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Dame Margaret Rutherford, DBE (May 11, 1892 – May 22, 1972) was an English character actress, who first came to prominence following World War II in the film adaptations of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. She is best-known for her 1960s performances as Miss Marple in several films based loosely on Agatha Christie's novels.

Early life
Born in the Surrey town of Balham, Margaret Taylor Rutherford was the only child of William Rutherford Benn and his wife, the former Florence 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.

Rutherford's father suffered from mental illness, having suffered a nervous breakdown on his honeymoon, and was confined to an asylum. He was eventually released on holiday and on 4 March 1883, he murdered his father, Reverend Julius Benn, a Congregational church minister, by bludgeoning him to death with a chamberpot; shortly afterward, William tried to kill himself as well, by slashing his throat with a pocketknife. After the murder, William Benn was confined to the Broadmoor aslyum for the criminally insane. Several years later he was released, reportedly cured of his mental affliction, changed his surname to Rutherford, and returned to his wife.

As an infant Rutherford and her parents moved to India but she was returned to Britain when she was three to live with an aunt, professional governess Bessie Nicholson, in Wimbledon, England, after her mother 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; he died in 1921.

Rutherford was educated at the independent Wimbledon High School and at RADA.

Career
Having worked as a teacher of elocution, she went into acting later in life - making her stage debut at the Old Vic in 1925 at the age of thirty-three. Her physical appearance was such that romantic heroines were almost out of the question, and she soon established her name in comedy, appearing in many of the most successful British films of the mid-twentieth century. "I never intended to play for laughs. I am always surprised that the audience thinks me funny at all", Rutherford wrote in her autobiography. In most of these films, she had originally played the role on stage. She married the actor Stringer Davis in 1945. They often appeared together in films.

In the 1950s, Rutherford and Davis 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.

In 1957, Rutherford appeared as Cynthia Gordon in the episode "The Kissing Bandit" of the American sitcom filmed in England, Dick and the Duchess, starring Patrick O'Neal and Hazel Court. In 1961, Rutherford first played the film role with which she was most often associated in later life, that of Miss Marple in a series of four films loosely based on the novels of Agatha Christie. Rutherford, then age seventy, insisted on wearing her own clothes for the part and having her husband appear alongside her.

In 1964, George Harrison, when asked who his favourite girl film star was by Cathy McGowan on Ready Steady Go!, replied "Margaret Rutherford".

Rutherford won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and a Golden Globe for The VIPs (1963), as the absent-minded Duchess of Brighton, opposite Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. She also played Mistress Quickly in Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight in 1966.

She was created an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1961, and raised to Dame Commander (DBE) in 1967.

Later life and death
She suffered from Alzheimer's disease at the end of her life. Sir John Gielgud wrote: "Her last appearance at the Haymarket Theatre with Sir Ralph Richardson in The Rivals, an engagement which she was finally obliged to give up after a few weeks, was a most poignant struggle against her obviously failing powers."

Dame Margaret Rutherford is buried along with her husband, Stringer Davis, who died in August 1973, in the graveyard of St. James Church, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, England.

Selected stage performances

 * Blithe Spirit
 * The Way of the World
 * The Importance of Being Earnest, as Miss Prism and in New York (1947) as Lady Bracknell, directed by John Gielgud
 * The Rivals
 * The School for Scandal
 * The Solid Gold Cadillac (1965)