Margaret Rutherford is the great English actress immortalized in the 1960s Miss Marple films (which also boast one of the happiest theme tunes in cinema history). Joan Hickson is a bewitching and subtly knowing Marple, Geraldine McEwan a Miss Marple, so all-knowing, she's practically elbowing the suspects and winking at every new clue but Dame Margaret's Marple is the real miracle. How is it possible that a sleuth who acts this broadly, is so utterly credible?!
I can only give thanks to whoever had the genius idea to cast her because every time I'm feeling low I watch one of her Miss Marple performances and feel strong enough to take on the whole world. Rutherford also features in a most haunting autobiography 'Dawn:A Charleston Legend' by Dawn Langley Simmons. It tells Dawn's story from a Sussex childhood as a boy, named Gordon Langley Hall (the illegitimate son of Vita Sackville West's chauffeur, raised by her grandmother and eventual adoption by Margaret Rutherford and her husband Stringer Davies) to womanhood, as Dawn, via one of the world's first sex change operations.
However, it is Dawn's marriage to a black chauffeur in Charleston, South Carolina, one of the first interracial marriages in Charleston, which proves more controversial. This AND the fact that she gives birth. I must admit it is a few years since I have read this book so I am vague on the details but I've always kept it in a safe place as I do not want to lose it. I think this is the best recommendation I can make !