Margaret Rutherford - A Blithe Spirit: Dawn Langley Simmons

Margaret Rutherford was always known for her role as the wacky Madame Arcati in Noel Coward's amusing ghost story Blithe Spirit, yet she was so much more than Madame Arcati. She appeared in many character roles on stage and screen in her 40 year career and was adored by her husband, fellow character actor Stringer Davis. They did not marry until she was in her fifties - Davis' mother did not approve of Margaret and the wedding was postponed until after Mrs. Davis' death. Stringer supported her many whims and love of animals - even to the point of her bringing home the scaly star of An Alligator Named Daisy for the Christmas holidays. Yet only a very few were aware of Margaret's dark side - her recurring melancholia, nervous collapses, her hopeless romantic pursuits of much younger men and the fear that she would go the way of the parents she had barely known - the mother who had committed suicide and the father, convicted of the murder of his own father, who had ended his days in an asylum for the criminally insane. The author was the adopted daughter of the Rutherfords who was allegedly male gender-assigned at birth but who always claimed that she was a woman, underwent corrective surgery in order to be assigned as female gender, although there has always been a certain amount of speculation and rumour regarding her gender. Her marriage to John-Paul Simmons, a young black motor mechanic on 21 January 1969 was the first legal interracial marriage in South Carolina.