Rutherford, Dame Margaret

Rutherford, Dame Margaret (1892–1972), English actress. She was late in starting her stage career, being in her early thirties when a small legacy enabled her to give up teaching elocution and the piano. She made her first appearance in pantomime at the Old Vic in 1925, under Robert Atkins, subsequently playing several small parts without much success. The turning-point in her career came when she played the formidable and extremely eccentric Bijou Furze in Spring Meeting (1938) by M. J. Farrell and John Perry. She was immediately recognized as an outstanding comedienne, and in the following year played Miss Prism in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. After a serious role as Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper in Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca (1940), she achieved a great success as the medium Madame Arcati in Coward's Blithe Spirit (1941). She then made her New York début as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest (1947), and returned to London to appear as Miss Whitchurch in John Dighton's farce The Happiest Days of Your Life (1948); Madame Desmortes (in a bath-chair) in Anouilh's Ring round the Moon (1950); and Lady Wishfort in Congreve's The Way of the World in 1953, in which she gave a masterly impression of an ‘old peeled wall’. She was then seen in Anouilh's Time Remembered (1954) and, after an Australian tour, in Rodney Ackland's adaptation of John Vari's Farewell, Farewell, Eugene (1959; NY, 1960). She played Bijou again in Dazzling Prospect (1961), the sequel to Spring Meeting, and was then seen as two of Sheridan's ladies, Mrs Candour in The School for Scandal in 1962 and Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals (her last appearance on the stage) in 1966. At her best in comedy, she could convey pathos and also inject a certain sinister element into some of her personifications of unpredictable old ladies.