MURDER MOST FOUL TRIVIA: MISS MARPLE AT YOUR SERVICE!

 

MURDER MOST FOUL

 

1964, UK

Pc: Lawrence P. Bachman Production (Lon)

Dist: M.G.M. (03/64, UK and US)

D: George Pollock; P: Lawrence P. Bachmann; Sc: David Pursall & Jack Seddon; Nov: "Mrs. McGinty's Dead" by Agatha Christie (02/52, Dodd, Mead and Company, UK), and an extract of the poem "The Shooting of Dan McGrew"; M: Ron Goodwin

C: Margaret Rutherford (Miss Jane Marple), Ron Moody (H. Driffold Cosgood), Eric Francis (Stage Manager), Michael Segal (Stagehand), Susan Richards (Cleaning Lady) & Charles Tingwell (Inspector Craddock), Stringer Davis [James Buckley Stringer Davis] (Jim Stringer)  

     Comm: MURDER MOST FOUL was Ms. Margaret Rutherford’s third of five appearances as Agatha Christie’s intrepid lady detective (counting her amusing cameo in “The Alphabet Murders” (08/65, UK). It was preceded by “Murder She Said” (09/61 UK), and “Murder at the Gallop” (05/63, UK), and followed by “Murder Ahoy!” (09/64, US and 10/65, UK). The book’s main character Hercule Poirot, was replaced by Miss Marple for the film, and most of the other characters are not in the novel either. Neither is her big stage number!

     When Miss Marple goes to the Cosgood Theatre, to audition and snoop on a theatrical troupe, she is asked to recite something, and she chooses Robert W. Services’ poem "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" (1907). Her captive audience of waiting stagehands and cleaners listen on with novel interest.

     Service was a Scot who came to Canada as a young adult. He was an employee of the Imperial Bank of Canada, and was sent to Whitehorse, Yukon, in 1904. Service garnered enough knowledge of the gold rush and mining in general to bolster his writings. His poems were used in schools for many years.

     "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and Services’ other poem “The Cremation of Sam McGee” (both 1907) are still his most famous works and were published in a book of prose titled “Songs of a Sourdough”.

     The poem "The Shooting” takes place in a Yukon saloon during the Gold Rush of the late 1890’s Canada. It follows three characters: Dan McGrew, a rough-hewed prospector; McGrew's sweetheart ‘Lou’, a saloon woman; and a mysterious stranger who arrives at the saloon, to get in from the cold. The newcomer appears to know both McGrew & ‘Lou’ and has come to settle a long-forgotten grudge. McGrew and the stranger shoot and kill each other, leaving ‘Lou’ to take the gold that the stranger had on him, and to start a life anew.

     Miss Marple and Ms. Rutherford give a hardy rendition of the story, and the Christie plot is returned to forthwith.

     Miss Marple, take a well-deserved bow!

 

By Michael Ferguson