Trailer
Plot summary
Marina Rudd, a movie star returning to the screen after a long absence, arrives in St Mary Mead with a film crew to make a drama about Mary, Queen of Scots, with herself in the lead. Marina has been told her rival Lola Brewster has a part. The villagers attend a fête at Gossington Hall to welcome the company, and at the reception Heather Babcock, a devoted fan, tells Marina how she once met her during the war. Marina asks her husband Jason Rudd, the film's director, to bring them both a cocktail, and Heather dies after drinking it. The death is attributed to a barbiturate overdose, and the drink is believed to have been meant for Marina. Inspector Craddock of Scotland Yard asks his aunt, Miss Marple, who is recovering from a foot injury at home, to help.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Mirror Crack'd (1980)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer John Brabourne broke his leg in the same 1979 IRA bomb blast that killed his mother, his son and his father-in-law, Lord Mountbatten, yet he went ahead and made the film anyway.
SPOILER
Biographers believe Agatha Christie based the novel's central mystery on a real 1943 tragedy involving actress Gene Tierney: while pregnant, Tierney caught German measles from a fan who had snuck out of quarantine to meet her, and Tierney's daughter was born deaf, partially blind and severely disabled as a result.- Gene Tierney wrote in her autobiography that when she realized the cheerful fan had no idea her wartime visit had caused her daughter's disability, she simply walked away, adding that afterward she "didn't care if I was ever again anyone's favorite actress."
- Director Guy Hamilton got the job partly because he told the producers he was not even a fan of Agatha Christie's novels, and they decided that was exactly what made him right for the film.
- Tony Curtis joined the cast of The Mirror Crack'd right after being fired from the Broadway play I Ought to Be in Pictures.
- Elizabeth Taylor took the role in what was her first film in three years, saying she had refused to return to movies unless something "absolutely intrigued" her or kept her away from her husband too long, and that The Mirror Crack'd was that project.
