... I generally prefer Miss Marple to Poirot, but David Suchet really brought him to life for me. He's fussy but not annoying. I think Ariadne Oliver's opinions about her own detective might mirror Christie's feelings about Poirot. I don't know what Agatha Christie thought of the portrayals of Poirot during her lifetime, but I think she would have given David Suchet the nod.
Believe it or not, I read that Christie's favorite portrayal of Poirot was by Tony Randall in The ABC Murders! I don't think I've ever seen that one, though. Of course, we've all heard that she hated Margaret Rutherford's portrayal of Miss Marple (and one of those movies wasn't even based on one of the novels), but at the same time admired and was friendly with Rutherford.
So many actresses have portrayed Miss Marple! Both in movies and on TV. The Joan Hickson series was very good, but the other series have not treated the stories well, with many changes. They're still fun to watch, though. I was most excited when Geraldine McEwan was going to play her, because I think she resembles Miss Marple the most (remember that, in the books, she is tall and thin; most actresses have been on the shorter side), and I just love McEwan, anyway. But the writers for that series should be shot! They did the most egregious things I've ever seen, including setting it in a different time period and inventing a backstory and old love affair for Miss Marple. The worst was when one of the episodes was By the Pricking of My Thumbs, taking a Tommy and Tuppence novel, inventing marital problems for Tommy and Tuppence, and inserting Miss Marple (instead of Tommy) to solve the mystery with Tuppence. They played similar tricks with the Julia McKenzie series that followed. Why do they need to mess with the originals so much when it comes to Miss Marple?
Yes, Agatha Christie definitely used Ariadne Oliver as a mouthpiece to express her own feeling about a number of topics - having to appear in public and at events, dramatic (mis)adaptations of her work, and her feelings about her detective. You probably remember the essays I wrote for the B&N Mystery Forum about Mrs. Oliver, who is one of my favorite Christie characters (and I like Zoe Wanamaker, but she doesn't resemble Mrs. Oliver physically). I'll go hunt them up and copy/paste that one here.
Ariadne Oliver – the Voice of Agatha Christie
The most fascinating thing about Ariadne Oliver is how she allows Agatha Christie to express her attitudes and frustrations about being a famous author. Is it a coincidence that they share a first initial? Christie was a very shy woman, and hated making public appearances and speeches, and Mrs. Oliver shares her feelings. Even the common occurrence of meeting someone who loves her books causes a painful awkwardness: “And then people say things to me – you know – how much they like my books, and how they’ve been longing to meet me – and it all makes me feel hot and bothered and rather silly. But I manage to cope more or less.” In Elephants Can Remember, Mrs. Oliver goes to a literary luncheon, and acquaintance after acquaintance expresses surprise at having read about it in the paper, since she never went to that sort of thing. “He [Poirot] knew Mrs. Oliver’s embarrassing moments. Extravagant praise of her books always upset her highly because, as she had once told him, she never knew the proper answers.”
Mrs. Oliver also expresses Christie’s frustration at people correcting her. “As a matter of fact I don’t care two pins about accuracy…I don’t see that it matters if I mix up police ranks and say a revolver when I mean an automatic and a dictograph when I mean a phonograph…” At one point she refers to an actual experience of Christie’s: “…that’s where I made a blowpipe a foot long and it’s really six feet…someone wrote from a Museum to tell me so. Sometimes I think there are people who only read books in the hope of finding mistakes in them.” The real novel referred to here is Death in the Air (aka Death in the Clouds).
And when she talks about her detective, just substitute “Belgian” for “Finn”, and you’ll get a picture of what Christie really thought about Poirot. “I only regret one thing, making my detective a Finn. I don’t really know anything about Finns and I’m always getting letters from Finland pointing out something impossible he’s said or done.” “Of course he’s idiotic. But people like him.” “And they say how much they love my awful detective Sven Hjerson. If they knew how much I hated him! But my publisher always says I’m not to say so.” She really lets her feelings out in this tirade: “How do I know why I ever thought of the revolting man? I must have been mad! Why a Finn when I know nothing about Finland? Why a vegetarian? Why all the idiotic mannerisms he’s got? These things just happen. You try something – and people seem to like it – and then you go on – and before you know where you are, you’ve got someone like that maddening Sven Hjerson tied to you for life. And people even write and say how fond you must be of him. Fond of him? If I met that bony gangling vegetable eating Finn in real life, I’d do a better murder than any I’ve ever invented.” What an irony that Ariadne Oliver and Hercule Poirot are close friends!
One of Christie’s pet peeves was the dramatization of her stories and she expresses this in Mrs. McGinty’s Dead by having Mrs. Oliver work with a young dramatist. “But you’ve no idea of the agony of having your characters taken and made to say things that they never would have said, and do things that they never would have done. And if you protest, all they say is that it’s ‘good theatre.’” In Robin Upward’s treatment, the elderly vegetarian Finn is transformed into a young meat-eating Norwegian! Many of us fans who have seen the many adaptations of her work can share Christie’s and Mrs. Oliver’s annoyance!
We also get glimpses of Christie’s creative process. Mrs. Oliver often complains that she thinks of so many things at once that she can’t make up her mind (Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks shows how true this was of Christie). “I’ve got any amount of ideas. In fact that’s just the difficulty. It always is my difficulty. I can never think of even one plot at a time. I always think of at least five, and then it’s agony to decide among them.” She sometimes admits that she finds writing hard work and even boring, easier to think up ideas than to write them down (although she still feels much more comfortable writing than speaking). And, to avoid complaints about inaccuracies, “It’s safer, I think, to stick to what you know…People on cruises, and in hostels, and what goes on in hospitals, and on parish councils – and sales of work, and music festivals, and girls in shops, and committees and daily women, and young men and girls who hike round the world in the interests of science, and shop assistants -” Luckily for us, Agatha Christie (and Ariadne Oliver) knew about an amazing variety of things!
Thank you, thank you! I have the text for most of the posts authors contributed to the 120th Agatha Christie Birthday Celebration, but posts like your - ones that were posted directly on the BN.com forum - were archived by Barnes & Noble. And since most of the people there who worked on the forum are no longer at BN.com, I'm not sure how I would go about accessing them.
I was very surprised to hear that Agatha Christie liked Tony Randall's performance as Poirot. I haven't seen it, but it's hard to imagine the actor who portrayed Felix Unger in THE ODD COUPLE as Poirot. (Although, Felix was pretty finicky.) I do remember that Agatha Christie was good friends with Margaret Rutherford and her husband Stringer Davis, but that she didn't like the movie adaptations. I thought they were a little goofy - I might have enjoyed them if they were anything but Christie stories.
I wonder what she would have thought of the star-studded TV adaptation of THE MIRROR CRACK'D, which featured Angela Lansbury as Miss Marple. The cast included Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Kim Novak, Tony Curtis, Geraldine Chaplin and a young Laurence Fox. The latter is the son of William Fox (better known as James Fox) and nephew of Edward Fox. He played Hathaway in the MORSE spin-off, Inspector Lewis. (Which I love.)
I think Agatha Christie, who was notoriously shy, would have been appalled by social media.
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