1. Dame Margaret Taylor Rutherford was an English actress of stage, film and television.
23 Facts About Margaret Rutherford
2.
Margaret Rutherford came to national attention following World War II in the film adaptations of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.
3.
Margaret Rutherford was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1961 and a Dame Commander in 1967.
4.
Margaret Rutherford's uncle, Sir John Benn, 1st Baronet, was a politician, and her first cousin once removed was the Labour politician Tony Benn.
5.
Young Margaret Rutherford had been told that her father died of a broken heart soon afterward.
6.
Margaret Rutherford was educated at Wimbledon High School and, from the age of 13, at Raven's Croft School, a boarding school in Sutton Avenue, Seaford.
7.
Margaret Rutherford developed an acting career relatively late, making her stage debut only in 1925, aged 33, at the Old Vic.
8.
Margaret 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 John Gielgud's production of The Importance of Being Earnest at the Globe Theatre in 1939.
9.
Margaret Rutherford received rave reviews from audiences and critics alike for her lusty portrayal of the bumbling medium Madame Arcati, a role for which Coward had envisioned her.
10.
Margaret Rutherford played an officious headmistress in The Happiest Days of Your Life at the Apollo Theatre in 1948 and classical roles such as Madame Desmortes in Ring Round the Moon at the Globe Theatre, 1950, Lady Wishfort in The Way of the World at Lyric Hammersmith, 1953 and Saville Theatres, in 1956, and Mrs Candour in The School for Scandal at the Haymarket Theatre in 1962.
11.
Margaret Rutherford's declining health meant she had to give up the role.
12.
Margaret Rutherford was Nurse Carey in Miranda and the sprightly Medieval expert Professor Hatton-Jones in Passport to Pimlico, one of the Ealing Comedies.
13.
Margaret Rutherford reprised her stage roles of the headmistress alongside Alastair Sim in The Happiest Days of Your Life and Miss Prism in Anthony Asquith's film adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest.
14.
Margaret Rutherford worked with Norman Wisdom again in Just My Luck and co-starred in The Smallest Show on Earth with Virginia McKenna, Peter Sellers and Leslie Phillips.
15.
Margaret Rutherford starred alongside Ian Carmichael and Peter Sellers, in the Boulting Brothers satire I'm All Right Jack.
16.
Margaret Rutherford reprised the role of Miss Marple in a very brief, uncredited cameo in the 1965 film The Alphabet Murders.
17.
Margaret Rutherford appeared as Mistress Quickly in Orson Welles' film Chimes at Midnight and was directed by Charlie Chaplin in A Countess from Hong Kong, starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren, which was one of her final films.
18.
Margaret Rutherford started work on The Virgin and the Gypsy, but illness caused her to be replaced by Fay Compton.
19.
In 1945, Margaret Rutherford, 53, married character actor Stringer Davis, 46, after a courtship that lasted 15 years.
20.
Margaret Rutherford nursed and comforted her through periodic debilitating depression.
21.
Margaret Rutherford suffered from Alzheimer's disease at the end of her life and was unable to work.
22.
Many of Britain's top actors, including Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Dame Flora Robson and Joyce Grenfell, attended a memorial Service of Thanksgiving at the Actors' Church, St Paul's, Covent Garden, on 21 July 1972, where 90-year-old Dame Sybil Thorndike praised her friend's enormous talent and recalled that Margaret Rutherford had "never said anything horrid about anyone".
23.
Margaret Rutherford tells her life story in cabaret form before an audience.