Dame Margaret Taylor Rutherford, DBE (11 May 1892 â€" 22 May 1972) was
an English actress of stage, television and film.She 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. She won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for her
role as the Duchess of Brighton in The V.I.P.s (1963). In the early
1960s she starred as Agatha Christie's character Miss Marple in a
series of four George Pollock films. She was appointed an Officer of
the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1961 and a Dame Commander
(DBE) in 1967.Rutherford's early life was overshadowed by tragedies
involving both of her parents. Her father, journalist and poet William
Rutherford Benn, married Florence Nicholson on 16 December 1882 in
Wandsworth, south London. One month after the marriage, he suffered a
nervous breakdown and was admitted to Bethnal House Lunatic Asylum.
Released to travel under his family's supervision, he murdered his
father, the Reverend Julius Benn, a Congregational Church minister, by
bludgeoning him to death with a chamber pot, before slashing his own
throat with a pocket knife at an inn in Matlock, Derbyshire on 4 March
1883.
an English actress of stage, television and film.She 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. She won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for her
role as the Duchess of Brighton in The V.I.P.s (1963). In the early
1960s she starred as Agatha Christie's character Miss Marple in a
series of four George Pollock films. She was appointed an Officer of
the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1961 and a Dame Commander
(DBE) in 1967.Rutherford's early life was overshadowed by tragedies
involving both of her parents. Her father, journalist and poet William
Rutherford Benn, married Florence Nicholson on 16 December 1882 in
Wandsworth, south London. One month after the marriage, he suffered a
nervous breakdown and was admitted to Bethnal House Lunatic Asylum.
Released to travel under his family's supervision, he murdered his
father, the Reverend Julius Benn, a Congregational Church minister, by
bludgeoning him to death with a chamber pot, before slashing his own
throat with a pocket knife at an inn in Matlock, Derbyshire on 4 March
1883.
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