The Margaret Rutherford/Miss Marple Movies Quiz

Answer: False

The first person to portray Miss Marple on-screen was Gracie Fields (1898-1979) in a 1956 television adaptation of "A Murder is Announced". Fields was a very popular English singer, actress, and comedienne of the 1920's to 1940's. Commonly known as "Our Gracie", she was famous for her war-time hit songs such as "Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye".

Margaret Rutherford (1892-1972) portrayed Miss Marple on the "big screen" in 1961, in the first of four movies (plus one cameo in a later film). Agatha Christie was not a fan of the movies as she felt that the movie character was far removed from her creation and she disagreed with many of the changes made to her stories. She wrote to her literary agent, Edmund Cork, expressing displeasure with "Murder She Said", saying "Frankly, it's pretty poor! I thought so that evening in London, but I couldn't say so before Margaret Rutherford, especially as she herself was so good".

Answer: Murder She Said

The novel "4.50 from Paddington" (1957) was published in the U.S. as "What Mrs McGillicuddy Saw" and was made into the 1961 movie, "Murder She Said", starring Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple.

In the original novel, the Crackenthorpe family lived at Rutherford Hall. To prevent confusion with the actress's name, the name of the family and their house was changed to Ackenthorpe. In the movie version, Miss Marple witnesses a murder on a train but no-one in authority believes her, so she begins her own investigation by getting a job as a maid at the estate where she assumes the body must have landed after being thrown from the train.

This movie was the only one of the four movies which was actually based on a Miss Marple novel. It is generally considered to be the best of the four and was considered a box-office success in its day.

Answer: Joan Hickson

Joan Hickson (1906-1998) performed in several Agatha Christie-based productions throughout her long career. In 1946 she appeared on stage in the play, "Appointment with Death" in the role of Miss Pryce. Christie was so impressed with her performance that she sent her a note saying, "I will call you to play my Miss Marple one day, if I can find the time to write another play".

In 1961, Hickson portrayed Mrs Kidder, the daily household help at the Ackenthorpe estate, in "Murder She Said". She then played Mrs Rivington in the made-for-television movie "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?" in 1980.

She finally fulfilled Agatha Christie's wish (38 years later) when she played Miss Marple in a BBC series from 1984 to 1992. In 1987, Joan Hickson received an OBE from Queen Elizabeth II who said, "You play the part just as one envisages it".

Answer: Poirot

"Murder at the Gallop" was loosely (emphasis on loosely) based on 1953 novel "After the Funeral" (also published as "Funerals are Fatal"), which features Hercule Poirot as the detective, not Miss Marple.

In the movie, Miss Marple joins a riding academy to investigate the death of Mr Enderby, an elderly recluse. Her character makes a reference to Agatha Christie and her novel "The Ninth Life" (there is no such novel in the Christie canon), which in turn is a reference to the fact that the killer used a cat as the murder weapon. Mr Enderby had a pathological fear of cats and the killer brought a cat into the house to induce him to have a heart attack, thus attempting to give the impression the death was natural.

Although not as successful at the box office as its predecessor, "Murder She Said", it was generally well received by audiences. Agatha Christie refused to attend the movie's premiere.

Answer: Hamlet

"Murder Most Foul" (1964) was loosely based on Agatha Christie's novel "Mrs McGinty's Dead" (1952). Like "Murder at the Gallop", the detective was changed from Hercule Poirot to Miss Marple. In this movie Miss Marple joins a theatre company in order to save an innocent man from being convicted of murder and to flush out the real killer.

"Murder Most Foul" is a line from Shakespeare's "Hamlet" (Act 1, Scene 5) when a ghost tells Hamlet that he is Hamlet's father's spirit and entreats Hamlet to avenge his "murder most foul". In a letter to her literary agent, Edmund Cork, Christie wrote "Can you imagine a triter title?" (an opinion I thought was curious, given her inclination to borrow titles from Shakespeare).

This movie did not do that well at the box office compared to the first two movies and the reviews were mediocre.

Answer: Murder Ahoy

"Murder Ahoy" (1964) was the last of the four Margaret Rutherford/Miss Marple movies. While the first three were based on specific Agatha Christie novels, the fourth movie was based on an original screen play by David Pursall and Jack Seddon. It does, however, borrow a few details from "They Do It With Mirrors" (1952) and makes reference to the play "The Mousetrap". In this movie, Miss Marple investigates murders on board a naval training ship that is schooling recruits in various forms of theft.

Agatha Christie thought this film was "awful". In a 1966 interview she said that "Murder Ahoy" was "one of the silliest things you ever saw. It got very bad reviews, I am delighted to say".

Although still profitable, it did not do very well at the box office. Christie fans were unenthusiastic because it wasn't based on a Christie novel. The reviews were so poor that plans for a fifth film, based on "The Body in the Library", were abandoned. Today, however, the four movies are considered classics.

Answer: Alphabet

Margaret Rutherford portrayed Miss Marple in four Marple-based movies. However, there was a fifth portrayal when she made a brief uncredited cameo as Miss Marple in the 1965 spoof movie "The Alphabet Murders", a Hercule Poirot film starring Tony Randall as Poirot. In the cameo, she is shown walking past Poirot into a police station, saying to Mr Stringer (her real-life husband, Stringer Davis), "The solution is ABC, to anyone with half a brain cell".

"The ABC Murders" was first published in 1936. It is also published under the title of "The Alphabet Murders". According to Janet Morgan in her biography of Agatha Christie, when "The ABC Murders" was made into a film, it was renamed "The Alphabet Murders" so that "the public would not shun the chain of ABC cinemas that showed it".

Answer: The Mirror Crackd

Although Agatha Christie respected Margaret Rutherford as an actress, she felt she was not really right for the role of Miss Marple. Rutherford's Marple was a hearty and forceful character whereas Christie's Marple was frail and subdued. Christie had described her as "a white-haired old lady with a gentle, appealing manner...tall and thin, with pink cheeks and blue eyes" - not a description which could be applied to Margaret Rutherford's character (other than the white hair).

Nevertheless, although she did not care for the film adaptations, Christie appreciated Margaret Rutherford's acting skills enough to dedicate her 1962 novel "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side" to her, inscribing it "To Margaret Rutherford in admiration".

This novel is also published in the U.S. under the shorter title of "The Mirror Crack'd". The book title is derived from a line in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, "The Lady of Shalott" (1832).

Answer: Stringer Davis

James Buckley Stringer Davis (1899-1973) was known professionally as Stringer Davis. He was a mediocre actor at best, while his wife's career was flourishing. Being quite devoted to each other, Margaret Rutherford insisted that a role for her husband be included in her films, thus he appeared in all four of her Miss Marple movies as Mr Jim Stringer, a meek librarian who assists Miss Marple in her investigations.

His character never appears in any of Christie's works.

Answer: Craddock

Veteran Australian actor, Charles William "Bud" Tingwell (1923-2009), starred in all four of Margaret Rutherford's Miss Marple movies as Inspector Craddock. Tingwell had a long and illustrious career in film and television, both in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Inspector Craddock is a recurring character in Agatha Christie's novels, appearing in three novels and one short story - "A Murder is Announced" (1950), "4.50 from Paddington" (1957), "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side" (1962), and "Sanctuary (1954). He is also mentioned in "A Caribbean Mystery" (1964).

His first name is not indicated in the movies but Agatha Christie christened him Dermot.