The Mystery Person

Sometimes you meet people and you wonder who they are. There may be some tantalizing hints but nothing to give you a full explanation, especial back in the days before the internet. Just as people asked as the Lone Ranger rode away, "Who was that masked man?" you may have questions for years during which time you get more information but it may take even more years before your questions are completely answered.

In 1975 I lived in Los Angeles. To make a little extra money I answered an ad for an old lady who needed a "chauffeur." Not really a chauffeur, but just someone to drive the woman around to her appointments once a week. I only knew her as "Mrs. Rutherford." While she paid me by check, it was so long ago that I do not remember what her first name was.

Mrs. Rutherford lived in a small 30's vintage apartment building on Wilshire boulevard in Los Angeles, a building that I am sure now is long gone. She owned a 1961 Cadillac with a automatic transmission that had reverse down below low -- something that federal safety officials later required to be changed. We didn't really talk about who she was, but I had some clues:

1. One day as I waited in the car while she was at an appointment, I looked in the glove box. I found an issue of the Hollywood Reporter from 1967 address to William Dozier, producer of the Batman TV series.

2. One of her daughters had died. Her widower was a "Mr. Simon." We stopped by his house in Beverly Hills one day. I saw him but he did not look familiar to me. He lived in a big mansion and had a Mercedes and a Cadillac in the circular driveway.

3. Sometime in the early 1940's she had been to Santa Rosa, California for the filming of a movie.

Mrs. Rutherford had another daughter. One day we dropped off some groceries to that daughter's house. I did not meet the other daughter, we just came in the back door of a home in Beverly Hills, dropped off the bag, and left. Mrs. Rutherford said that Steve Lawrence lived either next door or across the street.

That was all I was to learn. I mentioned some of those clues to my mother. She mentioned that Neil Simon had been a widower, and that the Hitchcock film Shadow of a Doubt from 1943 was filmed in Santa Rosa. That was the most I could find out for years to come.

In the early 2000's, with the advent of the internet, I was able to find a few more things. I looked on the Internet Movie Database for anyone named "Rutherford." Among the names I found was Ann Rutherford. Lo and behold, Ann Rutherford had married William Dozier in 1953.

I also looked up Neil Simon and found the name of his late wife. I could find no connection between her and Ann Rutherford. Nor could I find any connection between anyone named Rutherford and Shadow of a Doubt. While the IMDB listing for Ann Rutherford gave her mother's maiden name (she was in the chorus of a Broadway show in 1910 had made some movies in the mid 1910's), I could not confirm anything else. I could find no reference to Ann Rutherford having a sister who died young, nor could I connect Neil Simon's wife to Anne Rutherford.

Don Ameche and Harry Carey in Happy Land (1943) (Photo:http://dearoldhollywood.blogspot.com)

Recently I saw the Don Ameche film Happy Land from 1943. That was Twentieth Century Fox's entry in the "loved one goes off to war and gets killed" genre. IMDB said the film was made in Santa Rosa and other towns in Sonoma County. Nothing clicked, but out of curiosity I searched to see what other films had been made in Santa Rosa.

I found a site that talked about McDonald Street in that city. There was a picture of a house that Wes Craven used in Scream in 1996. There was the house from Shadow of a Doubt, a house used in Pollyanna from 1960. And there was Don Ameche's house from Happy Land. Then a light went off. Who played Don Ameche's son's girlfriend in Happy Land?

Ann Rutherford.

Ann Rutherford being patriotic during WWII. During the Korean War she again wanted to help out by entertaining the troops. When she went to get her passport she was shocked to find out she was not an American citizen, but rather a Canadian. She fixed that post-haste. (Photo: dearmrgable.com)

I then looked up Ann Rutherford again. More information came forth. One of the things I now found was the Los Angeles Times obituary for Ann Rutherford from 2012. In the third paragraph I found this sentence:

She is predeceased by her sister and brother-in-law, Judith Rutherford Simon (who was a WAMPAS Baby Star under the name Judith Arlen) and television producer Al Simon

Mrs. Rutherford, or Lucille Mansfield Rutherford, died in 1981 at the age of 91. It took 44 years, but the answers had finally fallen into place.