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11/01/2004: "The Miss Marple File"
With the news that Agatha Christie's genteel geriatric sleuth is about to make a reappearance on our television screens portrayed by Geraldine McEwan, we thought it would be interesting to investigate this unlikely popular character. As a detective, Miss Jane Marple has none of the usual characteristics or attributes of the determined detective. She is an old spinster who has never moved very far from her own village and indulges in none of the vices typical of many investigators such as drugs, alcohol or sex; although she does seem to be addicted to knitting.
Miss Marple was based on Christie's own grandmother, a pleasant woman who nevertheless, according to Christie, 'expected the worst of everyone and everything', and was usually right. The character first appeared in a series of six short stories in The Sketch magazine. She was a member of the Tuesday Club, a discussion group that met in the quiet Kentish village of St Mary Meade to discuss unsolved crimes. Other members included the vicar; Miss Marple's nephew, Raymond West, a successful novelist, his fiancée, Joyce, an artist and others. However it was Miss Marple who always arrived at the correct solution to the crimes. These short stories were collected with seven others written especially for the volume The Thirteen Problems (1932), which was published two years after Miss Marple's first novel appearance in Murder at the Vicarage (1930).
When we first encounter Miss Marple she is very much the stereotypical spinster - blue-eyed, somewhat frail and wearing a black lace cap and mittens, along with a rather disapproving expression. She is also a gleeful gossip and not very nice. She modernises over the years and becomes a nicer and more likeable character.
Miss Marple is able to solve difficult crimes not only because of her shrewd intelligence, but because, as one critic put it, 'St Mary Meade, over her lifetime has put on a pageant of human depravity rivalled only by that of Sodom and Gomorrah. No crime can arise without reminding Miss Marple of some parallel incident in the history of her time.'
St Mary Meade is the setting for crimes in three novels and many of the short stories, but thanks to a network of friends and her nephew's generosity Miss Marple is able to travel and use her skills elsewhere.
Christie's other sleuth, Poirot was old when he first made his appearance in A Mysterious Affair at Styles and similarly when she first appeared in 1928, Miss Marple's age is given as seventy four. But we cannot take that as being accurate. By the time she died in Sleeping Murder (published in 1977 but written in 1940) she must have been a recipient of the Queen's telegram. Indeed, in Bertram's Hotel (1965) she is described as looking a hundred and throughout the canon, her age is stressed. In essence she seems to be stuck at around the age of eighty. She is tall and thin; her hair is white, her face placid, pink and crinkled; her china blue eyes appear innocent. Gardening is amongst her chief interests, although she much prefers a juicy homicide. Her age and apparent innocent appearance help to camouflage her detective abilities and agile mind.
Part of Miss Marple's appeal lies in her contradictory nature. She's led a sheltered life, never known passion or the trials of domestic family life, but he has encountered every side of human nature and nothing shocks her. She is a thorough-going cynic: 'it really is very dangerous to believe people. I never have for years.'
In A Talent to Deceive - An Appreciation of Agatha Christie, Robert Barnard observed that Miss Marple is not 'in any rigorous sense a detective at all. Her cases are much more loosely organised affairs than Poirot's: they are solved less by clues and scrupulous reasoning from them than by intuition and village parallels. At the end of a Miss Marple book the villain tends to be brought to confess by a trick, or he commits suicide, or he is killed by another character. It is rare for Miss Marple actually to have anything that could be described as proof of anyone's guilt - something that could be produced in court in order to make a case.'
Not then the stuff of high drama - and yet Miss Marple has had a healthy dramatised career. However her screen debut did not occur until nearly thirty years after her first appearance in print. It was television not film which first introduced mass audiences to the elderly crime solver. On December 30, 1956, Goodyear Playhouse presented an hour-long adaptation of A Murder is Announced on American television. Gracie Fields, former music hall star turned actress, made a rather unlikely Jane Marple.
In the sixties MGM set up a production unit at Boreham Wood Studios in Hertfordshire and amongst their programme of supporting features, they started a Miss Marple series featuring the eccentric comedy actress Margaret Rutherford. The first in the series, Murder, She Said, based on 4.50 From Paddington set the humorous tone. Changes both to Marple's character and the plot were instigated for the movie audiences. Rutherford's Marple was portrayed as eccentric figure, not very far removed from the role of Madame Acarti in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit which Rutherford played in the film version made in 1945. Rather than the surreptitious observer of the novels, Rutherford's Miss Marple became a woman of action. This creative licence taken by the film makers resulted in the elderly sleuth going undercover as a housemaid, riding on horseback and even taking part in a vigorous swordfight. Part of her deal with MGM was to cast her husband Stringer Davies as a librarian friend, her partner in crime solving. The result did not please Agatha Christie who thought Rutherford was too boisterous and comical for the reserved spinster of the novels.
However Murder, She Said was a box office success and three more films followed: Murder at the Gallop (1963) actually based on a Poirot novel, After the Funeral; Murder Most Foul (1964) based on another Poirot novel, Mrs McGinty's Dead; and Murder Ahoy (1964) which was not based on any Christie work.
Although Christie hated these films - all the way to the bank, no doubt - she admired and eventually became friends with Rutherford - even dedicating one of her later Marple novels, The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side to the actress.
In 1980, in the wake of the movie successes of the big budget Poirot films Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, Hollywood filmed another Marple story, this time with a far-too-young Angela Lansbury in the role, surrounded by an all star cast including Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Kim Novak and Tony Curtis. While this movie avoided the comic slant of the Rutherford vehicles, it was too slick and glossy to capture the essence of the Marple novels and too little screen time was given to the lady detective.
In two made-for-television features, A Caribbean Mystery (1983) and Murder with Mirrors (1984) veteran American stage actress Helen Hayes played a suitably elderly Miss Marple. Hayes was eighty three when she made the first movie. Sue Grafton contributed to the screenplay of A Caribbean Mystery and presented Miss Marple as benign and chirpy. The New York Times called Hayes's portrayal 'delightful and resilient.'
However it was the BBC television series which began in the 80s that brought what many regard as the definitive Miss Marple to the screen, played by Joan Hickson. The series was a resounding success and was seen in more than forty countries. From 1985 to 1992, Hickson filmed all twelve of the Miss Marple novels.
In promoting the programmes in America, they were described as 'heritage productions': 'As a celebration of English culture, 'heritage' demands that the program be as faithful as possible to the source material. Thus the BBC's Miss Marple does not chase the villains herself as Margaret Rutherford did. In another departure from the more typical detective narratives, at the denouements, Miss Marple is never involved in any physical fight or chase. Although she solves the mystery - through observation, a few pertinent questions and a bit of knitting - Miss Marple has very little physical impact on the progress of the narrative. She is often peripheral rather than central. Although she may engineer a denouement as in 4.50 from Paddington, she is not involved in the chase that follows. Rather it is the policeman and good male characters who become involved in car chases and athletic leaps through glass windows.
Rather like David Suchet who became the physical embodiment of the literary Poirot, Joan Hickson, in her neat two piece and high buttoned blouse actually became the Miss Marple of the Christie novels.
Strangely enough, it was actually Christie herself who first detected the possibility of Hickson's future triumph. The two met on the set of Murder She Said. Hickson later recalled, 'She said to me, 'Someday I would like you to play my Miss Marple,' I was quite taken aback, as I was young at the time.'
While the Rutherford movies were set in the period in which they were filmed, the BBC series was set in a nostalgic version of the past, somewhere in the 50s on the brink of the 50s. As such they have not aged and remain eminently watchable today. So, I wonder what has prompted ITV to resurrect the character for a four new adaptations of The Body in the Library, A Murder is Announced, Murder at the Vicarage and 4.50 from Paddington. What new elements do they think they can bring to this project? How do they think they can improve upon the almost perfect? Well, we shall have to wait and see what they do with the stories and how actress Geraldine McEwan copes with the role. However these prestige productions reveal that there is still a great fascination with that funny old lady from St Mary Meade who has the fascinating knack of encountering murders and then solving them while at the same time knitting another cardigan.
The Marple Checklist
The Novels
The Murder at the Vicarage, 1930.
The Body in the Library, 1942.
The Moving Finger, 1943.
A Murder is Announced, 1950.
They do it with Mirrors, 1953.
A Pocket Full of Rye, 1953.
4.50 from Paddington, 1957.
The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, 1962.
A Caribbean Mystery, 1964. At Bertram's Hotel, 1965.
Nemesis, 1971.
Sleeping Murder, 1976.
Short Stories
Thirteen Problems, 1932.
The Regatta Mystery, 1939 (nine stories, one featuring Miss Marple).
Three Blind Mice, 1950 (nine stories, four with Miss Marple).
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, 1960 (six stories, one with Miss Marple).
Double Sin, 1961 (eight stories, two with Miss Marple).
Miss Marple's Final Cases, 1979 (eight stories, six with Miss Marple)
On Screen
Gracie Fields as Marple
A Murder is Announced, 1956. Goodyear Playhouse. USA television.
Margaret Rutherford as Marple
Murder She Said, 1962. MGM
Murder at the Gallop, 1963. MGM
Murder Most Foul, 1964. MGM
Murder Ahoy, 1964. MGM
The Alphabet Murders, 1966. MGM (Brief guest appearance in the movie starring Tony Randall as Poirot).
Angela Lansbury as Marple
The Mirror Crack'd, 1980. EMI
Helen Hayes as Marple
A Caribbean Mystery, 1983. CBS
Murder with Mirrors, 1984. CBS
Joan Hickson as Marple
The Body in the Library, 1984. BBC
The Moving Finger, 1985. BBC
A Murder is Announced, 1985. BBC
A Pocketful of Rye, 1985. BBC
Murder at the Vicarage, 1986. BBC
Sleeping Murder, 1987. BBC
At Bertram's Hotel, 1987. BBC
Nemesis, 1987. BBC
4.50 from Paddington, 1987. BBC
A Caribbean Mystery, 1989. BBC
They do it with Mirrors, 1991. BBC
The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side, 1992. BBC
(This article first appeared in issue 62 of SHERLOCK magazine.)
David Stuart Davies on Monday, November 1st 2004 @ 04:11 PM GMT [link]