Margaret Rutherford: A Blithe Spirit

by Dawn Langley Simmons

Traces the life and career of the great British character actress and eccentric, best known for her role as Miss Marple, Agatha Christie's elderly detective

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

224 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1983

About the author

Dawn Langley Pepita Simmons (15 October 1937,[1] or unknown date in 1922, depending on source[2][3][4] – 18 September 2000) was a prolific English author and biographer.[3] Born "Gordon Langley Hall", Simmons lived her first decades as a male. As a young adult, she became close to British actress Margaret Rutherford, whom she considered an adoptive mother and who was the subject of a biography Simmons wrote in later years.

Wikipedia

Reviews

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit apprehensive reading this book as I have for a long time been a fan of Margaret Rutherford. I’ve always known she was eccentric but beyond that not much else. Placing some one on a pedestal often leads one to disappointment of those we admire. However this is not an objective account of Margaret Rutherford’s life, it is a biography of her life but it also touches on that of her adopted daughter Dawn Langley Simmons the author who was born in 1937 ostensibly considered to be a boy and raised as such but she states that she was in fact a girl (due to a medical error) though there is controversy over this point. Having a difficult early life she met Margaret Rutherford and her husband Stringer Davis who offered her a home with them and were fully supportive of her. So this is Dawn’s collection of anecdotes and stories from those she interviewed intermingled with information she discovered after Margaret’s death and Dawn’s own memories of Margaret and Spencer told with much love and affection.

Dawn traces Margaret’s early beginnings including the background of her parents’ tragic life and the lasting effect this had on her. Her yearnings to be a serious actress and her subsequent stage and film career and of course her loving relationship with her devoted husband Stringer Davis.

I’m happy to say my admiration of Margaret Rutherford remains intact.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

The beginning of this book is most odd: it tells the Simmons’ own story, how she began life as someone with an extended clitoris and was pronounced a boy. She lived as a male until she was in her thirties, and then, through the help of Margaret Rutherford and others, she was finally able to have an operation that confirmed her femaleness. She then married, and had a child, and her husband went crazy and so on and so on. Just when you think this woman has had an extraordinary life, you begin to wonder if it’s true. She’s a great name-dropper, and seems to have had the ability to work her way into high society and into the world of writing without difficulty. But there’s a lingering suspicion that her life is just a bit too much to be true.
Anyway, after this opening she goes on to describe Margaret Rutherford’s parents: her father murdered his own father (!) after he’d become depressed, and wound up in Broadmoor for several years; he was released and went back to his long-suffering wife and they had Margaret. And then the wife hanged herself while expecting their second child. Years later, Simmons seems to have ingratiated herself into the lives of Rutherford and her husband Stringer Davis, and from then on called them Mother and Father, or her ‘parents.’
But the trouble is, time and again you have odd doubts about the stories. Looking this woman up on the Net, you find that you’re not the only one who has doubts; in fact she’s called a pathological liar by some. How much is invention? How much is truth? She seems always to have had the rich and famous looking after her. And certainly she regarded Rutherford and Davis as very close, and very parental, and obviously had real contact with them because that’s all available in news archives. But what her real relationship was is less obvious, because we only get it from Simmons’ point of view.
The book itself is quite interesting, although it really does little more than race through the various plays and films that Rutherford made, with a lot of anecdotes and quotations along the way. Rutherford ages at great speed in it; just when you think she can only be in her twenties, she’s 36; just when you think she’s at her peak, she’s in her seventies.
It would be good to read a biography that focused on Rutherford herself, since she was a complex and wonderful woman.

[Martyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the book painted a pleasant portrait of Margaret Rutherford and Stringer Davis, by and large it really only presented them as they come across on screen, and at the end of the day it lacked a little something. It felt like the author, in spite of being the 'adopted' son/daughter of Margaret and Stringer, wasn't really any closer to them than a lot of their friends. I didn't find anything particularly touching or insightful about Simmons' own personal perspective, and there was quite a lot about Simmons own life - and a lot of name-dropping of all her important relatives - which didn't feel relevant to the biography. It often felt like Simmons was relying on books and letters and newspaper clippings to write about Margaret Rutherford without having much to contribute from her own experience, as though they actually met very rarely and didn't have a great deal of contact, as though she didn't really know Margaret and Stringer all that well. Did she not have lots of letters which she herself received from Margaret and Stringer which she could have quoted from at length? Simmons was a writer. Did she not keep a journal to record all her interactions with Margaret and Stringer? Did she not ask them lots of questions about their lives and treasure up the answers, knowing that one day she might write about them? Her sources of information often seemed to be rather limited, and the quotes from those sources often seemed to be rather inane and didn't shed much light on the subject, or Simmons attributed a tone or implication to them which the words themselves didn't actually convey. I rather wish we could have had all Margaret's friends writing about her for themselves instead of having all their reminiscences mutilated by Simmons. And as there was no mention of Stringer being gay, if she was covering that up, what else did she choose to hide? How truthful and accurate a biography was it really?

[Katharine Holden · Rating 2 out of 5]

Odd, jumbled memoir. Very dated, and oddly stresses inconsequential happenings
and people while leaving out major details. Still, worth skimming through.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this book about one of my new favorite actresses. Then I got even more interested in the author's life story!