In 1953 in the English village of St Mary Mead, the home of Miss Jane Marple, a Hollywood production company arrives to film a costume drama about Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I with two famous movie stars, Marina Rudd and Lola Brewster. The two actresses are old rivals. Marina is making a much-heralded comeback after a prolonged "illness" and retirement (due to what was really a nervous breakdown when her son was born with severe brain damage). She and her husband, Jason Rudd, who is directing the film, arrive with their entourage. When she learns that Lola will be in the film as well, she becomes enraged and vents her anger. Lola then arrives with her husband, Marty Fenn, who is producing the film.
Excitement runs high in the village as the locals have been invited to a reception held by the film company in a manor house, Gossington Hall, to meet the celebrities. Lola and Marina come face to face at the reception and exchange insults as they smile and pose for the cameras.
At the reception Marina is cornered by a devoted fan, Heather Babcock, who bores her with a long and detailed story about having actually met Marina in person during the Second World War. After recounting the meeting they had all those years ago, when she arose from her sickbed to go and meet the glamorous star, Heather drinks a cocktail which was made for Marina, but quickly dies from poisoning. An autopsy attributes the death to a barbiturate overdose.
Everyone is certain Marina was the intended murder victim. Not only has Marina been receiving anonymous death threats made up from newspaper clippings, once shooting begins on the film, she discovers that her cup of coffee on the set has also been spiked with arsenic, sending her into fits of terror.
The detective from Scotland Yard investigating the case, Inspector Craddock, is baffled. He asks his aunt, who happens to be Jane Marple, who recently injured her foot at the reception and is therefore confined to her home, for help. The suspects are Ella Zielinsky, Jason's assistant who is secretly in love with him and would like Marina out of the way, and the hotheaded actress Lola.
The main suspect, Ella Zielinsky, after going to a pay phone in the village where she telephoned and threatened to expose the murderer, is then killed by a lethal nasal spray substituted for her hay-fever medication. An autopsy reveals that there was prussic acid in her medication.
Miss Marple, now back on her feet, visits Gossington Hall, where Marina and Jason are staying, and views where Heather's death occurred. Working from information received from her cleaning woman, Cherry Baker, who worked as a waitress the day of the murder, Marple begins to piece together the events and solves the mystery. By that time, however, another death occurs at Gossington Hall, which explains who was the killer: Marina Rudd, who has apparently died by suicide.
Miss Marple explains that Heather Babcock's story was Marina's motive. Heather suffered from German measles, a rather harmless disease to most adults, but dangerous for a pregnant woman's foetus. Heather innocently infected Marina when she kissed her during the Second World War, while Marina was pregnant: she had caused Marina's child to be born with mental retardation. Upon hearing Heather cheerfully tell this story, Marina was overcome with rage and deliberately poisoned her. She then spread the idea that she was the intended victim, concocting the death threats and poisoning her own coffee. Ella, who made phone calls to various suspects from a phone box, accidentally guessed correctly, prompting Marina to murder her. Jason confesses to Miss Marple that he had put poison in his wife's hot chocolate to save her from being prosecuted, but the drink has not been touched. Marina is nonetheless found dead, seeming to have poisoned herself.
Film rights for Mirror passed to John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin, who had previously produced adaptations of Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978). In 1979, they announced they would make the film starring Lansbury, who had played a support role in Death on the Nile and was appearing on stage in Sweeney Todd. Production would be put on hold until Lansbury finished her run in the musical.[5]
In August 1979, Brabourne suffered leg injuries in a bomb blast that killed his mother, son, and father-in-law, Lord Mountbatten, but he proceeded with the picture.[6][7]
Hamilton was given the job as director. He told the producers he was not a fan of Christie's novels and they said that is what would make him ideal for the film. Hamilton described the script as "awfully funny".[7]
The casting director, Dyson Lovell, said that since the film was set in the 1950s "it seemed like a good idea to use stars from that era".[7] Rock Hudson, Kim Novak, Tony Curtis and Taylor signed to play support roles. Taylor took over from Wood. Curtis made the film after being fired from the Broadway play I Ought to Be in Pictures.[8]
It was Taylor's first film in three years. She said, "I have said for two years now that I would not go back to films unless it was something that absolutely intrigued me, and something that would not take me away from my husband for too long. I have found just that in The Mirror Crack'd and am longing to work with some very dear friends again."[9]
There had been a series of Miss Marple films in the 1960s starring Margaret Rutherford. Hamilton said that Rutherford "was a divine clown but she was no more Miss Marple than... fly to the moon. We are doing Miss Christie's Miss Marple, a more serious person, a gossip, a bit of a snob. And she doesn't fall off her bicycle into the village duckpond".[1]
Lansbury said she played the part of Marple "absolutely straight. I'm trying to get at the woman Agatha Christie created: an Edwardian maiden lady imbued with great humanity and a mind of tremendous breadth. She's very exactly described in the books as tall, pale-complexioned, with twinkling blue eyes and white hair - not a fat galumph of a creature at all. I base my performance on that. Also on the fact that she has tremendous alertness and curiosity allied to a great appetite for murder." She signed a three-picture deal, meaning the intention was to make two more Marples.[10]
Filming
Smarden in Kent doubles as St Mary Mead
St Clere Estate, in Heaverham, part of the Sevenoaks District of Kent, was used as the grand home of Marina Rudd (Taylor) and her husband Jason (Hudson). Ye Olde George Inn and a bridge on Church Street in Shoreham are both noticeable in the production, doubling as part of the village of St Mary Mead. The village of Smarden and St Michael's Church are also used to double as the village. Also throughout filming the "Thatched House" cottage in Smarden was used as Miss Marple's cottage. Smarden is located in the Ashford district of Kent,and the traditional thatched houses and village shops made it a perfect filming location.[11] The film was shot on a 10-week schedule from 12 May[12] to 18 July 1980.[13]
"It was fun", said Curtis. "A piece of cake. I didn't have to get all sweaty like in Spartacus and I had a good time." "I never had so much fun making a movie", said Novak. "It may not be my greatest role, but I didn't have a studio executive breathing down my neck, dictating my every move."[14]
Novak added that she and Taylor "...both had a lot of funny, bitchy lines to say to each other. In real life, that bitchiness rarely exists on a movie set, but actresses have certainly thought about it a lot. But they've never said it. That's why this movie was so much fun." However, her return to filmmaking was only temporary. "Doing something once in a while, like The Mirror Crack'd, is fine and it makes me feel like Cinderella at the ball. But as a steady diet — no way."[15]
Biographers theorise that Christie used an incident in the real-life of the American film star Gene Tierney as the basis of the plot of The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side.[16] In June 1943, while pregnant with her first daughter, Tierney contracted German measles during her only appearance at the Hollywood Canteen. Due to Tierney's illness, her daughter was born deaf, partially blind with cataracts and severely developmentally disabled. Some time after the tragedy surrounding the birth, the actress learned from a fan who approached her for an autograph at a tennis party that the woman (who was then a member of the women's branch of the Marine Corps) had sneaked out of quarantine while sick with German measles to meet Tierney at her only Hollywood Canteen appearance. In her autobiography, Tierney wrote that after the woman had recounted her story, "I stood there for a very long minute. There was no point in telling her of the tragedy that had occurred. I turned and walked away very quickly. After that, I didn't care if I was ever again anyone's favorite actress".[17]
The incident, as well as the circumstances under which the information was imparted to the actress, is repeated almost verbatim in Christie's story. Tierney's life experience had been well-publicized.
Reception
The film was considered a box office disappointment in the United States.[18] Lansbury never reprised her performance as Miss Marple.
Related Research Articles
Miss Jane Marple is a fictional character in Agatha Christie's crime novels and short stories. Miss Marple lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur consulting detective. Often characterized as an elderly spinster, she is one of Christie's best-known characters and has been portrayed numerous times on screen. Her first appearance was in a short story published in The Royal Magazine in December 1927, "The Tuesday Night Club", which later became the first chapter of The Thirteen Problems (1932). Her first appearance in a full-length novel was in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930, and her last appearance was in Sleeping Murder in 1976.
Murder, She Wrote is an American crime drama television series, created by Peter S. Fischer, Richard Levinson and William Link, starring Angela Lansbury, and produced and distributed by Universal Television for the CBS network. The series focuses on the life of Jessica Fletcher, a mystery writer and amateur detective, who becomes involved in solving murders that take place in the fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine, across the United States, and abroad. The program ran for 12 seasons from September 30, 1984, to May 19, 1996, for a total of 264 episodes and included amongst its recurring cast Tom Bosley, William Windom and Ron Masak, as well as a vast array of guest cast members including Michael Horton, Keith Michell and Julie Adams.
Gene Eliza Tierney was an American film and stage actress. Acclaimed for her great beauty, she became established as a leading lady. She was best known for her portrayal of the title character in the film Laura (1944), and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Ellen Berent Harland in Leave Her to Heaven (1945).
Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in October 1976 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed for £3.50 and the US edition for $7.95.
The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, a novel by Agatha Christie, was published in the UK in 1962 and a year later in the US under the title The Mirror Crack'd. The story features amateur detective Miss Marple solving a mystery in St. Mary Mead.
St Mary Mead is a fictional village created by popular crime fiction author Dame Agatha Christie.
Joan Bogle Hickson, OBE was an English actress of theatre, film and television. She was known for her role as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in the television series Miss Marple. She also narrated a number of Miss Marple stories on audiobooks.
The Murder at the Vicarage is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in October 1930 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence and the US edition at $2.00.
The Body in the Library is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1942 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in May of the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence. The novel features her fictional amateur detective Miss Marple.
They Do It with Mirrors is a detective fiction novel by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1952 under the title of Murder with Mirrors and in UK by the Collins Crime Club on 17 November that year under Christie's original title. The US edition retailed at $2.50 and the UK edition at ten shillings and sixpence (10/6). The book features her detective Miss Marple.
4.50 from Paddington is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in November 1957 in the United Kingdom by Collins Crime Club. This work was published in the United States at the same time as What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!, by Dodd, Mead. The novel was published in serial form before the book was released in each nation, and under different titles. The US edition retailed at $2.95.
Murder Ahoy! is the last of four Miss Marple films made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that starred Margaret Rutherford. As in the previous three, Murder, She Said (1961), Murder at the Gallop (1963), Murder Most Foul (1964), the actress plays Agatha Christie's amateur sleuth Miss Jane Marple, with Charles 'Bud' Tingwell as (Chief) Inspector Craddock and Stringer Davis playing Mr. Stringer.
Julia Kathleen Nancy McKenzie is an English actress, singer, presenter, and theatre director. She has premièred leading roles written by both Alan Ayckbourn and Stephen Sondheim. On television, she is known for her BAFTA Award nominated role as Hester Fields in the sitcom Fresh Fields (1984–1986) and its sequel French Fields (1989–1991), and as Miss Marple in Agatha Christie's Marple (2009–2013).
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Agatha Christie's Marple is a British ITV television programme loosely based on the books and short stories by British crime novelist Agatha Christie. The title character was played by Geraldine McEwan from the first to the third series, until her retirement from the role, and by Julia McKenzie from the fourth series onwards. Unlike the counterpart TV series Agatha Christie's Poirot, the show took many liberties with Christie’s works, most notably adding Miss Marple’s character to the adaptations of novels in which she never appeared. Following the conclusion of the sixth series, the BBC acquired the rights for the production of Agatha Christie adaptations, suggesting that ITV would be unable to make a seventh series of Marple.
Miss Marple, titled Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in the series, is a British television series based on the Miss Marple murder mystery novels by Agatha Christie, starring Joan Hickson in the title role. It aired from 26 December 1984 to 27 December 1992 on BBC1. All twelve original Miss Marple novels by Christie were dramatised.
Lists of adaptations of the works of Agatha Christie:
Sir Henry Clithering is a fictional character who appears in a series of short stories by Agatha Christie, featuring Jane Marple. The stories were first published in monthly magazines starting in 1927, and then collected into a hard-bound collection, The Thirteen Problems in 1932. Clithering also appeared in several novels featuring Miss Marple.
Raymond West is a fictional character who appears or is mentioned in several of Agatha Christie's novels and short stories featuring Jane Marple.
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References
1 2 The exorcism of Miss Rutherford. The Guardian. 12 July 1980: 9.
↑ "Three stars look back at what were often bad days". Boston Globe. 4 January 1981. p.1.
↑ Klemesrud, Judy (26 December 1980). "AFTER 11 YEARS, A FEATURE FILM FOR KIM NOVAK". The New York Times. p.C.6.
↑ Osborne (2006). Leading Ladies. Chronicle Books. p.195. - "Biography". The Official Web Site of Gene Tierney. Archived from the original on 7 February 2012. Retrieved 12 January 2008. - Tierney and Herskowitz (1978). Self-Portrait. Wyden Books. p.101.
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