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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 6, No. 23 |
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4.50 From Paddington AND THE THREE MOVIE VERSIONS WITH THREE DIFFERENT MISS MARPLES
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Christie's story served
three Marples in 40 years
of TheColumnists.com
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This column reveals certain plot twists and details that may spoil your enjoyment if you haven't read the book or seen the film versions already. I suggest you read this after you've at least read the book. --Ron Miller |
One of the best
of Agatha Christie’s later Miss Marple novels is "4:50
From Paddington" (1957), sometimes known in the U.S. as
"What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw." It also must have been
considered the most dramatically interesting of them all because
it has been filmed three times, all with distinctly different
Jane Marples.
It has a deceptively simple plot gimmick that wasn’t all
that original, even in 1957: A woman riding in a railroad car
witnesses what seems to be a murder taking place in another railroad
car as two trains pass each other on closely parallel tracks.
In the novel, the woman is Elspeth McGillicuddy, who's coming
to visit Miss Jane Marple, an old friend, in St. Mary Mead before
leaving for a trip overseas. Still in shock from what she’s
seen--and the railroad’s apparent indifference to her story--Mrs.
McGillicuddy is comforted by Miss Marple, whose own curiosity
is piqued by the story. Marple believes her friend, even though
no dead body was found on the train nor on the railroad tracks
along the route of either train.
Working with Elspeth to reconstruct what must have happened,
Miss Marple concludes that the body must have been pushed off
the train into the underbrush near the large estate known as
Rutherford Hall. She reasons the killer must have returned quickly
and moved the body, possibly hiding it somewhere on the estate,
where railroad investigators would not have looked.
Without a corpse to inspire them, the police aren’t interested
in pursuing the matter any further. In fact, they treat Miss
Marple and Elspeth McGillicuddy pretty much as dotty old ladies
who got all worked up about some bit of nonsense on the train
that surely wasn’t a murder. In other words, if anyone is
going to find out about the murder, it will have to be Jane Marple,
still the most famous elderly female amateur sleuth in the mystery
genre.
The most important thing to remember about Christie’s original
concept of the novel is that she was endeavoring to portray a
much older Jane Marple than we first met in "Murder at the
Vicarage" back in 1930. Many years have gone by, many mysteries
have been solved and it's now in the 1950s. The Marple of "4:50
From Paddington" realizes she’s "physically unfit"
for the challenges of investigating this murder in person. Her
physician has advised her to start taking it easy. That’s
why she enlists the services of a young woman she knows--32-year-old
Lucy Eyelesbarrow--to handle the "leg work" for her
investigation.
Lucy is a handsome young woman who, though she’s well-educated
and could do work of a much higher grade, has decided to specialize
in taking short-term positions as a housekeeper for some of England’s
wealthiest people. Jane knows Lucy because her nephew Raymond
West, the famous novelist, once hired Lucy as a nurse for Jane
while his aunt was recovering from a bout of pneumonia. Jane
contacts Lucy and asks her to take a maid's job at Rutherford
Hall, so she can look for the hidden dead body in her spare time.
Lucy agrees, lands the job--her youth, beauty and absurd over-qualifications
make her a bargain at any price--and begins reporting regularly
to Miss Marple, who is staying nearby at an inn run by a former
maidservant of hers. Marple digests the information Lucy supplies
and soon enough Lucy finds the body of a woman who had been strangled
to death and hidden in a storage building on the estate.
So, in "4.50 From Paddington," Marple functions very
much like Rex Stout’s armchair detective, Nero Wolfe, while
Lucy does the on-site detective work, much like Wolfe’s
sidekick, Archie Goodwin.
The first film version of the novel was MGM’s British-made
"Murder, She Said," first in a series of four Miss
Marple films starring British comic actress Margaret Rutherford.
In that 1961 film, Christie's original concept went into the
rubbish bin. There is no Lucy because Miss Marple (Margaret Rutherford)
does all the detective work herself, getting the maid job on
her own so she can skulk around the estate and conduct her own
search for the body and clues to the murderer. There is also
no Elspeth McGillicuddy because Marple herself sees the strangulation
as the other train zooms by.
That, of course, meant Marple had no Elspeth to help her scout
around before getting her housekeeper job. Instead, screenwriter
David D. Osborn created a new character, Mr. Jim Stringer, a
doddering old bookstore clerk and boy-friend for the spinster
sleuth. Mr. Stringer, who’s played by Rutherford’s
real-life husband, Stringer Davis, appears in all four Marple
films that starred Rutherford. Call it nepotism, if you like,
but Stringer Davis was an agreeable old chap and seemed perfectly-suited
for Rutherford, if not the Miss Marple we all cherish.
Rutherford herself was a radical departure from the Miss Marple
of the printed page. The beloved English character actress was
short, rather stout and did lots of mugging for the camera, with
exaggerated double "takes." She was nearly 70 when
she first played Jane Marple. In contrast, the literary Marple
was a quiet, maybe even meek-appearing village busybody, who
didn't do a lot of prattle nor attract undue attention to herself.
Rutherford's Marple was like a giant stone rolling down a hill.
Her presence almost by itself turns "Murder, She Said"
into a Margaret Rutherford comedy vehicle rather than a classic
"cozy" mystery.
In one sequence, for instance, Miss Marple and Mr. Stringer find
the place by the railroad tracks where they think the body was
dumped. Marple is sure the killer hauled the corpse to a nearby
stone fence and pushed it over. She wants to climb up and see
what’s beyond the wall. This leads to an embarrassing bit
of slapstick in which the hapless Mr. Stringer has to hold her
up high enough to peek over the wall, her enormous rear end nearly
in his face.
When Miss Marple finally goes to Rutherford Hall to apply for the job, she's greeted by the manor's chief housekeeper, Mrs. Kidder, who takes her into the kitchen for a brief chat. This is a historic moment in mystery trivia since Mrs. Kidder is played by Joan Hickson, who would take over the role of Miss Marple two decades later for the acclaimed British television series, "Agatha Christie's Miss Marple."
Though the storyline otherwise resembles Christie's original, eliminating the Lucy character probably was quite jarring to readers who enjoyed the book and understood where it fell in the long saga of Jane Marple's many cases. But it's best to remember "Murder, She Said" was the first film about Miss Marple. If they had followed Christie's story faithfully, those not familiar with the book might have wondered why the famous "detective" wasn't taking a more active role in solving the case and instead was turning it over to a stand-in. The film was enormously popular and led to three more feature films starring Rutherford as Marple, so perhaps the end justified the means in the eyes of the producers and the studio brass.
The decision to turn Marple into a comic character is even less justifiable to Christie purists. Rutherford was a veteran actress who employed lots of comic schtick that was totally out of place for Jane Marple. The infectious musical score by Ron Goodwin wasn't subtle either, making sure we didn't forget we were watching a comedy. Still, the four Marple films brought about a great career revival for Rutherford, who went on to win a movie Academy Award two years later for a supporting part in MGM's "The V.I.P.'s."
Today the four Rutherford Marple films are warmly remembered by less picky mystery fans. One example: The great macabre cartoonist Edward Gorey much preferred Rutherford's Marple to all the others. The purists are more likely to revere the 12 Marple movies made for television by Joan Hickson two decades later.
The Joan Hickson version of "4.50 From Paddington" uses Christie's original title and hews much more closely to the original novel. Elspeth McGillicuddy (Mona Bruce) witnesses the murder on a passing train and Jane Marple takes up her case after the authorities frustrate her attempts to identify the victim or her attacker.
Screenwriter T.R. Bowen does add in Detective Inspector Slack (David Horovitch), who serves as Marple's eternally-perturbed police ally/adversary through several of the Hickson films. (He refers to her, not exactly affectionately, as "quite the local busybody.") Lucy Eyelesbarrow (Jill Meager) makes her first appearance in any screen version of Christie's story--and because she's very attractive, creates quite a stir among the males at Rutherford Hall.
The Hickson version stays pretty close to the Christie story, especially in terms of its overall spirit. Hickson's Marple is much less demonstrative than Rutherford's. Neither Hickson nor, we expect, the real Marple of Christie's imagination, would ever be caught dead climbing over a stone wall, Rutherford-style, with some man helping to heft her rear end. There are no pratfalls nor comedy "gags" in the Hickson version of the story. Those who favor the Rutherfords have been known to refer to the later Hickson versions as much slower in pace.
Like the others in the Hickson series, "4.50 From Paddington" was beautifully filmed around English village locales and featured a superb cast of British actors, including Maurice Denham and Joanna David.
After Hickson's death in the 1990s, there were no Marple films made either for theaters or television until 2004, when the BBC decided to remake all the classic Marple novels with a new leading lady--Geraldine McEwan, a younger, more stylish Jane Marple, who colors her hair and avoids the dowdy look that Hickson always affected for the character, in keeping with Christie's imagery for her.
The McEwan film, which uses the American title "What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw" for its PBS showings in the U.S. via the "Mystery!" series, is being shown in two parts. The final segment is scheduled to air on most PBS stations this coming Sunday (May 22, 2005) at 9 p.m. The film was made in 2004, but is just now making its U.S. debut.
Like the Hickson version, the new McEwan
version follows the Christie novel fairly closely. Mrs. McGillicuddy
(Pam Ferris) witnesses what she believes is a murder just as
her train pulls out of a station and passes another train. Marple
persuades Lucy (Amanda Holden) to become a maid at Rutherford
Hall, as in the book. One significant change: Marple takes up
temporary lodging near Rutherford Hall, staying with a local
constable, who shows considerable romantic interest in the fetching
Lucy.
The McEwan version also starts with a major change in the Christie
narrative: A flashback showing a deathbed sequence that later
turns out to have profound significance in terms of the murder
case. It's not effective, though, because we don't yet really
know who the people are in that flashback and it only serves
to confuse what should have been a straightforward story, letting
us meet the major players as the story unfolds in real time.
Judged on how accurately it handles the adaptation of Christie's novel, the new version comes in second to the 1987 Joan Hickson version, although that, too, has some alterations to Christie. However, all three versions are quite entertaining--even the comical "Murder, She Said"--so, your enjoyment may depend upon how seriously you take your Christie and how sacrosanct you feel Miss Marple ought to be as a character.
©2005 by Ron Miller.
The photo of Margaret Rutherford is courtesy of MGM. The photos
of Joan Hickson and Geraldine McEwan are courtesy of WGBH-Boston,
American producers of the "Mystery!" television series.
This column first posted May 16, 2005
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine
and teaches classes in mystery for the Academy of Lifelong Learning
at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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