Highlights - remembering TV shows of our youth – Margaret Rutherford’s Miss Marple

Murder She Said marked the first big-screen appearance of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. The script by David Pursall and Jack Seddon is based on the 1957 novel "4:50 From Paddington".

It's success lead to three more equally entertaining films starring Margaret Rutherford. Agatha Christie liked Rutherford as an actress but thought that she was all wrong for the part. Indeed Rutherford is nothing like the Jane Marple that Joan Hickson would portray in the highly successful BBC series of the 1980's-90's, but she is a delight to watch as she makes the part entirely her own and earned herself a legion of fans.
Incedentally, Hickson appears in this film in a minor role as the miserable housekeeper Mrs Kidder.
A great supporting cast includes Muriel Pavlow, Arthur Kennedy and James Robertson Justice. Charles Tingwell plays the hapless Inspector Craddock who cannot bear Miss Marple interfering and solving his cases for him, a role that in which he is featured in all the entries in this series. Another regular in the series is Stringer Davis (Rutherford's real life husband) who plays the local librarian and her closest friend Mr Stringer.

Sequels:
MURDER AT THE GALLOP (1963)
MURDER MOST FOUL (1964)
MURDER AHOY (produced in 1964 but released in late 1965 to space out the series).