned off madam don't you think perhaps you had a little nap and maybe had a bad dream young man I was not dreaming I saw it ask them they saw it happen what did I tell you nobody is going to believe us Andy Merriman has written a biography about Margaret Rutherford and unveiled a few new surprises and facts he grew up in a world of entertainment and comedy his father was a well-known scriptwriter for British sitcoms Andy Merriman has written a play for BBC Radio with the actress June Whitfield playing Margaret Rutherford I suppose there's always been an interest in old eccentric dotty old ladies which is what she played from really early on when she was only in her forties she was already cast almost as I've got the old lady she's a British institution and she's so English I mean I think if she cut herself she'd probably bleed tea [Music] I mean English always love love murders and there's so many murder mysteries on the English you ever send affinity for that to meet the inimitable Margaret Rutherford is to know the indestructible miss marble [Music] wouldn't play any character that was described as mad I mean she wasn't happy about the Marvel films in that murder came into the title like that either [Music] as with all criminal cases you need to get to the bottom of it all to the background facts margaret's begins with a long and closely guarded family secret a relative in Notting Hill helped shed some light on the mystery Tony Benn is Margaret Rutherford second cousin and political figurehead for the British left for many a cult Labour Minister and in his mid 80s still politically active [Music] she was my father's cousin and that her father was William Rutherford men but when I looked in the family records there was no reference to William rather furred men and I used to ask my mother about it and she used to get very defensive and say oh well he did nothing to be ashamed of well I didn't know what she meaning and so this went on and on and it wasn't until phool late 1950s or early 1960s when when I was a member of parliament I went to the times record and I looked up the name of her father the Reverend Julius Ben and it said murdered by his lunatic son this brutal and bloody murder more horrific than any crime Miss Marple would ever have to solve haunts Margaret her entire life the murderer her own father William Rutherford Ben is certified insane and locked away in Broadmoor psychiatric hospital before Margaret is born her father changes the family name to Rutherford to protect his family from any repercussions he came out of Broadmoor and with wife and they three of them went to India sadly in India her mother committed suicide and her father brought her back to England couldn't cope but there was himself still suffering from mental illness ended up back in a psychiatric hospital and so Margaret lived with her aunt her mother's sister in in Wimbledon and she was told that her father had died so as far as she knew there was she was an orphan it occurred in Matlock very near my old constituency and they looked at all the local papers at the time and they described what happened her father was killed his father with a chamber pot and hit him on the head and and it was very very strange and tragic when Margaret is hardly two years old her mother Florence hangs herself in India the suicide is never explained [Music] Margaret grows up without a mother and with a father destined to spend the rest of his days behind the closed doors of a psychiatric hospital [Music] in the countryside just outside Oxford lives Gwen Robins the ghostwriter of Margaret Rutherford's autobiography in 1969 when lived together with Margaret and her husband stringer Davis for six months at their home Gwen was best friend and biographer of Grace Kelly and has also written about Barbara Cartland and Agatha Christie Margaret's autobiography was published posthumously in 1972 well the idea you see was that I would listen to her parlance and try to write as she would and that's what I did but the maddening thing you see is that the good parts of the story all of the father mother the agent took out you know said oh we don't want that I said please leave that in and she said no no we won't have that in it that would be offensive for her behind us it would have given more character to it I don't know whether she told me all of it but she she hinted at it no but she was she was then gone with the Pixies the lovable it's with her mother sister aunt bessie that Margaret Rutherford grows up in Wimbledon [Music] at eight she attends Wimbledon high school for girls her aunt remains a very important and close confident who performs the roles of both mother and father [Music] [Music] later in life Margaret describes herself as a grave child my face was oval like a Bantam egg and I had green eyes round as Penny's I wrinkled my nose like a rabbit a mannerism I still have today I was also a lonely child [Music] at school they all call her Peggy [Music] it's a happy time and she develops a taste for acting for an audience she revels in the creative atmosphere at the school [Music] I think the fear of father getting out seen sent a message to her saying that he was getting out and he was coming to get her I think this accounted for the horror of any character being described as mad I think this also accounted for her marrying late because I think she realized that it would be wrong to have children and she was intensely maternal and would have loved children this was why I was known as the eldest daughter well it came in to the public domain because a newspaper a right-wing newspaper decided to examine my life and went back and found the story that way and published it and that was how it became into the public domain and I was very angry about that because they were trying to suggest that her father was mad that she was mad and that I was mad she started working as a location and music teacher she was always interested in drama she went to the local track amateur dramatic company but she always wanted to be an actress and she there were times when at the beginning when she couldn't find work when she she cycled around Wimbledon even those days with a cape flowing behind her off to teach children the piano which I think she did because she had to do I don't think it was a great love of her life but it certainly it gave her and I an idea certainly I'm sure that that made such a difference to her later life in a delivery in speech I was 33 before I started seriously to train in the theatre but the way didn't open until the beloved aunt who brought me up died and left me just enough money to get along with and so then I burned my boats I've been teaching music piano actually and elocution I've been teaching in the late 1930s I used to go down to Bexhill in South Caston holiday and she used to be there occasionally and so when we met we would meet together and there's a picture of me sitting on a beach next to her she looks very kindly and generous and I look whatever I was about 13 or 14 and I'm pleased to have that picture I remember we were being told that she wanted to go on the stage well now if you meet a girl of 14 who wants to go on the stage or 20 but a woman of over 40 who still wanted to go on the stage seemed very strange [Music] I remember one day going to the Old Vic where I trained and in the train from Wimbledon and feeling this was suddenly a fairy story I couldn't believe it until the day went on increasing in its glory I reached the Old Vic and I found I was to be lady-in-waiting to Edith Evans together with several other very beautiful girls I was there was much older and not beautiful and stand behind Edith Evans and every night to face an audience which of course affair my sense of exhibitionism which must be very great you know I must have a great sense of exhibitionism [Music] and then she was cast in a in a play while justice which was her first performance and she was 41 at the time this is her first at a West End almost very small part but after that she she never stopped working she was spotted by Rob Morley and a play and from then on she appeared in the West End really never stopped working in films television theatre from from the from the mid-30s really it was also at Oxford Playhouse was important for her because this is where she met her future husband stringer Davis it was an accident Margaret Lanza Roe in the Irish fast spring meeting in 1938 under the direction of John Gielgud it becomes her very first huge success Margaret plays a supporting role as the grumpy 70 year old aunt bees you his only pleasure in life is betting on the horses through Bijou Margaret establishes herself as a comedy actress and from now on she's always cast in the same role that of the dotty old lady after excellent notices and sold-out houses John Gielgud decides to direct Oscar Wilde's socio critical play The Importance of Being Earnest Margaret fits perfectly into this world of mistaken identity firstly as the governess miss prison and later as the legendary character Lady Augusta Bracknell so many outstanding talents in a single motion picture here is the scintillating immaculate wit of Oscar Wilde brilliantly captured on the screen by the artistry of Anthony Asquith and a distinguished cast of stars and Margaret Rutherford the preposterous miss prism who do not seem to realize dear doctor that by persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation she did have a capacity of entering into the parks she was playing and making them very very real and attaching them to herself so when I think of Margaret I think of the parts I've seen her in and there's something very authentic about the whole acting performance she always was herself but also playing the part brilliantly [Music] the influential theatre impresario Noel Coward is absolutely determined to cast Margaret Rutherford in his new stage show Blithe Spirit she's to play Madame okati a medium who not only rides a bike but can also summon up ghosts at first she turns the part down but then it becomes the role of her life because she was flat religious and she believed in spiritualism she thought the part of Madame okati they were ridiculing that that whole world and so they had to persuade her that actually they weren't making fun of spiritualism at all and and of course she went on to to be in the play I think for over 2,000 performances and playing there in the film is there anyone down who wishes to speak to anyone here you could mister come to me [Music] someone whom choose to speak pleased but can't leave a message [Music] I seem to remember I used to do a thing from Blithe Spirit when somebody talked about her cycling everywhere and getting up for hills and that kind of the thing and and I can't remember the exact words but she said something like you never know no no no it's just down with her head and up with a heart and you're over the hills and far away before you can look round yeah it's that kind of thing that's stuck in there I don't know why I used to mimic people I suppose as a child and and at school and that kind of thing and she was such an easy one really but I did admire her [Music] June Whitfield knows a lot about comedy she's a star of many sitcoms like Terry and June and has become internationally famous by playing mother in the BBC cult series absolutely fabulous June Whitfield has always been well known for her impressions of celebrities and in particular people like Margaret Thatcher she once gave Miss Marple her voice for BBC radio Margaret meets husband-to-be fellow actor stringer Davis at Oxford Playhouse she calls him tuft it takes a long time for them to marry a future mother-in-law and the Second World War get in the way but in 1945 they eventually exchanged rings Margaret is now 53 they live together more like brother and sister than husband and wife I don't think there was too much rumbledy-hump went wrong but no no I think that she would want that I don't think they ever had sex I think one of the one that things was that and Margot was always very concerned about inheriting her father's mental illness and and becoming although she suffered from bipolar disorder of becoming psychotic or and she was worried and Sonny bipolar disorder can and can be hereditary when I got to live with him when I went home and you know I had to arrange things about for the last time when I walked and she said who are you that's it Glen coming to live with you no don't get to know each other and then that's when I got to know them but it was just like in one of her films it was incredibly Dottie we start to finish it began in the morning was stringer arriving about how past six with a miner's lamp on round here and the light going and coming down into my face and saying good morning mr. t or his your teeth here on top of 6:00 in the morning but the - nampara slit and so one got into the mood and then I just adored every minute of it said it was a marriage of convenience really I mean they were great friends more than anything else I think and stringer wouldn't really have got much work who think without without Margaret and she insisted that certainly is going by that he was contracted to play small parts in the films she needed him she needed him more and more as her she became suffering for more bouts of depression she needed him just to be around to help her is it difficult miss rather for being married to an actor perhaps I should ask doing Dale is that why are you going to watch ask your husband that sound is it difficult when both have you involved in the same career sir I've been a supporting actor all my working life since 1920 but I really didn't see why I shouldn't support a star offstage as well as on stage my side of that question is that without this particular support I couldn't have done what I have done so for me it's a CNA quondam to have him at my side [Music] Damaris Heyman is a British character actress known from the stage and later from film and TV she entered cult stardom following her appearances as a witch in the long-running BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who Damaris is one of Margaret's oldest and closest friends although she's almost two decades younger for Margaret Damaris was a member of the family I understood her in The Importance of Being Earnest which was the production going to the Dublin Festival and then a tour the first sort of real contact we had was during rehearsals and I went with her to help her choose jewelry to wear and we got on like a house on fire there and then later she threw a birthday party and the hotel she was staying in had a swimming pool in the garden and I said yes thank you I would like to swim and she was one for swimming and almost immediately they showed a strap of her bathing dress gave way and I had to rescue it and sort of put her back into her bathing dress before it had gone too far and you tried reuniting a bathing dresses strapped to itself on a struggling chuckling 7512 q45 oh shut up sorry just try reuniting this strap of a bathing dress to a bathing dress on a struggling body underwater and you know the little problems I had the one and only she is a shoplifter whose day is never done until every bag is full [Music] at one time the thought of as a lovable old battle-ax are you resigned to this kind of publicity I'm not altogether resigned to the battle-ax and being bit mind being really thought of as lovable yes madam I don't be mind being thought eccentric because I like to be a person by myself no with my own kind of ways I don't I mustn't say distinctive but a little bit odd I don't I must tell you I very nearly sent up a saying of a week to the observer one week because she was asked a question rather like that one yeah and my wife responded I am NOT about so I suppose the eccentric behavior up to a point is acceptable and she she himself was drawn to other eccentric people I know who the killer is [Music] we'll just have to go and solve this crime ourselves [Music] people love the idea of dotty old ladies solving crimes that the police couldn't and as for the police well they are positively uncertain assure you Miss Marple that a woman cannot be married on a busy train a few minutes before a station without her finding out about it I'm quite sure you mean an inspector but if you were imagine that I am going to sit back and let everybody regard me as a dotty old lady you are very much mistaken john curran is not only a fan of Agatha Christie he's also a Christie expert he worked with Agatha Christie's nephew Matthew Pritchard on an archive of the queen of crime John's book murder in the making tells stories and unveils secrets from the crime novelists private archive Hugh well Margaret is probably the most unlikely version of Miss Marple we've seen on-screen and the first intimation Agatha Christie had of this was when she went to her local cinema in Torquay to see murder she said and I think I can safely say she was horrified because even though the storyline of the film sticks fairly closely to the original novel 4:50 from Paddington the character of Miss Marple is completely unrecognizable because Miss Marple is supposed to be tall and thin and very ladylike and Margaret Rutherford doesn't really appear in any of those guys is in the film because at one stage she's played laying on the railway line even mr. stringer will have his dance it's the stringer will you kindly give me a leg up please mr. stringer [Music] and then they went on to make three more films two of which were based on Hercule Poirot novels and one which had absolutely nothing to do with Agatha Christie a murderer knows he's discovered come out at once and only Miss Marple stands in his way [Music] the for Miss Marple films are shot in Buckinghamshire miss Marples fictional village is milchester in Agatha Christie's books its st. Mary Mead the locations are a mix of the absolutely English villages AMISOM and denim time seems to stand still at miss Marples cottage in denim [Music] I have seen you two months what did you hear who Miss Marple I'm afraid I'm terribly afraid mrs. lanscanay Miss Marple murder and make another Christy must have had Margit Rutherford in mind when she wrote her fascinating murder series around that lovable busybody Miss Marple Miss Marple who could smell a murder a mile away Margaret wasn't like Miss Marple herself nor in my view was she like the Miss Marple of the books I'm rather a purist and I was crossed that they'd altered the stories more than some odd but nobody else seemed to mind in fact one of them is a Poirot story and they turned it into a Miss Marple story the inimitable Agatha Christie an incomparable combination that signposts murder [Music] agatha christie's delightful extraordinary lady detective finds herself hot on the heels of homicide and distressingly in the hair of Scotland Yard sergeant would you escort her to headquarters you see that she makes a complete statement I'll get around to a later mystery man murder and Miss Marple will this be another murder most foul the fourth filum merger AHA has nothing to do with Agatha Christie so there is no comparison with any of her books now hear this you hearty lappers here comes Academy Award winner Margaret Rutherford free corn welcome aboard marvelous Margaret Rutherford once again as Miss Marple a busybody detective can either be fearless and met a big drop they wanted to include a large element of comedy in it because Margaret Rutherford was very good at comedy on screen um but I give the Christie was left far behind but it has to be said that when Agatha Christie did meet Margaret Rutherford they both admired each other's work the two of them got on well together because both respected the other's professionalism this was reflected in the dedication of the Miss Marple novel then we were cracked from side to side to Margaret rose from the Miss Marple films bring Margaret international success she's at the height of her career and not only in Britain she's paid 16,000 pounds for each Miss Marple film and becomes one of the highest earning actresses in England Margaret doesn't get much enjoyment out of it though her depressions are becoming deeper and darker and then sunny Hollywood calls margaret is cast with heady company in a blockbuster which includes some of the greatest film stars of the sixties in 1963 she wins an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her dotty portrayal of the Duchess of Brighton in the vips there's a nice story about when Margot was filming the vips and Liz Taylor had a huge trailer which had to be she demanded being painted pink so he was a double trailer has had fresh flowers every day you know everything was kind of for the star the only thing that Margot Rutherford asked was a baby Belling small stove that's so that she could cook her bacon and eggs every night machines drinking used to like and I just saw that was just absolutely classics that the modesty of my food compared to the Hollywood The Hollywood scene she'll look after you and take her up to our special VIP laughs VIPs very important persons the famous and the near famous each one confronted with a crisis brought about by the delayed flights and there's the Duchess wonderful loveable uproarious Margaret resident would you kindly farm your details please what are they going to do look the look for something Peter Ustinov accepts the Oscar for Margaret who can't be there she's also awarded a Golden Globe for the film and receives the actress of the Year award Margaret Rutherford because of her work mainly in the theatre but then certainly winning an Oscar at that stage of her life because she's not the typical film star and she never was she wasn't a tall slim beautiful blonde at any stage in her life or beautiful brunette so she achieved what she achieved purely on the basis of her acting talent so I think I most people were quite glad to see BOCES and become Dame because they've given lots of entertainment to millions of people and will continue to do so for many years to come when Marvel was appearing in Broadway in a play she and stringer met this young man called Gordon Langley Simmons again a bit of an eccentric will have a lost soul who they took in Gordon Langley Hall is someone who wants to take advantage of Margaret's success he has a particular secret Gordon is one of the first people to undertake a transgender operation in sixties America as dawn she then marries John Simmons a black car mechanic to become dawn Langley Simmons [Music] now you're in for something because she he she it was an absolute bad one absolutely God they he got himself attached to the Rutherfords because he thought this was something good for him whenever say he and then he became she he eventually had a sex change operation and became dawn Langley Simmons and told all sorts of ridiculous stories about how he'd been born a woman originally and hadn't had a sex change and had a baby and it was all a lot of nonsense and he professed that he'd been adopted by stringer Margret which he hadn't really been adopted at all but they did they were fond of him and in fact Margaret left all her things to Gordon off she died most of after stringer died at all her possessions or our archives went to Windsor Gordon I met dawn Pepita before the sex change when it was still Gordon Langley Hall don't repeater seemed to think she knew me better than she did because she wrote a book about Margaret and I get quite a few mentions in it and I've always wondered why I was sorry when other people tried to take hold of her life and make it out to fit their own world into her life dawn Langley Simmons used to send me material she'd written and I think she wrote a biography didn't she and I think I saw it and I thought it was nonsense so I felt that probably she allowed herself to be exploited a bit but there that you don't know what the nature of her own feeling was about it know the awful awful awful thing is I used to say to her you must have literacy and she should know they didn't know thinking and then dawn Langley think me went out into the garage one day I think just poking around and saw a big box and she opened the box inversely all letters from Gielgud and Olivia or and everything and if I had had that yeah that was a search course with no way Edward Lear is one of Margaret's favorite poets she even published a volume of his selected poems next to Lewis Carroll Edward Lear is the master of Victorian nonsense literature a perfect match for Margaret and her friend Damaris one of my favorite Edward Lear poems is the almond the pussycat the almond the Pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat they took some honey and plenty of money wrapped up in a five-pound note the owl looked up to the stars above and sang to a small guitar Oh lovely [ __ ] Oh [ __ ] my love what a beautiful [ __ ] you are you are you are what a beautiful [ __ ] you are [ __ ] said to the owl you elegant fowl how charmingly sweet you sing let us be married too long we have carried but what shall we do for ring they sailed away for a year and a day to the land where the palm tree grows and there in a wood a piggy-wig stood with a ring at the end of his nose his nose his nose with a ring at the end of his nose deer pig are you willing to sell for one shilling your ring said the piggy I will so they took it away and were married next day by the turkey who lives on the hill they dine it on mince and slices of quince which they ate with a runcible spoon and hand in hand on the edge of the sand they danced by the light of the moon the moon the moon they danced by the light of the moon [Music] Margaret becomes an icon of Englishness she pulls the crowds in in the theater and enters the first division of British actors she performs with John Gielgud Sybil Thorndike Laurence Olivier and many others but the bouts of depression keep raising their gloomy heads in her autobiography she writes like many actresses I have periods of great elation followed by immensely depressing ones the very fact that we are super sensitive people has something to do with this all through my life I have had to go away from time to time and sort things out for myself when my turmoil became too much my very dear friends were there to rescue me when she was done she was very very down and when she was really up she was very very up and sadly the down side took over late in life and for a long time I could get her out of it and get her slightly up again but really laterally when she was pretty oh I couldn't I couldn't sort of get to the inside Margaret and raise it up out of the depths which was sad in 1966 Margaret struggles with the role of mrs. mallet Prof in Sheridan's Restoration comedy the rivals mrs. malaprop's is a lady who mixes up her words and pronounces them wrongly malapropism in fact what's supposed to be most amusing on stage becomes tragic in reality because miss Rutherford really does keep forgetting her lines and invents new ones instead to save herself much to the horror of her fellow actors later on it's assumed she has Alzheimer's well I saw her very last which is something I've tried to forget which was the rivals and she was obviously playing mrs. mailer probe and if only it had been a few years earlier she'd have been the mrs. mailer prop of our age but by that time she was starting to be ill and instead of a great big star coming on it was a rather tired of lady and a heavy costume it was torture because she came to the speech that everyone knows and she dried a lot of us in the audience probably were wanting to shriek out the prompt and I went round to see her afterwards and she was really in a state of near collapse and always before she'd had a rather Gabe supper party not this time I think they probably just went home a year later Margaret's talent is honored she's awarded the highest order in the kingdom at buckingham palace and becomes a dame of the British Empire [Music] I guess if she was pleased by it I didn't know it's a funny thing about English titles well it's just completely out of date and absurd but people pick them up and if you were made a knight or a dame or a lord they will like it it was rather sad when Margaret became a dame because I think it came too late I think by that turn she wasn't as excited about it as she would have been when she was a bit younger she'd had a bad time I suppose she had a bad time during the rivals and they gave her a CT and this had the appalling result of making her forget a lot of her past and in particular for getting the times that she was happy [Music] Michael Noakes one of Britain's most celebrated portrait painters lives in Tony Ben's former constituency Morvan in 1970 he painted Dame Margaret and the picture was exhibited in September the same year at the Royal Society of portrait painters in Trafalgar Square [Music] nowadays the portrait hangs in the Gielgud Theatre in the West End but Michael Noakes keeps a second version of the painting in his studio for himself she wasn't able to come to my studio so I went to her and she we worked on her drawing ruler and she had you know chintz curtains and nice pumped-up cushions and all wet it looked looked fine but it had nothing to indicate that it belonged to an actress except but above the fireplace wasn't Oscar and I must have known the answer at that time but I was trying to encourage her to talk to me and because that's part of portraiture early interchange really and I said Dame Margaret when did you get the Oscar and she said what dear and I said when did you get the Oscar and she said oh I don't know dear Thursday I think [Music] she had this enormous charm which I think came from her inbuilt goodness I think with Margaret because she'd had a little stroke or two or three I had to accept that she was not vital and she was sitting there and I think had she been the old Margaret ray lahood I think I would have got a more dynamic composition but it wasn't it was too much to ask therefore one had to adapt one's Minds view of her so that it's it's a fairly quiet thoughtful reflective picture rather than one brimming with vitality and I reckon that that's how she was at that time her husband clapped around her like an old old hen really they were absolutely delight together and you know he took her out for a little afternoon ramble one after her sitting one day and you night have lunch with them and and then she'd wrap up in one of her wonderful cloaks and he put his arm round her and write charmingly when I showed them the picture he think of all the things that had happened to those two and it's stringer said I mean absolute nonsense this but stringer said oh this is the most exciting day of our lives [Music] michael has had the most sittings with the queen of any portrait painter and has also captured many other members of the royal family not only Royals are amongst his clients but also many show business celebrities including Margaret's close friend Robert Morley [Music] Margaret has to be carried into the gallery to see her portrait for the first time she's clearly not in the best of health [Music] [Music] whenever say Gone with the Pixies I mean she she didn't really know what was going on she she didn't know why I was there just so they come to stay with them a nice lady come stay with them and own strength all at night because stringer always wanted to play the piano he played it atrociously atrociously and thunk them so Margaret would sit there and I'd sit here and stringer would go to the piano this is after supper and there Margaret was wonderful she was roller eyes to me you know it's we've got to put up on it again oh it was a lovely experience yes while shooting her last film arabela in Italy in 1967 Margaret had fallen and broken her hip from then on she's confined to a wheelchair and never recovers as I went down near her birthday not on it because I was due to be working in Leeds but as near as I could because I always had and for Stringer's sake I tried to do anything that I had always done because it made him feel better and we were sitting in her room and she was in bed and really not there at all and then I said it I must go I was going on down home and he said oh you'd like to kiss her goodbye wouldn't you which was the last thing I felt I wanted to do and I did and just for a second she came back and knew me and I was so pleased that I had and of course I was heartbroken when I'd heard she died [Music] Margaret Rutherford dies of pneumonia on the 22nd of May 1972 at the age of 80 inch Alphonse and Peter she's buried in the cemetery of st. James's Church Gerrard's cross string had taken up with a housekeeper violet and there were plans for them to get married and I think stringer was just lost without Margaret he needed someone to be around and and this violet that they plan to get married and he hadn't you know he'd never clue really and so at the end of it I said all there's a tea party at home I've got some food there and she said no yes I so I take that over from and I said no you won't I said this is his day this is not your day it's not my day and I don't know who you are but keep your hands off him he's a fellow man and they were going to be married Trey thought was a mistake and perhaps fortunately stringer died I think before it happened I was pleased when he had because he was never going to be happy without Margaret and I hoped that they were together you know better land than this I'm Paul hunter I'm from Thames Valley Police or I was until I retired in 1996 I served 30 years and most of that time I was in the CID I was an operational detective and I worked on various crimes lots of murders sexual offences fraud cases and one day a phone call came in to say there'd been a burglary at a house called Hatfield in joiners Lane in Charles and Peter violet Victoria she was an old lady that's the only way I can describe her she was an old lady she was very well-spoken spoke with a very we would say a very posh English accent spoke very well but she was also a very cunning cunning old lady to have gone to do this there is however one final case to solve police detective Paul hunter is sent to investigate following the deaths of Margaret and stringer the housekeeper violet Lang Davis not only reports a burglary at the Rutherford house where she still lives but also presents a last will and testament pronouncing her as sole benefactor [Music] there was no criminal record of her but what we do know that is that she had been a trained opera singer but I at her age I suspect that her opera singing days had long finished and probably she wasn't very successful anyhow because who having trained as an opera singer with own gone off of their services as a housekeeper the Oscar and Golden Globe and other possessions I think a tea set another of their possessions had been stolen in a burglary and of course actually it wasn't a burglary at all it was she'd stolen diamond had sold them sold the Oscar to an antique dealer and she appeared in court it's almost unbelievable what this old lady did but this is absolutely the truth this is what she did and she apart from she didn't get the property back she seems to have got away with it and after that we never saw her again she did a runner it turns out that violet not only faked the burglary but also forged the signature on the will Margaret and stringer luckily did not live to experience all this and violet has indeed taken her secret with her to her grave the Oscar is still missing today in her autobiography Margaret writes people have asked me what I think successes I can only answer for myself it can't be measured in fur coats or fancy cars as I own neither success is having the hearts of people and lifting them up Margaret certainly had enormous charisma she was unique I mean the the wouldn't ever be another like her that couldn't be she wasn't all that intelligent but she was warm and loving in some ways too loving for her own good because there were too many people who were hangers-on out for what they could get which distressed me greatly he she they just unique totally unique therefore they must they must be preserved I'd like to take them away and put them somewhere and preserve them so that in 50 years time people can enjoy them even more than they do today I don't think she gets nearly the credit she should get as an actress [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: True Story Documentary Channel

Views: 624,823

Keywords: documentaries, odisea, documentalesgrandes, documentales, la noche temática, documentos tv, la2, full, documentary, films, miss marple, margaret rutherford, true story, full documentary, agatha christie, miss prism, oscar wilde, the importance of being earnest, blithe spirit, madame arcati, academy award winner, golden globe winner, the VIPs, best performance ever, filmwriter

Id: Btwljs9QN3Y

Length: 59min 28sec (3568 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 11 2018