Dame Margaret Taylor Rutherford, DBE (11 May 1892 – 22 May 1972) was an English character actress, who first came to prominence following World War II in the film adaptations of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. In 1963 she won the best supporting actress Oscar and a Golden Globe for her role as The Duchess of Brighton in The VIPs. Rutherford was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1961 and a Dame Commander (DBE) in 1967.

Biography

In 1945, Rutherford, 53, married character actor Stringer Davis, 46, after a courtship that lasted for 15 years. Davis' mother reportedly considered Rutherford an unsuitable match for her son and nuptials were postponed until Mrs Davis' demise. Subsequently, the couple appeared in many productions together. Davis adored Rutherford, with one friend noting: "For him she was not only a great talent but, above all, a beauty." The ex-serviceman and actor rarely left his wife's side, serving Rutherford as private secretary, gofer and general dogsbody. More importantly, he nursed and comforted her through periodic debilitating depressions. These illnesses, sometimes involving stays in mental hospitals and electric shock treatment, were kept hidden from the press during Rutherford's life. The Marple films capture something of the couple's public personae as projected in the media at the time: their cozy domesticity, erratic housekeeping and almost childlike innocence and affection.

In the 1950s, Rutherford and Davis unofficially 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. Famously, in the film 'Withnail & I' Paul McGann's character was filmed reading about Hall's story in a tabloid newspaper during the breakfast cafe scene near the beginning of the film.

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