Angela Lansbury

Sun 25th Jan - 11:30PM

She is best known for her endearing portrayal of Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote. But hers is a 50-year career that spans film, theatre and television -and a life - fraught with frustration and disappointment.

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Angela Lansbury
born: 16-10-1925
birth place: London, England

The only blip on the crest of her success was taking the title role in the musical Prettybelle in 1971. After a difficult rehearsal period, the show opened to brutal reviews in Boston and it closed within a week

Most of Lansbury’s subsequent films in the late 1940s and early ‘50s under her MGM contract did not match the quality of character or material as her debut films. She appeared in supporting parts in films such as National Velvet (1944) and The Harvey Girls (1946) and also began to work on live television dramas in the 1960s.

Lansbury’s willingness to play older women worked to her advantage. In many cases, she was less than five years older than her on-screen sons and this led to her being cast in many prominent roles from Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), to the malevolent mother to actor Laurence Harvey’s brainwashed war veteran (who was actually just three years Lansbury’s junior) in The Manchurian Candidate, which earned her a third Oscar nomination. She has since commented that the role was one of her favourites in her career.

By 1970, Lansbury, now in her forties, began a run of film roles to please her fans that tapped her flair for eccentric comedy. Most notably, she earned a Golden Globe nomination in the cult comedy Something For Everyone (1970).

Lansbury’s long association with murder mysteries dramas began with a turn as a besotted romance novelist who becomes involved in a murder on board an Egyptian boat cruise in Death on the Nile (1979), which brought her a National Board of Review award and a BAFTA nomination.

Back on Broadway, Lansbury landed a third Tony award for her performance in the revival of Gypsy (1974) and her fourth Tony for her role in Stephen Sondheim’s gory blockbuster Sweeney Todd (1979). Lansbury recreated the role for a 1982 PBS broadcast of the production, which also brought her a Cable ACE award and an Emmy nomination.

Off-screen, however, Lansbury’s personal life had taken a nose dive. Both of her children had become involved with hard drugs and a fire in 1970 destroyed the Lansbury’s home in Malibu. The fire and worry over the children’s drug involvement prompted a move to Country Cork in Ireland and Lansbury credited the incidents as fate in helping to put her children back on an even path.

Lansbury’s savvy portrayals in the Agatha Christie adaptations helped lay the groundwork for Murder, She Wrote from 1984 to 1996 in which she starred (and later executive produced) as Jessica Fletcher, a mystery novelist with a knack for finding herself in the middle of a murder – and the ability to solve it without the help of police.

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