Margaret Rutherford

She was the daughter of William Benn and Florence Nicholson. In 1883, nine years before her birth, her father murdered her grandfather. Her mother committed suicide when she was three years old and she was brought up by her aunt, Bessie Nicholson, in Wimbledon. After her aunt died, a small inheritance allowed her to join the Old Vic in repertory.

She appeared in two adaptations of the 1895 play "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde: she played Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest (1946) and Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest (1952).

Rutherford began her acting career first as a student at London's Old Vic, debuting on stage in 1925.

In 1933, she first appeared in the West End at the not-so-tender age of 41.

She had made her screen debut in 1936 portraying Miss Butterby in the Twickenham-Wardour production of Hideout in the Alps (1936).

In summer 1941, Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit opened on the London stage, with Coward himself directing. Appearing as Madame Arcati, the genuine psychic, was Rutherford, in a role in which Coward had earlier envisaged her and which he then especially shaped for her.

Once recollected an unexpected backstage encounter during the early 1960s with John Baldwin Buckstone, the benevolent former manager ghost of London's Theatre Royal, Haymarket. Uncertain of what convention to follow, she simply stroked his leg.

Rare is the reference to Margaret Rutherford that doesn't characterize her as either jut-chinned, eccentric, or both. The combination of those most mundane of attributes has led some to suggest that she was made for the role of Agatha Christie's indomitable sleuth, Jane Marple, whom Rutherford portrayed in four films between 1961 and 1964 plus in an uncredited film cameo in The Alphabet Murders (1965).

Agatha Christie dedicated her 1963 novel, The Mirror Crack'd From Side To Side, to Rutherford in admiration.

Was the 58th actress to receive an Academy Award; she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The V.I.P.s (1963) at The 36th Annual Academy Awards (1964) on April 13, 1964.

Robert Morley said in a 1967 TV interview, "Although the profession is crowded with very nice people, she's always too nice, too soft, too much the perfect auntie. She's frightfully funny. She's a marvelous woman... a good woman.".

While filming "The Virgin and the Gypsy" in 1969 Rutherford, who was playing a deaf old grandmother, suffered frequent memory lapses causing filming delays. This resulted in her being replaced by Fay Compton. Unfortunately Rutherford never made another film.

She started work on The Virgin and the Gypsy (1970), but illness caused her to be replaced by Fay Compton.

A memorial service was held for her at St Paul's Church, Covent Garden on 21st July 1972.