The Stately Ghosts of England ( 1965 )

Margaret Rutherford, the intrepid actress best known for portraying the medium Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit and Jane Marple in the Murder She Said series had, in 1967, earned an Academy Award for her performance in The V.I.Ps and was awarded the title, Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire that same year. Prior to this crowning achievement she had an even more exciting experience....she was thrust among the living and the dead in a one hour television special The Stately Ghosts of England. 

In this program, which aired in 1965, the stout dame guided us on a tour of some of the oldest and grandest castles of Great Britain. However, their architecture and interior decor were not the highlight of the tour - instead, she attempted to beckon the spirits to make an appearance for NBC's audience in great Britain and the United States, where eager ectoplasm enthusiasts gathered around their teles to see what they could not see. 

Within the one hour timespan, Margaret Rutherford, her husband Stringer Davis, and Tom Corbett, one of England's most famous clairvoyants, traveled in a 1909 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost to visit three stately homes of England. 

The first, Longleat in Wiltshire, belonging to Lord Henry Thynne, the Marquess of Bath, was the setting of a duel provoked by the most ancient of sins - adultery. In the dark dismal hall leading to the upstairs chambers, Sir Thomas Thynne, with a flash of steel, slew his wife's lover. Lady Louisa Thynne died shortly after and joined her darling in the afterlife. However, she didn't quite make it...judging from the moans that are resounding in the corridors.  

"Lord Thynne, have you ever seen the ghost?"
"No, I never actually myself, seen or heard the supernatural" 

And so they carried themselves upstairs to have a chat with a woman who had seen the ghost. "Well, I didn't actually quite really see the ghost myself, it was more like a sinister presence that I felt ". 

Tom Corbett, being a clairvoyant ( one who sees ghosts ) had no trouble seeing her, of course, but for the viewers benefit, our team arranged to have a ghost camera - that wonder of the ages - set up to capture her fleeting presence on celluloid. To their satisfaction ( but hardly ours ), they did capture a shaft of light which appeared for a few seconds. 

Off they whisked themselves away to their second destination, the home of Mr. and Mrs. Goldsmith, owners of the charming cottage once belonging to Nell Gwynne, the famous stage actress and mistress of King Charles II. Unlike most ghosts, this lovely lady walks the floors of her dwelling in peace, choosing to remain to cherish the happy moments she spent in her home. Upstairs, however, is a more tempestuous spirit. The footsteps of a suicidal cavalier can be heard roaming the wooden passages leading to the bedrooms. The poor man is lost in limbo, still searching for the missing wing of his manor. Honestly, the current owners should have notified him of the change in the house's structure. 

More startling than these spirits, however, is when Tom Corbett actually speaks! 

"Do you know you have a third ghost?" he quietly announces, before promptly pursing his lips once again. The rest of the cast wander off to the bridge to not see the lady standing there, while Dame Margaret Rutherford chooses to snoop inside the Goldsmith's barn. Here, she points out an airplane belonging to Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, who once worked on the property. 

On their third and final visit, the ghostbusters are off to Beaulieu, an abbey in Hampshire. This crumbling ruin was built by hand by the monks of the Cistercian order in the thirteenth century, and rudely repossessed by King Henry VIII, a despisor of the church, to be given as a gift to Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. Though the monks peacefully allowed their physical property to be taken from them, in spirit, they refused to budge. Spunky monks they be! 

The current owner, a descendant of the Earl, cordially conveys the story of the ancestral ghosts of the former abbey. Once again, he utters those profound words echoed throughout the special, "I, myself, have not seen the ghosts", but, he explains, his sister heard their rhythmic musical chanting...as had a number of other townsfolk. The Earl's sister, surely a relative of Margaret Thatcher, relays her account of hearing the sounds of a primitive radio which was sending out easy-listening signals of comfort and peace. Our trio, anxious to tune into this station, sit outside the walls of the abbey, with tape recorder in hand, ready to document these songs for posterity. 

Margaret Rutherford sums up the program and her personal feelings succinctly with the words, "Let those deny who will, I for one choose to believe in them".

This program perfectly suited the talents of Margaret Rutherford, not only because she had a flair for the dramatic, but because she, herself, was a believer in the spiritual and the occult. Indeed, she was the ideal host to the ghosts. 

The Stately Ghosts of England is available for viewing here. 

This post is our contribution to The Big Stars of the Small Screen blogathon, hosted by Aurora at How Sweet it Was! . Be sure to check out all the other great posts about film stars on television! 

The Miss Marple Mysteries with Margaret Rutherford

Miss Jane Marple, the wiry framed spinster from St. Mary Mead, whose hobbies include knitting and solving crimes, is one of Agatha Christie's most endearing creations. Quiet and sedate, she was the complete opposite of Hercule Poirot, Christie's very own Sherlock Holmes, but went on to become the star of the show in twelve novels and thirty-two short stories between 1926 and 1976. 

It's no wonder then that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer saw an ideal character to bring to the screen. In early 1960 the studio purchased the rights to most of the author's stories for the comely sum of three million dollars in the hopes of creating a television series around the lovable sleuth. When this idea fell through, they set their sights on securing 72-year-old Margaret Rutherford, one of Great Britain's most beloved character actresses to play the part in a film version of one of Miss Marple's most entertaining novels, "4:50 from Paddington". 

Agatha Christie had disapproved of this casting from the start. She had modeled Miss Marple after a favorite aunt and Margaret Rutherford bore no resemblance to her whatsoever. Rutherford did not wish to play the part either, saying "Murder, you see, is not the sort of thing I could get close to. I never found it amusing. I don't like anything that tends to lower or debase or degrade". It was not until director George Pollack sent her the script for Murder She Said, the first Miss Marple film planned, and convinced her that Miss Marple would be a helpful character, one who took a gamesman-like approach to crime solving. Rutherford was then gung-ho about the part and made Miss Marple completely her own. Her husband and closest companion, Stringer Davis, was pulled in for the ride as well in a part that was created especially for him at Rutherford's insistence. As the timid librarian Jim Stringer, he was the perfect partner for the indomitable Jane. 

Rutherford's Miss Marple was a completely transformed character from the St. Mary's Mead citizen that Christie had penned some thirty-five years back. In fact, she did not even live in St. Mary's Mead anymore, her cottage home now being situated in Milchester (filmed in Denham). Here the jaunty heroine lives in contented peace until a mystery falls at her feet and she takes on the task of solving the crime herself when the local police force doubt her theories - the local police force being Inspector Craddock (admirably played by Australian actor Charles "Bud" Tingwell) and his aide Sergeant Bacon. Craddock was another character written in especially for the film and he proved to be a capital foil in the crime-solving endeavors of Miss Marple. His attitude towards Miss Marple was much like a kindly nephew, loving and protective and yet at times quite aggravated over her interference in police matters and the dangers the old gal was putting herself into. 

The sprightly harpsichord strains of Ron Goodwin's Miss Marple theme quickly set the tempo and mood for the films that were to follow, all of them being light-hearted tea and crumpet mysteries. Just as one enjoys curling up with a good mystery before bedtime to carry one off to slumberland, so these films were a relaxing escape from the typical juvenile crime flicks, period dramas, and psychological capers of the times. And, as an added bonus, they gave us opportunity to nod our heads in blessed slumber during many a scene. 

Between 1961 and 1965, MGM made four Miss Marple films starring Margaret Rutherford. Each film in the series was directed by George Pollock and featured scripts written by David Pursall and Jack Seddon. Although none of them bore any resemblance to the books on which they were based, each of them had their redeeming charms and to this day all of the films have their loyal following of fans. 

Whatever Miss Christie intended her stories to be, is completely thrown out the window. Margaret Rutherford is the unreputable star of these films. Plump, energetic and commanding, Rutherford created a newly emancipated Miss Marple, a gal brimming with spunk. With jowls jiggling and her tongue jutted firmly in her cheek, Jane would swing her tweed cape about her, square her shoulders and be ready to face any danger that stood in the way of her amateur sleuthing. 

Murder She Said ( 1961 ) 

En route from Paddington station to her home in Milchester, Miss Marple witnesses a murder onboard a passing train. When the authorities investigate and find no clues, Miss Marple is determined to investigate herself. With the help of her good friend, Mr. Stringer, they track the body to the Ackenthorpe Estate. Here she goes undercover as a maid and in between the housework and the cooking, hunts for clues. The entire family comes for a visit and when the body turns up in the stable, each member, including Miss Marple herself, becomes a suspect....and one by one start being killed off themselves. 

Margaret Rutherford is splendid as the elderly amateur sleuth who is excited to put her knowledge of mystery stories to the test and try crime-detection on a personal level. She proves to be more perceptive than the police and more daring, often jeopardizing herself much to the chagrin of Inspector Craddock, who feels personally responsible for the dear gal's safety. 

Our cast of suspects is a colorful lot of crooked family members, each one of them waiting for the blustery old codger, Mr. Ackenthorpe (played with splendid bark by James Robertson Justice) to die so they can inherit his money, his land, and his house. Muriel Pavlow, playing Ackenthorpe's daughter provides the romantic interest in the film with love blossoming between her and the American doctor (Arthur Kennedy) who is looking after the old man. Most engaging of all the characters however, is cheeky little Alexander (Ronnie Raymond), a playful dodger who tries to hide his mischievous pranks with his overly gentlemanly manner. He and Miss Marple quickly become chums and he provides her with many an inside scoop in the whereabouts of the family skeletons. Thorley Walters, Ron Howard (son of Leslie Howard), Conrad Phillips, Gerald Cross and Joan Hickson round out the cast. Joan Hickson later picked up the Miss Marple mantle herself in a PBS series during the 1980s. 

Margaret Rutherford's immense appeal and the delightful mystery plot she was involved with in Murder She Said made the film an instant box office success and it was quickly followed by three more Miss Marple mysteries. Murder She Said was the only one of the three actually based on one of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple mysteries, "4:50 from Paddington" (known as "What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw" in Great Britain). A few major alternations from the 1957 novel resulted in a more cohesive and less complicated film. In the novel, Miss Marple is a relatively minor character. In the film however, she takes on the activities of three of the characters from the novel: Mrs. McGillicuddy, who first witnesses the murder, Lucy Eyesbarrow, housekeeper at the Crackenthorpe estate, and herself. 

Murder at the Gallop ( 1963 ) 

George Pollock returned to take the helm in the second Miss Marple movie, Murder at the Gallop, this time set at a riding establishment, the Gallop Hotel, where members of the Enderby family are staying. Mr. Enderby, an elderly recluse (played by Finlay Currie), was frightened to death - by a cat - in circumstances that Miss Marple believes was deliberate murder. After Aunt Cora announces those same suspicions to the family members during the reading of the will and is quickly dispatched herself - with a hairpin, by george! - Miss Marple declares "murder most foul" and is off to capture the culprit herself. Once again Inspector Craddock's insistence against her meddling prove useless in stopping the indomitable dame from charging. 

Many of the elements used in Murder She Said are repeated for this second outing, notably the family inheritance plot line, the eccentric male lead (this time played by the perpetually baffled-faced Robert Morley), the surly stableman, and the multiple murders. Yes, when Miss Marple attempts to solve a case, murder is never a solitary occurrence. Even the finale of Miss Marple receiving a marriage proposal is repeated. 

Many of the Enderby family members are not as engaging as the Ackenthorpes however, and this time around most of the entertaining scenes belong solely to Margaret Rutherford, which thankfully there are plenty of. Highlights include Miss Marple and Mr. Stringer collecting donations to help rehabilitate criminals and the duo performing the twist in preparation for the climatic ending. The extremely talented character actress, Flora Robson, has a wonderful part in Murder at the Gallop as the frightened companion to Aunt Cora, and Robert Urquhart, Katya Douglas, and James Villiers complete the cast. 

Murder at the Gallop was based on the Poirot mystery "After the Funeral". The film had its premiere in a tent at a garden party in rural Cheshire during a fundraiser and once again received good critic reviews after its national premiere. One critic however did not find the film amusing... Agatha Christie called it "incredibly silly" and often argued with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer over the scripts and characterizations of her stories, but to no avail. The London Times agreed, "The whole thing is happily calculated to convince foreigners yet again that everything they have been told about the English is absolutely true and only a trifle understated."

Murder Ahoy ( 1964 ) 

The next Miss Marple film to be released, Murder Ahoy, was actually the final one in the series to be filmed, with Murder Most Foul being temporarily delayed in its release. 

This film has the distinction of being the only one of the four pictures based on an original script, and unfortunately, that was a mistake...the movie suffers badly with long stretches of sleep-inducing sequences. Ron Goodwin's jaunty Marple theme fails to revive one, even in the film's most exciting moments. 

One redeeming quality, however, is the change of locale. Filmed at St. Mawes, on the Cornwall coast, Murder Ahoy gives one the impression of being on a seaside holiday. Miss Marple enjoys the respite herself and decks herself in full-rigged naval dress complete with brass buttons and tricorn hat. Quite fitting regalia indeed for a trustee of the H.M.S Battledore, a training ship used for rehabilitating juvenile delinquents. During the annual meeting of the trustees, Mr. Folly-Hardwicke snuffs himself out and drops dead before announcing a most dreadful finding - one of the instructors onboard the Battledore is an embezzler! 

Miss Marple brings out her trusty Slocum's Chemistry Set for Girls, discovers strychnine in the snuff, shanghai's her sweetheart Mr.Stringer, and then boldly sets out to board the Battledore and hoist the culprit on the highest yardarms. She makes an impressive splash and puts every member of the frigate properly ill at ease, before confronting the killer with crossed swords in a climatic finale. "It won't be as easy as you think" she burbles stoutly, "I was ladies' fencing champion in 1931", whereupon she lunges to attack for a swashbuckling finish. 

The inimitable character actor Lionel Jeffries plays the eccentric lead, Captain Rhumstone, in this seafaring outing that also features William Mervyn, Francis Matthews, Joan Benham and Gerald Cross. 

Murder Most Foul ( 1965 ) 

In this final installment in the series our doughty heroine finds herself in the blazing spotlights of a stage; a stage where murder and mayhem are being played out. After the former actress Mrs. McGinty is found hanging in her house with roses and money strewn on the floor about her, a young man is promptly arrested as the leading suspect. Miss Marple, serving on the jury during the trial, believes him innocent and decides to prove just that. Clues lead her to the Cosgood Players, a mixed lot of theatrical characters, and to one player in particular, a scheming murderer who kills twice more before Miss Marple drops the final curtain on him. 

Ron Moody, best known for his portrayal of Fagin in Oliver!, plays the leading supporting character Clifford Cosgood, head of the Cosgood Players, and not unlike Fagin, he is a thoroughly shifty-eyed sort. The marvelous Megs Jenkins has an all too brief appearance as Mrs. Thomas, the dead actress' sister who has taken a bit of a fancy to the dear Mr. Stringer, and Andrew Cruickshank, Ralph Michael, James Bolam, and Annette Kerr complete our cast of suspects. 

Margaret Rutherford gets to recite a splendid piece, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" during her audition to become one of the Cosgood Players. This was one of Rutherford's favorite pieces and at one time she had to be dissuaded from performing it at a women's prison. "It was a good, bloodcurdling bit, which I thought the poor women would enjoy as they must have been disillusioned by the men in their lives," she said. These are words that prove what a beloved, albeit dotty, character one of the most popular British actresses of all time had. 

Murder Most Foul picks up on the pace once again after Murder Ahoy dropped the slack, but alas....it was not enough to draw fans into the theatres in droves and the declining box-office receipts were a sign that the Miss Marple series had reached their end. Such a shame too, for there were so many more good mysteries Margaret Rutherford's Miss Marple could have solved. 

This post was our contribution to Movie Silently's Sleuthathon : A Blogathon of Gumshoes. Be sure to check out all the other mysterious contributions and baffling blogs featuring your favorite detectives! 

Lionel Jeffries - What a Character! Blogathon

Lionel Jeffries was one of the most delightful and unique character actors to ever grace the British cinema. Bald, bewhiskered and bumbling he was an instantly recognizable actor in over 100 films, and however brief his appearances he was always an asset in comedies, thrillers, and dramas alike. Whether he be Grandpa Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or the inventor Cavor in First Men in the Moon, Jeffries excelled at playing charming crackpots and inquisitive and spirited characters.

Unlike Terry-Thomas who exaggerated toothy eccentrics for comic effect, Jeffries portrayed peculiar personas in a compelling and queer manner which made them strangely believable. His characterizations were of people that you might find and meet one day. Lionel Jeffries brought an element of reality to every character he portrayed. 

"I was constantly rewriting the words of the characters I was given to bring them a comic humanity. Most of the people I played were caught in desperation. In their hearts they knew they were failures - but they would never admit it, even to themselves."

Jeffries was born on June 10, 1926 in Forest Hill, London. As a boy he attended Queen Elizabeth Grammer School in Wimborne Minster, Dorset while his parents worked in a mission in London's East End with the Salvation Army. 

At the age of 19, he received a commission in the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, serving first in Burma, where he worked for the Rangoon radio station and later with the Royal West African Frontier Force where he rose to the rank of captain in 1945. After the war he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where one short year later he won the Kendel award for his acting and writing. He felt out of place at the Academy however, being the only bald student among the bunch. He had lost all of his hair before the age of 20! Perhaps the war had that bad of an effect on his head. 

"Of course I was upset. Tried a toupee once, but it looked like a dead moth on a boiled egg". 

Upon completing his schooling in the early 1950s he quickly embraced the film medium and plunged into a series of roles in some memorable British comedies and spy thrillers in spite of being told by his agent that he was too young for character parts and not good-looking enough for leading man roles. His baldness certainly put him at a disadvantage but he took his egghead and used it to his advantage instead. 

One of his first film roles was a small part in Hitchcock's marvelous little thriller, Stage Fright ( 1950 ). Roles in Windfall and The Black Rider followed but then he hit a rough patch and as his agent predicted, parts were hard to come by and few and far in between. In 1953 he turned to stage and appeared in the Westminster Theatre production of Carrington VC with Alec Clunes. Stage was not his cup of tea and although he did a few more productions he quickly stepped out of the stage scene and was not behind the floodlights again until 1984, when he played Horace Vandergelder in Hello Dolly! at the Prince of Wales theatre in London. 

One day, in early 1955, he attended the cast audition for The Colditz Story and with holes in his shoes he walked away with the third lead to Eric Portman and John Mills. From then on he was always in demand for his quirky characterizations, often playing an officious policeman or bungling crook in these early roles. Some of his most memorable parts of the 1950s included the inquisitive reporter in The Quatermass Xperiment, Gelignite Joe, the diamond robber in Blue Murder at St. Trinians, Major Proudfoot in Law and Order, and a prison officer in The Two-Way Stretch, a Peter Sellars comedy. Jeffries also appeared in a number of dramas and crime films including the suspenseful Vicious Circle with John Mills, Hour of Decision and Man in the Sky with the always competent Jack Hawkins. 

It was in the 1960s, however, that Lionel Jeffries reached his comedic peak, first with his role of a priest in the wacky Bob Hope spy flick, Call Me Bwana, then as key suspect Captain Rhumstone in Murder Ahoy, and lastly in one of my all-time favorite roles, as the highly-strung Professor Cavor in the delightful Charles Schneer/Ray Harryhausen adaptation of H.G Wells' First Men in the Moon featuring Edward Judd and Martha Hyer. Here, Jeffries plays a reclusive scientist who invented a paste that combats gravity and, not wanting to dilly-dally with simple everyday uses, intends to launch a sphere into space on a voyage to the moon. 

Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon was another film that featured Lionel Jeffries in a similiar role, but that same year he starred in one of his most memorable films - Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Jeffries gladly accepted the role of Grandpa Potts, Caractacus' travel-loving father, even though he was in fact six months younger than Dick Van Dyke. 

Jeffries thoroughly enjoyed playing in wholesome children's films such as Chitty. He believed there were more wise children than wise adults and wanted to see entertainment geared towards children that adults could enjoy as well. In an era when society was bombarded with images of sex and violence Lionel Jeffries stood out for his gentler sensibilities. He was a devoted Catholic and deplored permissivism. Unlike alot of Hollywood marriages, Jeffries remained married to one woman, former actress Eileen Walsh, for over 59 years ( until his death ), with whom he had one son and two daughters. One day, his eight-year old daughter Martha came to him with a book she was reading - Edith Nesbit's delightful classic "The Railway Children" - and told her father "I think this would make a good film". Papa agreed and he promptly purchased a short option on the film rights for £300. 

He wrote a script that retained all of the charm of Nesbit's book and took it to Bryan Forbes, then head of Elstree Studios, to get his opinion of it. Jeffries and his wife had met Forbes at Richmond Hill, home of Sir John Mills, where they often socialized with the Oliviers, the Nivens, and the Attenboroughs.  Jeffries confined to Forbes that he "secretly harbored a longing to direct the film" himself. The Railway Children was indeed Jeffries first experience behind the camera as a director and it was a smash hit. The film, featuring Bernard Cribbins, Jenny Agutter, and Dinah Sheridan remains a cult classic in Britain, being shown year after year at Christmas Time. 

On the wake of its success, Jeffries was inspired to direct some more children's films but continually hit a stone wall when it came time to finding a producer. They were indifferent at best, and he came to the conclusion that "No one wants family entertainment anymore. They want explicit sex". Nevertheless he did find backers to several more productions, The Amazing Mr. Blunden ( 1972 ), Baxter! ( 1973 ), Wobbling Free ( 1977 ) and, his final film as a director, The Water Babies ( 1978 ). 

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Lionel Jeffries turned to television, a medium which he had originally shunned years before because of its inferior production values. An appearance in the drama Cream in My Coffee altered his opinion and launched a belated career on the tiny tube. He had guest appearances in Inspector Morse, The Collectors, Lovejoy and portrayed grandpas in Rich, Tea and Sympathy and Woof!.

For years Lionel Jeffries was playing characters older than himself because of his premature baldness, but in these later roles, his age had finally caught up with his missing hair! Lionel Jeffries passed away on February 18, 2010 after several years of suffering from declining health ailments. He was 83 years old.

This post is our contribution to the What a Character! blogathon, a celebration of some of the most talented actors in Hollywood, the beloved "character actors". Don't miss visiting Once Upon a Screen or Paula's Cinema Club to view a complete schedule and find links to great posts on nearly fifty other great character actors. 

The Missing Miss Marple Film

When Agatha Christie first wrote "The Tuesday Night Club", a short story which had appeared in The Sketch magazine in 1926, she had little idea that her protagonist - a small-framed, bespeckled, gossiping little old lady - would charm the public as much as it had. What made this spinster from the sleepy hamlet of St. Mary Mead so endearing? Beneath her seemingly dotty facade she kept hidden a master intellect capable of accurately judging character and shrewdly sifting truth from fiction....attributes that helped her immensely in her hobby - solving mysteries.

Her name was Jane Marple, more commonly known simply as "Miss Marple". 

Miss Marple appeared in over thirty different novels and short stories from her introduction in the mid-1920s. However, in spite of her popularity it was not until 1961 that she made her first screen appearance in Murder She Said, an adaption of one of Christie's most popular Marple mysteries, "4:50 from Paddington". 

Dame Margaret Rutherford played the lead role in this film and, despite Christie's misgivings about her suitability to the role, she captured the essence of our quintessential snoopy-sleuth to perfection. The film was quite popular at the box-office and three other Marple mysteries were released within the next two years, Murder at the Gallop, Murder Most Foul and Murder Ahoy. With all the changing winds of the mid-sixties blowing in, the series was - sadly - brought to an abrupt end. 

We'd like to share a review of the fifth Miss Marple mystery that Margaret Rutherford would have made, had the series continued on. Enjoy! 

MURDER IS ANNOUNCED ( 1965 ) 

Studio : Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Prod.

Directed by : Ronald Neame 

Cast : Margaret Rutherford ( Miss Jane Marple ), Gladys Cooper ( Duchess Wynfleet ), Leslie Philips ( Reginald Wynfleet ), Sue Lloyd ( Dana Malstrom ) Stringer Davis ( Mr. Stringer ), Charles Tingwell ( Inspector Craddock ), Keiron Moore ( fisherman Rodgers ), Joyce Grenfell ( Buntley librarian ), Norman Bowler ( David Wynfleet ), Valerie Van Ost ( Binnie ).

The film opens with a fisherman hauling in his catch one early morning and lo! what is amongst his aquatic load? A body...of the two-legged variety. 

Meanwhile in Miss Marple's village of Milchester, everything is peaceful as usual. Mr. Stringer, the village librarian, is spending a Saturday afternoon at Miss Marple's cottage enjoying her company and her excellent tea and biscuits. Her conversational repartee isn't up to par on this day however, for, while perusing the obituaries, she was startled to read this article : 

MR. GILES TOWNSEND, 67

The body of Mr. Giles Townsend, of London, was found early this morning by a fisherman about a mile out from the coast at Buntley-by-the-sea. The police are investigating his death which appears to be from suicide caused by drowning. Mr. Townsend was one of London's most prominent genealogists. 

"Miss Marple, your interest in the obituaries is distressingly morbid. Have you ever thought about taking up a gentle hobby?" 

Little does Mr. Stringer know that Miss Marple is indeed very active in her community. In fact, it was because of her involvement in the Ladies of Milchester Society that made her recognize Mr. Townsend's name. She had written a letter to him only days earlier asking if he would give a lecture at the society's next meeting on Thursday. Why had he committed suicide? Or was it suicide?

That evening she is even more disturbed when she receives a rather cryptic letter from Mr. Townsend, postmarked two days earlier from Ye Old Ship's Inn, Buntley-by-the-sea. He states that he will be more than happy to make a speech for the ladies group but will not be able to arrive until Friday, as he is deep in research tracing a most prominent family's lineage. "England's future may just rest on the information I find!" he writes. These are not the words of a man who is about to kill himself. 

She takes her letter to Inspector Craddock but he dismisses her evidence as unsubstantial. And so Miss Marple packs up her bags and declares she is going "on holiday"...to the seaside. Buntley-by-the-sea. 

Inquiries at Ye Old Ships Inn and the local library reveal to Miss Marple that Mr. Townsend arrived in Buntley solely for the purpose of doing genealogy research on the Duke and Duchess Wynfleet. He had uncovered the fact that the current Wynfleets were not rightful heirs to the title nor the Wynfleet fortune. Perhaps this was the reason he was murdered?? 

With Mr. Stringers assistance ( he does a wonderful portrayal of an absent minded genealogist ) Miss Marple goes undercover to investigate at the Wynfleet estate and finds a house full of possible suspects... including the Duchess herself. 

Murder is Announced was a gem in the Rutherford series of Miss Marple films. It included one of the best casts with the inimitable Dame Gladys Cooper as the crusty Duchess Wynfleet. Gladys Cooper had been in films since the 1920s and had a made a name for herself in Hollywood for playing upper-crust, and often overbearing, English matrons. She had starred on Broadway as Mrs. St. Maugham in the 1956 stage adaption of Enid Bagnold's "The Chalk Garden" so the role of Duchess Wynfleet came very easily for her since they were quite similar characters. 

The film also boasts some wonderful supporting players such as Leslie Philips ( a delightful change from his usual comedy roles ), Joyce Grenfell, Keiron Moore, and Marple regulars Charles Tingwell ( as Inspector Craddock ) and Stringer Davis..who was in fact, Margaret Rutherford's husband. 

Ron Goodwin's jaunty theme music trips along throughout the film and helps enhance some of the more lackluster sequences. 

It is a shame that the series had to end after so few pictures because they are perfect films to watch on chilly autumn nights..which we will be having plenty of soon in the northern states!

This post is apart of The Great Imaginary Film Blogathon which will be running from Oct. 1-3, 2013. To read more about the event click here.