|
Post by Pippen on Jan 27, 2024 14:46:04 GMT
An all purpose place to post about Miss Jane Marple in films, television and perhaps even on radio.
|
|
|
Post by Teleadm on Jan 27, 2024 20:41:41 GMT
Think it's a so-called episode of Goodyear Playhouse TV-series A Murder Is Announced 1956, with Dame Gracie Fields as Marple. The young man on the right is offcourse a young Roger Moore.
|
|
|
Post by Pippen on Jan 27, 2024 21:09:32 GMT
She is NOTHING like the written Jane Marple BUT she was my first introduction to the character and my first introduction to Agatha Christie, so she has a special place of honor in my literary and my cinematic heart Margaret Rutherford here with her real life husband, Stringer Davis who appeared with her in several Marple Movies
|
|
|
Post by Teleadm on Jan 27, 2024 22:00:00 GMT
Ron Goodwin's theme music for the Margaret Rutherford Marple's was a huge summer hit on Swedish hit parades... We called it 4:50 från Paddington. Many know-it-alls thought it was based on some classical music. For youngsters who can't stand cembalo music, here is a modern version.
|
|
|
Post by politicidal1 on Jan 28, 2024 3:30:55 GMT
As played by Angela Lansbury in The Mirror Crack'd (1980).
|
|
|
Post by Nalkarj on Jan 29, 2024 20:48:11 GMT
She is NOTHING like the written Jane Marple BUT she was my first introduction to the character and my first introduction to Agatha Christie, so she has a special place of honor in my literary and my cinematic heart Same! I love Rutherford’s Marple, though I wish the movies around her were better. My favorite take on the character, though, is Geraldine McEwan’s. I loved how she played Marple with a twinkle in her eye and an impish wit; in fact, she’s a bit too impish to be Christie’s character (who started off as “the worst cat in the village” but quickly became rather twee), but I actually prefer her Marple to Christie’s. (Most Christie fans love Joan Hickson, who I’ve always felt comes off as too humorless and bluenosey.) Unfortunately, the McEwan show almost completely fell apart after Season 1; the Towards Zero adaptation is mostly well done, but most of the episodes are dreadful. In particular, the adaptation of The Sittaford Mystery (one of Christie’s best and least-known books) is simultaneously boring and incomprehensible. Anyway, top 10 Marples: 1. “The Murder at the Vicarage” (2004, Agatha Christie’s Marple) 2. “A Murder Is Announced” (2005, Agatha Christie’s Marple) 3. Murder, She Said (1961) 4. “4.50 from Paddington” (2004, Agatha Christie’s Marple) 5. “The Body in the Library” (2004, Agatha Christie’s Marple) 6. “Towards Zero” (2007, Agatha Christie’s Marple) 7. The Mirror Crack’d (1980) 8. Murder at the Gallop (1963) 9. Murder Most Foul (1964) 10. “The Blue Geranium” (2010, Agatha Christie’s Marple)
|
|
|
Post by Doghouse6 on Jan 29, 2024 22:14:03 GMT
Think it's a so-called episode of Goodyear Playhouse TV-series A Murder Is Announced 1956, with Dame Gracie Fields as Marple. The young man on the right is offcourse a young Roger Moore. This fascinates me, and I intend trying to track it down. I've always adored Gracie Fields, and am curious to see how she integrated her indominable personality and presence into the character of Marple.
|
|
|
Post by Doghouse6 on Jan 29, 2024 22:29:35 GMT
She is NOTHING like the written Jane Marple BUT she was my first introduction to the character and my first introduction to Agatha Christie, so she has a special place of honor in my literary and my cinematic heart Same! I love Rutherford’s Marple, though I wish the movies around her were better. My favorite take on the character, though, is Geraldine McEwan’s. I loved how she played Marple with a twinkle in her eye and an impish wit; in fact, she’s a bit too impish to be Christie’s character (who started off as “the worst cat in the village” but quickly becomes rather twee), but I actually prefer her Marple to Christie’s. (Most Christie fans love Joan Hickson, who I’ve always felt comes off as too humorless and bluenosey.) Unfortunately, the McEwan show almost completely fell apart after Season 1; the Towards Zero adaptation is mostly well done, but most of the episodes are dreadful. In particular, the adaptation of The Sittaford Mystery (one of Christie’s best and least-known books) is simultaneously boring and incomprehensible. It's difficult not to love Rutherford as Marple, regardless of questions about faithfulness to character or quality of films. Like the Thin Mans, hers have always struck me as being less about the whodunnit than about the fun of the ride (so ably assisted by colorful foils like Ron Moody, Robert Morley and Lionel Jeffries). I'm on the same page with you about Hickson, and do enjoy McEwan, but have always leaned most toward Julia McKenzie, who projects a sense of quiet formidability that very much works for me.
|
|
|
Post by Nalkarj on Jan 29, 2024 22:59:56 GMT
It's difficult not to love Rutherford as Marple, regardless of questions about faithfulness to character or quality of films. Like the Thin Mans, hers have always struck me as being less about the whodunnit than about the fun of the ride (so ably assisted by colorful foils like Ron Moody, Robert Morley and Lionel Jeffries). I'm on the same page with you about Hickson, and do enjoy McEwan, but have always leaned most toward Julia McKenzie, who projects a sense of quiet formidability that very much works for me. Oh, it’s not so much the quality of the whodunits as much as the pictures in general, I think: I recently rewatched Murder Most Foul and thought that—despite Rutherford and wonderful things like her recitation of “Dan McGrew”—it sorta loses some spark at the halfway mark. Murder, She Said keeps up the pacing and the fun throughout, in my opinion, which is why it’s favorite of the quartet (quintet if you count Rutherford and Davis’s cameo in The Alphabet Murders). I don’t dislike McKenzie’s Marple (I prefer her to Hickson, that’s for sure), but ultimately I have a fondness for McEwan’s puckishness. The “Bertram’s Hotel” adaptation is pretty irredeemable, but McEwan has this one moment where she gets caught eavesdropping and I found it delightful and hilarious. Totally tangential, and you’re probably well aware of this, but McKenzie appeared with Millicent Martin and former Sleuth-singer suspect David Kernan in Side by Side by Sondheim. That’s a fun cast recording.
|
|
|
Post by Pippen on Jan 30, 2024 0:42:17 GMT
TV Jane Marples for me 1) Joan Hickson ..the most like the written Jane - quietly smart and unobtrusive "Her first Agatha Christie role was "Miss Pryce" in the play, "Appointment With Death" (1946), which prompted Christie, herself, to write "I hope you will play my dear Miss Marple". She began playing this, her best known part, in her late 70s, in a BBC television series which ran from 1984 to 1992. A Miss Marple fan, Queen Elizabeth II, awarded her the Order of the British Empire in 1987. After the series closed, Joan recorded audio books of the Christie mysteries.
|
|
|
Post by Pippen on Jan 30, 2024 0:49:04 GMT
TV Marples Geraldine McEwan A bit more contemporary and more of a "buttinsky" when it comes to sleuthing. In 2003, Geraldine was chosen to play Agatha Christie's Jane Marple. She appeared in 12 two-hour mysteries for ITV/PBS.
|
|
|
Post by Pippen on Jan 30, 2024 0:55:39 GMT
TV Marples Julia MacKenzie 11 episodes, 2008-2013 "Personal Quote" - I'm very excited, but also slightly daunted by the enormous responsibility that comes with taking on such an iconic role. Just about everybody in the world knows about Miss Marple and has an opinion of what she should be like, so I'm under no illusions about the size of the task ahead. My #2 favorite of the "TV Marples"
|
|
|
Post by Pippen on Jan 30, 2024 1:37:46 GMT
Murder She Said (1961) - Margaret Ruthgerford That's JOAN HICKSON as Mrs. Kidder !!!
|
|
|
Post by Pippen on Jan 30, 2024 1:43:57 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Nalkarj on Jan 30, 2024 2:05:41 GMT
Yeah, those “listicles” always seem to be written by people who have never seen, and have no clue, what they’re writing about. “McEwan's Marple is notable for how stern, sterile, and unfunny she is”—that’s very obviously by someone who’s never seen McEwan’s Marple. (Hilarious that the writer made this comment about the Marple who’s tolerant, elfish, and funny.) I once saw one listicle that rhapsodized over the ’70s U.K. film adaptation of Christie’s The Mousetrap, particularly praising the cinematography’s “atmospheric charm.” Only problem is, there is no ’70s adaptation of The Mousetrap. In fact, there’s no English-language movie adaptation of The Mousetrap at all.
|
|