Marple on Screen

Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple

The first Miss Marple feature film was released in 1962. Starring Margaret Rutherford, Murder, She Said depicted a very different Miss Marple to the ones fans knew from the books. The quiet and shrewd Miss Marple was loud and active in the hands of Rutherford and many, including the Christie family, were not altogether impressed with this interpretation. Based on 4.50 from Paddington, the film included a number of changes from the book; the most dramatic was that Miss Marple is the witness to the murder not Mrs McGillicuddy.

Murder, She Said was a box office success and Murder at the Gallop followed in 1963, with Murder Most Foul and Murder Ahoy both released in 1964. Murder at the Gallop was loosely based on After the Funeral which is a Hercule Poirot novel. Murder Most Foul was again based on a Poirot novel, this time Mrs McGinty’s Dead. In the biggest departure, Murder Ahoy was not based on a Christie novel at all! Though many object to the dramatic changes made in these films, it can’t be denied that many others love Rutherford in these comedic and entertaining movies - and the theme tune is very memorable.

In 1980 EMI produced The Mirror Crack’d. This time Angela Lansbury played the role (as a cigarette smoking) Miss Marple in this very lavish production. The glamour of the story, featuring Hollywood actors, was replicated in the production, which starred which starred Elizabeth Taylor, Tony Curtis and Rock Hudson.

Joan Hickson as Miss Marple

Miss Marple has also been portrayed on television by a number of actresses. Helen Hayes, winner of two academy awards, portrayed Miss Marple in two made for television movies. The first was A Caribbean Mystery (1983) and the second was Murder with Mirrors (1984). Both were shown on CBS.

In 1984, Joan Hickson revived the role in the BBC’s Miss Marple series. For many, the quiet and shrewd actress was the embodiment of Miss Marple. For eight years Hickson played the sleuth in all twelve of the Miss Marple novels. According to her interview with The Agatha Christie Society in 1993, Joan's connections with Agatha Christie go back to 1937, when she appeared as Emmy in Love from a Stranger. Then in 1962, she played Mrs Kidder in Margaret Rutherford's Murder She Said. It was on the set that Joan first met Agatha Christie: "She said to me, ‘Some day I would like you to play my Miss Marple.' I was quite taken aback, as I was young at the time."

In 2004 the Miss Marple stories were refreshed for television. Starring Geraldine McEwan in the role of Marple, it has run for three successful series and in February 2008, Agatha Christie Ltd confirmed that Julia McKenzie, the popular actress of Fresh Fields and Cranford, would replace McEwan as the sleuth. At the time McKenzie is reported to have said: "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.”

DVDs of all the Miss Marple films can be bought here.

Explore

• Characters: Miss Marple
• Stories: A Caribbean Mystery