Angela Lansbury

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Dame

Angela Lansbury

DBE
Studio publicity Angela Lansbury.jpg
Lansbury in 1950
Born
Angela Brigid Lansbury

(1925-10-16)October 16, 1925
London, England
DiedOctober 11, 2022(2022-10-11) (aged 96)
Los Angeles, California, US
Citizenship
  • United Kingdom
  • United States (from 1951)
  • Ireland (from c. 1970)
Occupations
  • Actress
  • singer
Years active1942–2022
TitleDame (2014)
Spouses
​
​
(m. 1945; div. 1946)​
​
​
(m. 1949; died 2003)​
Children2
Parents
Family
AwardsFull list

Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury

National Medal of the Arts in 1997, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2000. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2014.[1][2][3]

Lansbury was born to an upper-middle-class family in

B-list star during this period, but her role in The Manchurian Candidate
(1962) received widespread acclaim and is frequently ranked as one of her best performances.

Moving into musical theatre, Lansbury gained stardom for playing the leading role in the Broadway musical Mame (1966), winning her first Tony Award and becoming a gay icon. She went on to receive four more Tony Awards for her performances in Dear World (1969), Gypsy (1975), Sweeney Todd (1979), and Blithe Spirit (2009). Her other Tony-nominated roles include in Deuce (2007), and A Little Night Music (2012).

Lansbury achieved worldwide fame as the sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the American whodunit series Murder, She Wrote, which ran for twelve seasons from 1984 to 1996, becoming one of the longest-running and most popular detective drama series in television history. Through Corymore Productions, a company that she co-owned with her husband Peter Shaw, Lansbury assumed ownership of the series and was its executive producer during its final four seasons. She is also known for her roles in family films such as Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Anastasia (1997), Nanny McPhee (2005), and Mary Poppins Returns (2018).

Early life and career beginnings

See also: Angela Lansbury on screen and stage

Childhood: 1925–1942

Angela Brigid Lansbury was born to an

upper-middle-class family on October 16, 1925.[4] Although her birthplace has often been given as Poplar, East London,[5] she rejected this, stating that while she had ancestral connections to Poplar, she was born in Regent's Park, Central London.[a] Her mother was Belfast-born Irish Moyna Macgill (born Charlotte Lillian McIldowie), an actress who regularly appeared on stage in London's West End and who also appeared in several films.[7] Her father was the wealthy English timber merchant and politician Edgar Lansbury, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and former mayor of the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar.[8] Her paternal grandfather was the Labour Party leader George Lansbury, a man whom she felt "awed" by and considered "a giant in my youth".[9] Angela had an older half-sister, Isolde, from Macgill's previous marriage to Reginald Denham.[10] In January 1930, Macgill gave birth to twin boys, Bruce and Edgar, leading the Lansburys to move from their Poplar flat to a house in Mill Hill, North London; on weekends, they would vacate to a rural farm in Berrick Salome, Oxfordshire.[11]

I'm eternally grateful for the Irish side of me. That's where I got my sense of comedy and whimsy. As for the English half–that's my reserved side ... But put me onstage, and the Irish comes out. The combination makes a good mix for acting.

 – Angela Lansbury.[12]

When Lansbury was nine, her father died from

West London, first appearing onstage as a lady-in-waiting in the school's production of Maxwell Anderson's Mary of Scotland.[17]

That year, Lansbury's grandfather died, and with the onset of the Blitz, Macgill decided to take Angela, Bruce and Edgar to the United States; Isolde remained in Britain with her new husband, the actor Peter Ustinov. Macgill secured a job supervising 60 British children who were being evacuated to North America aboard the Duchess of Athol, arriving with them in Montreal, Canada, in August 1940.[18] She then proceeded by train to New York City, where she was financially sponsored by a Wall Street businessman, Charles T. Smith, moving in with his family at their home at Mahopac, New York.[19] Lansbury gained a scholarship from the American Theatre Wing to study at the Feagin School of Drama and Radio, where she appeared in performances of William Congreve's The Way of the World and Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan. She graduated in March 1942, by which time the family had moved to a flat in Morton Street, Greenwich Village.[20]

Career breakthrough: 1942–1945

Macgill secured work in a Canadian touring production of

Tonight at 8:30, and was joined by her daughter. There, Lansbury gained her first theatrical job as a nightclub act at the Samovar Club, Montreal, singing songs by Noël Coward. Although 16 years old, she claimed to be 19 to secure the job.[21] Lansbury returned to New York City in August 1942, but her mother had moved to Hollywood, Los Angeles, to resurrect her cinematic career; Lansbury and her brothers followed.[22] Moving into a bungalow in Laurel Canyon, both Lansbury and her mother obtained Christmas jobs at the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles; Macgill was sacked for incompetence, leaving the family to subsist on Lansbury's wages of $28 a week.[23] Befriending a group of gay men, Lansbury became privy to the city's underground gay scene.[24] With her mother, she attended lectures by the spiritual guru Jiddu Krishnamurti, at one of these meeting the writer Aldous Huxley.[24]

A young white women facing forward, with the name "Angela Lansbury" superimposed in front of her
Lansbury in the trailer for The Picture of Dorian Gray

At a party hosted by her mother, Lansbury met

MGM, earning $500 a week.[26] Gaslight received critical acclaim, and Lansbury's performance was widely praised, earning her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.[27]

Her next film appearance was as Edwina Brown in

Golden Globe Award, and she was again nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards, losing to Anne Revere, her co-star in National Velvet.[29]

Later MGM films: 1945–1951

On September 27, 1945, Lansbury married

dual nationality.[34]

A young white woman, her arms exposed, wearing a large red feathered headdress. A fairground ride can be seen in the background.
Lansbury in a scene from MGM's Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), one of her earliest film appearances

Following the success of Gaslight and The Picture of Dorian Gray, MGM cast Lansbury in 11 further films until her contract with the company ended in 1952. Keeping her among their

B-list stars, MGM used her less than their similar-aged actresses; Lansbury biographers Rob Edelman and Audrey E. Kupferberg believed that the majority of these films were "mediocre", doing little to further her career.[35] This view was echoed by Cukor, who believed Lansbury had been "consistently miscast" by MGM.[36] She was repeatedly made to portray older women, often villainous, and as a result became increasingly dissatisfied with working for MGM, commenting that "I kept wanting to play the Jean Arthur roles, and Mr Mayer kept casting me as a series of venal bitches."[37] The company was suffering from the post-1948 slump in cinema sales, as a result slashing film budgets and cutting their number of staff.[37]

In 1946, Lansbury played her first American character as Em, a honky-tonk saloon singer in the Oscar-winning

A.J. Cronin's The Citadel.[43]

Mid career

The Manchurian Candidate and minor roles: 1952–1965

A young white woman with a girl on the left side and a boy on the right, posing together for a photograph
Lansbury with her children in 1957

Unhappy with the roles she was being given by MGM, Lansbury instructed her manager, Harry Friedman of

Pacific Coast Highway that had been designed by Aaron Green; there, she and Peter escaped the Hollywood scene, and sent their children to public school.[51]

Returning to cinema as a freelance actress, Lansbury found herself typecast as an older, maternal figure, appearing in this capacity in most of her films from this period.

The George Gobel Show, and became a regular on game show Pantomime Quiz.[57]

A young white woman, with bare arms, looking directly at the viewer.
Lansbury in a publicity shot from 1966

In April 1957, she debuted on

Hotel Paradiso, a French burlesque directed by Peter Glenville. The play only ran for 15 weeks, although she earned good reviews for her role as Marcel Cat. She later stated that had she not appeared in the play, her "whole career would have fizzled out."[58] Into the 1960s, she followed this with an appearance in a Broadway performance of A Taste of Honey at the Lyceum Theatre, directed by Tony Richardson and George Devine. Lansbury played Helen, the boorish, verbally abusive mother of Josephine (played by Joan Plowright, only four years Lansbury's junior), remarking that she gained "a great deal of satisfaction" from the role.[59] During the show's run, Lansbury developed a friendship with both Plowright and Plowright's lover Laurence Olivier; it was from Lansbury's rented flat on East 97th Street that Plowright and Olivier eloped to be married.[60]

After a well-reviewed appearance in Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1959) – for which she had filmed in the Australian Outback – and a minor role in A Breath of Scandal (1960), Lansbury appeared in 1961's Blue Hawaii as the mother of a character played by Elvis Presley.[61] Although believing that the film was of poor quality, she commented that she agreed to appear in it because she "was desperate".[62] Her role as Mavis in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960) drew critical acclaim, as did her appearance in All Fall Down (1962) as a manipulative, destructive mother.[63] In 1962, she appeared in the Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate as Eleanor Iselin, cast for the role by John Frankenheimer. Although Lansbury played actor Laurence Harvey's mother in the film, she was in fact only three years older than him.[64] She had agreed to appear in the film after reading the original novel, describing it as "one of the most exciting political books I ever read".[65] Biographers Edelman and Kupferberg considered this role "her enduring cinematic triumph,"[66] while Gottfried stated that it was "the strongest, the most memorable and the best picture she ever made... she gives her finest film performance in it."[67] Lansbury received her third Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination for the film.[68]

She followed this with a performance as Sybil Logan in In the Cool of the Day (1963) – a film she renounced as awful – before appearing as wealthy Isabel Boyd in The World of Henry Orient (1964) and the widow Phyllis in Dear Heart (1964).[69] Her first appearance in a theatrical musical was the short-lived Anyone Can Whistle, written by Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim. An experimental work, it opened at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway in April 1964, but was critically panned and closed after nine performances. Lansbury had played the role of crooked mayoress Cora Hoover Hooper, and although she loved Sondheim's score she experienced personal differences with Laurents and was glad when the show closed.[70] She appeared in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), a cinematic biopic of Jesus, but was cut almost entirely from the final edit.[71] She followed this with appearances as Mama Jean Bello in Harlow (1965), as Lady Blystone in The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965), and as Gloria in Mister Buddwing (1966).[72] Although many of her cinematic roles had been well received, "celluloid superstardom" evaded Lansbury, and she became increasingly dissatisfied with these minor roles, feeling that none allowed her to explore her potential as an actress.[73]

Mame and theatrical stardom: 1966–1969

I was a wife and a mother, and I was completely fulfilled. But my husband recognised the signals in me which said 'I've been doing enough gardening, I've cooked enough good dinners, I've sat around the house and mooned about what more interior decoration I can get my fingers into.' It's a curious thing with actors and actresses, but suddenly the alarm goes off. My husband is a very sensitive person to my moods and he recognised the fact that I had to get on with something. Mame came along out of the blue just at this time. Now isn't that a miracle?.

 – Angela Lansbury.[74]

In 1966, Lansbury took on the title role of Mame Dennis in the musical Mame, Jerry Herman's musical adaptation of the 1955 novel Auntie Mame. The director's first choice for the role had been Rosalind Russell, who played Mame in the 1958 non-musical film adaptation, but she had declined. Lansbury actively sought the role in the hope that it would mark a change in her career. When she was chosen, it came as a surprise to theatre critics, who believed that the part would go to a better-known actress; Lansbury was 41 years old, and it was her first starring role.[75] Mame Dennis was a glamorous character, with over 20 costume changes throughout the play, and Lansbury's role involved ten songs and dance routines for which she trained extensively.[76] First appearing in Philadelphia and then Boston, Mame opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in May 1966.[77] Auntie Mame was already popular among the gay community,[78] and Mame gained Lansbury a cult gay following, something that she later attributed to the fact that Mame Dennis was "every gay person's idea of glamour... Everything about Mame coincided with every young man's idea of beauty and glory and it was lovely."[79]

Reviews of Lansbury's performance were overwhelmingly positive.

Antoinette Perry Award.[83] Lansbury's later biographer Margaret Bonanno claimed that Mame made Lansbury a "superstar",[84] with the actress herself commenting on her success: "Everyone loves you, everyone loves the success, and enjoys it as much as you do. And it lasts as long as you are on that stage and as long as you keep coming out of that stage door."[85]

Off the stage, Lansbury made further television appearances, such as on

heroin.[91]

Lansbury followed the success of Mame with a performance as Countess Aurelia, the 75-year-old Parisian eccentric in Dear World, a musical adaptation of Jean Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot. The show opened at Broadway's Mark Hellinger Theatre in February 1969, but Lansbury found it a "pretty depressing" experience. Reviews of her performance were positive, and she was awarded her second Tony Award on the basis of it. Reviews of the show more generally were critical, however, and it ended after 132 performances.[92] She followed this with an appearance in the title role of the musical Prettybelle, based upon Jean Arnold's Prettybelle: A Lively Tale of Rape and Resurrection. Set in the Deep South, it dealt with issues of racism, with Lansbury playing a wealthy alcoholic who seeks sexual encounters with black men. The play opened in Boston, but received poor reviews and was cancelled before it reached Broadway.[93] Lansbury later described the play as "a complete and utter fiasco", admitting that in her opinion, her "performance was awful".[94]

Ireland and Gypsy: 1970–1978

In the early 1970s, Lansbury declined several cinematic roles, including the lead in

David Frost Show.[97] She later noted that as a big commercial success, this film "secured an enormous audience for me".[98]

The year 1970 was a traumatic one for the Lansbury family, as Peter underwent a hip replacement, Anthony suffered a heroin overdose and entered a coma, and the family's Malibu home was destroyed in a brush fire.[99] They then purchased Knockmourne Glebe, a farmhouse built in the 1820s which was located near Conna in rural County Cork, and, after Anthony quit using cocaine and heroin, took him there to recover from his drug addiction.[100] He subsequently enrolled in the Webber-Douglas School, his mother's alma mater, and became a professional actor, before moving into television directing.[101] Lansbury and her husband did not return to California, instead dividing their time between Cork and New York City, where they lived in a flat opposite the Lincoln Center.[102]

[In Ireland, our gardener] had no idea who I was. Nobody there did. I was just Mrs. Shaw, which suited me down to the ground. I had absolute anonymity in those days, which was wonderful.

 – Angela Lansbury.[103]

In 1972, Lansbury returned to London's West End to perform in the Royal Shakespeare Company's theatrical production of Edward Albee's All Over at the Aldwych Theatre. She portrayed the mistress of a dying New England millionaire, and although the play's reviews were mixed, Lansbury's acting was widely praised.[104] This was followed by her reluctant involvement in a revival of Mame, which was then touring the United States,[105] after which she returned to the West End to play the character of Rose in the musical Gypsy. She had initially turned down the role, not wishing to be in the shadow of Ethel Merman, who had portrayed the character in the original Broadway production. When the show started in May 1973, Lansbury earned a standing ovation and rave reviews.[106] Settling into a Belgravia flat, she was soon in demand among London society, having dinners held in her honour.[107] Following the culmination of the London run, in 1974 Gypsy toured the US; in Chicago, Lansbury was awarded the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance. The show eventually reached Broadway, where it ran until January 1975. A critical success, it earned Lansbury her third Tony Award.[108] After several months' break, Gypsy toured the country again in the summer of 1975.[109]

Wanting to move on from musicals, Lansbury obtained the role of

Uris Theatre; Lansbury played the role of Mrs Anna, replacing Constance Towers, who was on a short break.[114] Her first cinematic role in seven years was as novelist Salome Otterbourne in a 1978 adaptation of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile, filmed in both London and Egypt. In the film, Lansbury starred alongside Ustinov and Bette Davis, who became a close friend. The role earned Lansbury the National Board of Review award for Best Supporting Actress of 1978.[115]

Sweeney Todd and continued cinematic work: 1979–1984

In March 1979, Lansbury appeared as Nellie Lovett in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a Sondheim musical directed by Harold Prince. Opening at the Uris Theatre, she starred alongside Len Cariou as Sweeney Todd, the murderous barber in 19th-century London. After being offered the role, she jumped on the opportunity due to Sondheim's involvement,[116] commenting that she loved "the extraordinary wit and intelligence of his lyrics."[117] She remained in the role for 14 months before being replaced by Dorothy Loudon; the musical received mixed critical reviews, although earned Lansbury her fourth Tony Award and After Dark magazine's Ruby Award for Broadway Performer of the Year.[118] She returned to the role in October 1980 for a ten-month US tour; the production was also filmed and broadcast on the Entertainment Channel.[119]

In 1982, Lansbury took on the role of an upper middle-class housewife who champions workers' rights in

period piece."[122]

A small number of people have seen me on the stage. [Television] is a chance for me to play to a vast U.S. public, and I think that's a chance you don't pass up... I'm interested in reaching everybody. I don't want to reach just the people who can pay forty-five or fifty dollars for a [theatre] seat.

 – Angela Lansbury.[123]

Working in cinema, in 1979 Lansbury appeared as Miss Froy in

1938 film.[124] The following year she appeared in The Mirror Crack'd, another film based on an Agatha Christie novel, this time as Miss Marple, a sleuth in 1950s Kent. Lansbury hoped to get away from the depiction of the role made famous by Margaret Rutherford, instead returning to Christie's description of the character. She was signed to appear in two sequels as Miss Marple, but these were never made.[125] Lansbury's next film was the animated The Last Unicorn (1982), for which she provided the voice of the witch Mommy Fortuna.[126]

Returning to musical cinema, she starred as Ruth in

Lace and The First Olympics: Athens 1896.[132]

Global fame

Murder, She Wrote: 1984–2003

Two middle-aged white women standing next to each other
Lansbury with Mame original Broadway cast member Bea Arthur at the 41st Primetime Emmy Awards
in 1989.

In 1983, Lansbury was offered two main television roles, one in a sitcom and the other in a detective drama series, Murder, She Wrote. As she was unable to do both, her agents advised her to accept the former, although Lansbury chose the latter.[133] Her decision was based on the appeal of the series' central character, Jessica Fletcher, a retired school teacher from the fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine. As portrayed by Lansbury, Fletcher was a successful detective novelist who also solved murders encountered during her travels.[134] Lansbury described the character as "an American Miss Marple".[135]

Murder, She Wrote had been created by

Nielsen rating of 18.9 and the first season being rated top in its time slot.[137] Designed as inoffensive family viewing, despite its topic the show eschewed depicting violence or gore, following the "whodunit" format rather than those of most US crime shows of the time.[138] Lansbury herself commented that "best of all, there's no violence. I hate violence."[139]

Lansbury exerted creative input over Fletcher's costumes, makeup and hair, and rejected pressure from network executives to put the character in a relationship, believing that the character should remain a strong single woman.

senior citizens, it gradually gained a younger audience; by 1991, a third of viewers were under fifty.[145] It gained continually high ratings throughout most of its run, outdoing rivals in its time slot such as Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories on NBC.[146] In 1987, a spin-off was produced, The Law & Harry McGraw, although it proved short-lived.[147]

As Murder, She Wrote went on, Lansbury assumed a larger role behind the scenes.[148] In 1989, her own company, Corymore Productions, began co-producing the show with Universal.[149] Lansbury began to tire of the series, and in particular the long working hours, stating that the 1990–1991 season would be its last.[150] She changed her mind after being appointed executive producer for the 1992–1993 season, something that she felt "made it far more interesting to me."[151] For the seventh season, the show's primary setting moved to New York City, where Fletcher had taken a job teaching criminology at Manhattan University; the move, encouraged by Lansbury, was an attempt to attract younger viewers.[152] Having become a "Sunday-night institution" in the US, the show's ratings improved during the early 1990s, becoming a Top Five programme.[153]

Kennedy Center
in Washington DC

Hoping to gain a larger audience for the show's 11th season, CBS executives moved Murder, She Wrote to Thursdays at 8 pm, opposite NBC's new sitcom, Friends. Lansbury was angry at the move, believing that it ignored the show's core audience.[154] This would be the series' final season. The final episode aired on 8 May 1996, and ended with Lansbury voicing a "Goodbye from Jessica" message.[155] In The Washington Post, Tom Shales suggested that the series had become "partly a victim of commercial television's mad youth mania".[156] There were "vocal protests" at its cancellation from the show's fanbase.[157] At the time, it tied the original Hawaii Five-O as the longest-running detective drama series in history.[153]

Lansbury initially had plans for a Murder, She Wrote television film that would be a musical with a score composed by Jerry Herman;[158] that project did not materialize but resulted in the 1996 television film Mrs. Santa Claus, with Lansbury playing the eponymous character, which proved to be a ratings success.[159] Murder, She Wrote continued through several made-for-television films: South By Southwest in 1997, A Story To Die For in 2000, The Last Free Man in 2001, and The Celtic Riddle in 2003.[157][160] The role of Fletcher would prove the most successful and prominent of Lansbury's career,[161] and she would later speak critically of attempts to reboot the series with a different actress in the lead.[162]

Throughout the run of Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury had continued appearing in other television films, miniseries and cinema.

Disney animation Beauty and the Beast, as part of which she performed the film's title song. She considered the appearance to be a gift for her three grandchildren.[169] Lansbury again lent her voice to an animated character, this time that of the Empress Dowager, for the 1997 film Anastasia.[170][171]

Lansbury's Murder, She Wrote fame resulted in her being employed to appear in advertisements and infomercials for

Charles, Prince of Wales, at the British consulate in Los Angeles.[174] While living for most of the year in California, Lansbury spent the Christmas period and the summer at Corymore House, a farmhouse overlooking the Atlantic Ocean near to Ballywilliam, County Cork, which she had had built as a family home in 1991.[175]

Final years: 2003–2022

An elderly white woman wearing a red dress sitting in a chair
Lansbury performing in Deuce on Broadway in 2007

In the years following Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury was increasingly preoccupied by her husband's deteriorating health; it was for this reason that she dropped out of being the lead role in the 2001

condominium in Manhattan.[178][179]

Lansbury appeared in a season six episode of the television show

Julie Harris.[184] From December 2009 to June 2010, Lansbury then starred as Madame Armfeldt in a Broadway revival of A Little Night Music at the Walter Kerr Theatre.[185] The role earned her a seventh Tony Award nomination.[186] In May 2010, she was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from Manhattan School of Music.[187] She then appeared in the 2011 film Mr. Popper's Penguins, opposite Jim Carrey.[188]

From March to July 2012, Lansbury appeared as women's rights advocate Sue-Ellen Gamadge in the Broadway revival of

Olivier Award as Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Arcati,[198] and in November 2015 was awarded the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre.[199]

Lansbury agreed to star as Mrs St Maugham in a Broadway run of Enid Bagnold's 1955 play The Chalk Garden, although later acknowledged that she no longer had the stamina for eight performances a week. Instead, she appeared in a one-night staged reading of the play at Hunter College in 2017.[200] Her next role was as Aunt March in the BBC miniseries Little Women, screened in December 2017.[201] In 2018, she appeared in the family film

Lady Bracknell in a one-night benefit staging of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest for Roundabout Theatre Company's American Airlines Theatre.[205] Lansbury made her final film appearance, a cameo role as herself, in the 2022 film Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.[206] She died in her sleep at her Los Angeles home on October 11, 2022, at the age of 96.[207][208][209]

Personal life

An elderly woman with her arms held aloft
Lansbury on stage in Driving Miss Daisy in 2013

Lansbury defined herself as being "Irish-British".[210] She became a US citizen in 1951, while retaining her British citizenship.[34] According to a 2014 article in the Irish Independent, she also held Irish citizenship.[211] Although adopting an Americanized accent for roles like that of Fletcher, Lansbury retained her English accent throughout her life.[212][213]

Lansbury was a profoundly private person,[214] and disliked attempts at flattery.[215] Gottfried characterized her as being "Meticulous. Cautious. Self-editing. Deliberate. It is what the British call reserved".[216] In The Daily Telegraph, the theatre critic Dominic Cavendish stated that Lansbury's hallmarks were "self-composure, commitment and, yes, gentility", approaches he thought had become "in too short supply in the age of snowflakery and social media self-promotion."[217] Gottfried also commented that she was "as concerned, as sensitive, and as sympathetic as anyone might want in a friend".[218]

Lansbury was married twice. Her first marriage was to actor Richard Cromwell and lasted from 1945 to 1946.[219] In 1949, Lansbury married actor and producer Peter Shaw, and they remained until he died in 2003.[177] They had two children together, Anthony Peter (b. 1952) and Deirdre Ann (b. 1953), and Lansbury became the stepmother of Shaw's son David from his first marriage. While Lansbury repeatedly stated that she wanted to put her children before her career, she admitted that she frequently had to leave them in California for long periods when she was working elsewhere.[220]

Anthony became a television director and directed 68 episodes of Murder, She Wrote.[221] Deirdre married a chef, and together they opened a restaurant in West Los Angeles.[222] Lansbury had three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren at the time of her death in 2022.[223] Lansbury was a cousin of the Postgate family, including the animator and activist Oliver Postgate.[224] She was also a cousin of the academic and novelist Coral Lansbury, whose son Malcolm Turnbull was Prime Minister of Australia from 2015 to 2018.[225]

An elderly white women facing towards the right.
Lansbury photographed in 2013

As a young actress, Lansbury was a self-professed

Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.[233]

Lansbury brought up her children as

domestic abuse and rehabilitating drug users.[236] In the 1980s, she also supported charities combating HIV/AIDS.[237]

Lansbury was a

chain smoker in early life,[230] but quit smoking in the mid-1960s.[238] In 1976 and 1987, she underwent cosmetic surgery on her neck to prevent it from broadening with age.[239] During the 1990s, she began to suffer from arthritis.[240] Lansbury underwent hip replacement surgery in May 1994,[240] followed by knee replacement surgery in 2005.[241]

Honours and legacy

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Angela Lansbury

In a career stretching from ingénue to dowager, from elegant heroine to depraved villainess, [Lansbury] has displayed durability and flexibility, as well as a highly admired work ethic.

— The Oxford Companion to Theatre and Performance, 2010[242]

In the 1960s, The New York Times referred to Lansbury as the "First Lady of Musical Theatre".[243] She described herself as an actress who also could sing,[243] although in her early film appearances her singing was repeatedly dubbed;[244] Sondheim stated that she had a strong voice, albeit with a limited range.[245] In The Oxford Companion to the American Musical, Thomas Hischak related that Lansbury was "more a character actress than a leading lady" for much of her career, one who brought "a sparkling stage presence to her work".[244] Gottfried described her as "an American icon",[214] while the BBC characterized her as "one of Britain's favourite exports,"[212] and The Independent suggested that she could be considered Britain's most successful actress.[246] In The Guardian, journalist Mark Lawson described her as a member of the "acting aristocracy in three countries" – Britain, Ireland, and the United States.[200]

Gottfried noted that Lansbury's public image was "practically saintly".[247] A 2007 interviewer for The New York Times described her as "one of the few actors it makes sense to call beloved", noting that a 1994 article in People magazine awarded her a perfect score on its "lovability index".[178] The New Statesman commented that she "has the kind of pulling power many younger and more ubiquitous actors can only dream of."[195] Lansbury was a gay icon.[79][248] She described herself as being "very proud of the fact", attributing her popularity among gay people to her performance in Mame;[79] an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer suggested that Murder, She Wrote had further broadened her appeal with that demographic.[249]

Following the announcement of Lansbury's death, many figures in the entertainment industry praised her on social media.

Robert Iger described her "a consummate professional, a talented actress, and a lovely person."[253] Others who posted in remembrance of Lansbury included Kristin Chenoweth, Viola Davis, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Harvey Fierstein, Kathy Griffin, Jeremy O. Harris, Brent Spiner, George Takei, and Rachel Zegler.[253][254][252]

A five-point star set in the ground; the name "Angela Lansbury" is written in the centre of it in gold lettering
Lansbury's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
in Los Angeles

Lansbury was recognised for her achievements in Britain on multiple occasions. In 2002, the

Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1994 Birthday Honours,[255] and subsequently was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to drama, charitable work, and philanthropy.[256] On being made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle, Lansbury stated: "I'm joining a marvellous group of women I greatly admire like Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. It's a lovely thing to be given that nod of approval by your own country and I cherish it."[256]

Lansbury won six Golden Globe Awards and a People's Choice Awards for her television and film work.[257][258] She never won an Emmy Award despite 18 nominations. As of 2009, she held the record for the most unsuccessful Emmy nominations by a performer.[259] She was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, but never won. Reflecting on this in 2007, she stated that she was at first "terribly disappointed, but subsequently very glad that [she] did not win" because she believed that she would have otherwise had a less successful career.[260]

In 2013, the

Honorary Academy Award for her lifetime achievements in the industry. The actors Emma Thompson and Geoffrey Rush offered tributes at the Governors Awards where the ceremony was held, and Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies presented her with the Oscar, stating that "Angela has been adding class, talent, beauty, and intelligence to the movies" since 1944.[261] The Oscar statue is inscribed: "To Angela Lansbury, an icon who has created some of cinema's most memorable characters inspiring generations of actors".[262]

Publications

See also

Notes

  1. ^ In a 2014 interview for BBC Radio 4, she stated: "I want to make one thing clear: I was not born in Poplar, that's not true, I was born in Regent's Park, so I wasn't born in the East End, I wish I could say I had been. Certainly my antecedents were: my grandfather, my father." (mins 3–4).[6]

References

Citations

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General and cited sources

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