Angela Lansbury
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| Angela Lansbury | |
 Angela Lansbury at the 1989 Emmy Awards. |
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| Birth name | Angela Brigid Lansbury |
| Born | October 16, 1925 (age 81) London, England |
| Spouse(s) | Richard Cromwell (deceased) Peter Shaw (1949-2003, deceased) |
| Notable roles | Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote Mrs. Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate |
Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE (born October 16, 1925) is a Tony-winning, Golden Globe-winning, Oscar-nominated, and Emmy-nominated English actress, best-known for playing mystery writer Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote. She currently holds simultaneous records for most Emmy losses (18) and most Tony wins (4).
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[edit] Background
Born in London, Lansbury was the daughter of Belfast-born actress Moyna Macgill and Edgar Lansbury, a prominent businessman, and the granddaughter of the former Labour Party leader George Lansbury. Her earliest theatrical influences were teen-aged coloratura Deanna Durbin, screen star Irene Dunne, and her own mother, who encouraged her daughter's ambition by taking her to plays at the Old Vic and removing her from South Hampstead High School for Girls in order to enroll her in the Ritman School of Dancing and later the Webber-Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art.
After her father's death of stomach cancer, Lansbury's mother become involved with a Scotsman named Leckie Forbes, and the two merged their families under one roof in Hampstead. A former colonel with the British Army in India, Forbes proved to be a jealous and suspicious tyrant who ruled the household with an iron hand. Just prior to the German blitzkrieg of London, Lansbury's mother was presented with the opportunity to take her children to America, and under cover of dark of night they fled from their unhappy home and sailed for Montreal, from where they headed to New York City. When her mother settled in Hollywood following a fund-raising Canadian tour of a Noel Coward play, she (and later her brothers) joined her there.
As a struggling young actress, Lansbury worked at the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles. At one of the frequent parties her mother hosted for British emigré performers in their Laurel Canyon home, she met would-be actor Michael Dyne, who arranged for her to meet Mel Ballerino, the casting director for the upcoming film adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ballerino was casting Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, as well, and he offered her the role of the impertinent and slightly malevolent maid Nancy. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her 1944 film debut, and the following year garnered another for her portrayal of Sibyl Vane in Dorian Gray.
[edit] Career
[edit] Theatre
On Broadway, Lansbury received good reviews from her first musical outing, the short-lived 1964 Stephen Sondheim musical Anyone Can Whistle, which co-starred Lee Remick. Two years later, she was offered what proved to be the biggest triumph of her theatrical career, the title role in Mame, Jerry Herman's musical adaptation of the novel and subsequent film Auntie Mame, which had starred Rosalind Russell. Opening at the Winter Garden Theater on May 24, 1966, Mame ran for 1508 performances. Lansbury's portrayal, opposite Bea Arthur as Vera Charles, earned her the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. She and Arthur became life-long friends. Lansbury became the "toast of Broadway," singing and dancing to memorable tunes like "Open a New Window," "We Need a Little Christmas," "Bosom Buddies," "It's Today," and "If He Walked Into My Life" eight performances a week.
Lansbury's popularity from and association with Mame had her very much in demand everywhere in the media. Ever the humanitarian, she used her fame as an opportunity to benefit others wherever possible. For example, when appearing as a guest panelist on the popular Sunday night CBS-TV show, What's My Line?, she made an impassioned plea for viewers to contribute to the 1966 Muscular Dystrophy Association fundraising drive, chaired by Jerry Lewis.
Lansbury won additional Tony Awards for Dear World (1969), the first Broadway revival of Gypsy (1974), and her English music hall turn as the affection-starved meat pie entrepreneuse, Mrs. Lovett, in Stephen Sondheim's ballad opera Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979). In a television interview with Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies aired in August 2006, Lansbury stated that, theatrically, she feels she would "most like to be remembered for this role". She also stated that this production was also a triumph and a comeback of sorts for Sondheim, whom she admires.
She also is a two-time winner of the Sarah Siddons Award (1975 and 1980) for dramatic achievement in Chicago theatre.
In 1971, Lansbury accepted the title role in the Jule Styne-Bob Merrill musical Prettybelle. After a difficult rehearsal period, the show opened to brutal reviews in Boston, where it closed within a week. In 1982 a recording of the show was authorised by Varese Sarabande which included most of the original cast and Lansbury's 11 o'clock number "When I'm Drunk, I'm Beautiful" along with "You Never Looked Better", a song that was cut early on in the preview run.
[edit] Film and television
Lansbury has enjoyed a long and varied career, mainly as a film actress in roles generally older than her actual age, appearing in everything from Samson and Delilah (1949) to Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). Her notable credits include The Manchurian Candidate (1962) in which she played Mrs. Iselin, the cold-blooded mother of a war veteran brainwashed into becoming a Communist assassin. She won much critical praise for her chilling performance, and received her third Oscar nomination. (Lucille Ball had been considered for the role; a decade later, Ball ironically landed the title role in the film version of Mame, a role Lansbury had created on Broadway.) On CNN's Larry King Live, Lansbury said that her character in The Manchurian Candidate was her favorite of her many film roles.[1]
After a career in theatre, returning to film, Lansbury played Salome Otterbourne in Death on the Nile (1978). She was somewhat less successful as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack'd (1980).
Lansbury then turned to character voice work in animated films like The Last Unicorn (1982) and as the Dowager Empress in the less well-received animated film Anastasia in 1997. Her most famous voice work was the singing teapot Mrs. Potts in the Disney hit Beauty and the Beast (1991), who performed the Oscar-winning title written by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. She reprised the role in the Disney/Square-Enix video game Kingdom Hearts II in 2006. In the same year, she appeared in Nanny McPhee as great aunt Adelaide.
While Lansbury has won every Tony for which she's been nominated, she was less successful with the Oscars and Emmys, for which she holds the record for the most primetime nominations (twelve) as Best Actress without a single win. She is the recipient of several other prominent awards, including the People's Choice and Golden Globe.
Lansbury found her biggest success and a worldwide following as Jessica Fletcher in the long-running television series, Murder, She Wrote (1984 - 1996), which was one of the longest running detective drama series in US TV history and made her one of the highest paid actresses in the world.
In the early 1990s, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom appointed her a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She was named a Disney Legend in 1995. She received a Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997, Kennedy Center Honors in 2000, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
[edit] Personal life
Lansbury married American actor Richard Cromwell when she was 19 and he was 35. Unbeknownst to her, Cromwell was homosexual and the marriage dissolved after a year, but the two remained friends. In 1949, Lansbury married Irish-born actor and businessman Peter Shaw, who had been a former boyfriend of Joan Crawford. Shaw was instrumental in guiding and managing Lansbury's career. Until his death in 2003, Lansbury enjoyed one of the longest show-business marriages on record.
Lansbury is the mother of two, stepmother of one, and a grandmother several times over. In an interview with Barbara Walters, Lansbury revealed a firestorm that destroyed the family's Malibu home in September 1970 was a blessing in disguise, as it prompted a move to rural County Cork, Ireland, where her children were separated from the hard drugs with which they had been experimenting. Her son Anthony, after a brief fling with acting, became producer/director of Murder She Wrote and presently is a television executive and director. Her daughter Deirdre and son-in-law, a chef, are restaurateurs in West Los Angeles.
Lansbury was related to the late Sir Peter Ustinov by her half-sister Isolde's marriage to the British actor (they divorced in 1946). The two former in-laws appeared together professionally just once, in 1978's Death on the Nile. Lansbury is related by marriage to actress Ally Sheedy, wife of her nephew David Lansbury. Both her twin brothers, Edgar and Bruce, are successful theater producers.
She is a long-time resident of Brentwood, California and supports various philanthropic groups. She was the guest of honor at the 14th annual Gala and Fundraiser on April 16, 2005 for Women in Recovery, Inc., a Venice, California-based non-profit organization offering a live-in, 12-Step program for women in need. Past honorees of this organization include Jamie Lee Curtis and Sir Anthony Hopkins.
Lansbury had knee replacement surgery on July 14, 2005 [1].
In 2006, Lansbury purchased a condominium in New York City at a reported cost of $2 million with her sights set on a return to Broadway. New York based writer Gordon Cox reported in October 2006 that she would return to the stage for the first time in more than 20 years in Deuce, a new play by Terrence McNally, scheduled to open at the Music Box Theatre on May 6, 2007.
[edit] Filmography
[edit] Television credits
- Grannytram (1956)
- The Story of the First Christmas Snow (1975)
- Sweeney Todd (1982)
- Little Gloria... Happy at Last (1982)
- The Gift of Love: A Christmas Story (1983)
- A Talent for Murder (1984)
- Lace (1984)
- The First Olympics: Athens 1896 (1984)
- The Murder of Sherlock Holmes (1984) (pilot for Murder, She Wrote)
- Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996)
- Magnum, P.I. (November 19, 1986, "Novel Connection", appeared as character Jessica Fletcher)
- Rage of Angels: The Story Continues (1986)
- Shootdown (1988)
- The Shell Seekers (1989)
- The Love She Sought (1990)
- Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris (1992)
- Mrs. Santa Claus (1996)
- Murder, She Wrote: South by Southwest (1997)
- The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (1999)
- Murder, She Wrote: A Story to Die For (2000)
- Murder, She Wrote: The Last Free Man (2001)
- Murder, She Wrote: The Celtic Riddle (2003)
- The Blackwater Lightship (2004)
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2005) (Guest Appearance)
- Lansbury has hosted or co-hosted more Tony Award telecasts than any other individual, with five telecasts (1968, 1971, 1987, 1988, and 1989).
[edit] Broadway productions
- Hotel Paradiso (Apr. - Jul. 1957)
- A Taste of Honey (Oct. 1960 - Sep. 1961)
- Anyone Can Whistle (Apr. 1964)
- Mame (May 1966 - Jan. 1969)
- Dear World (Feb. - May 1969)
- Gypsy (Sep. 1974 - Jan. 1975)
- The King and I (Substitute for several weeks, April 1978)
- Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Mar. 1979 - Jun. 1980)
- A Little Family Business (Dec. 1982)
- Mame (Jul. - Aug. 1983)
- Deuce (April - Aug. 2007)
[edit] Other Theatre
- Gypsy (May 29, 1973-March 2, 1974 - Piccadilly Theatre, London)
- Anyone Can Whistle (April 8, 1995, Benefit Concert)
- Short Talks on the Universe (Nov. 2002, Benefit)
- Oscar and the Pink Lady (Mar. 2006,Geffen Playhouse)
[edit] Awards and nominations
[edit] Academy Awards
- Nominations
- Best Supporting Actress (Gaslight, 1945)
- Best Supporting Actress (The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1946)
- Best Supporting Actress (The Manchurian Candidate, 1963)
[edit] BAFTA Awards
- Win
- Britannia Award (Lifetime Achievement, 2003)
- Nomination
- Best Supporting Actress (Death on the Nile, 1978)
[edit] Emmy Awards
- Nominations
- Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series (for playing Eleanor Duvall in "Law & Order: Trial by Jury", 2005)
- Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie (The Blackwater Lightship, 2004)
- Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series ("Murder, She Wrote", 1985-1996)
- Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program ("The 43rd Annual Tony Awards", 1990)
- Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program ("The 41st Annual Tony Awards", 1987)
- Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program (Sweeney Todd, 1985)
- Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie (Little Gloria... Happy at Last, 1983)
[edit] Golden Globes
- Wins
- Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama ("Murder, She Wrote", 1992)
- Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama ("Murder, She Wrote", 1990)
- Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama ("Murder, She Wrote", 1987)
- Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama ("Murder, She Wrote", 1985)
- Best Supporting Actress (The Manchurian Candidate, 1963)
- Best Supporting Actress (The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1946)
- Nominations
- Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama ("Murder, She Wrote", 1995)
- Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama ("Murder, She Wrote", 1993)
- Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama ("Murder, She Wrote", 1991)
- Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama ("Murder, She Wrote", 1989)
- Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama ("Murder, She Wrote", 1988)
- Best Performance by an Actress in a TV-Series - Drama ("Murder, She Wrote", 1986)
- Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Miniseries or TV-Movie (A Gift of Love: A Christmas Story, 1983)
- Best Motion Picture Actress - Musical/Comedy (Bedknobs and Broomsticks, 1972)
- Best Motion Picture Actress - Musical/Comedy (Something for Everyone, 1970)
[edit] Hasty Pudding Theatricals
- Win
- Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year (1968)
[edit] National Board of Review
- Wins
- Best Supporting Actress (Death on the Nile, 1978)
- Best Supporting Actress (All Fall Down and The Manchurian Candidate, 1962)
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Liza Minnelli in Flora the Red Menace |
Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical 1966 for Mame |
Succeeded by Barbara Harris in The Apple Tree |
| Preceded by (tie) Patricia Routledge in Darling of the Day and Leslie Uggams in Hallelujah, Baby! |
Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical 1969 for Dear World |
Succeeded by Lauren Bacall in Applause |
| Preceded by Virginia Capers in Raisin |
Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical 1975 for Gypsy |
Succeeded by Donna McKechnie in A Chorus Line |
| Preceded by Liza Minnelli in The Act |
Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical 1979 for Sweeney Todd |
Succeeded by Patti LuPone in Evita |
| Preceded by Lauren Bacall |
Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year 1968 |
Succeeded by Carol Burnett |
[edit] Reference
Balancing Act, the Authorized Biography of Angela Lansbury by Martin Gottfried, published by Little, Brown and Company, 1999
[edit] Notes
[edit] External links
- Angela Lansbury at the Internet Movie Database
- Angela Lansbury at the TCM Movie Database
- Angela Landsbury at the Notable Names Database
- Angela Lansbury at the Internet Broadway Database
- Angela Landsbury at TV.com
- Archive of American Television Interview with Angela Lansbury in Sep 15,1998 on Google Video
- Angela Lansbury on American Theatre Wing's Downstage Center
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lansbury, Angela |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lansbury, Angela Brigid |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | actress |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 16, 1925 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | London, England |
| DATE OF DEATH | |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
Categories: 1925 births | Alumni of the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art | American character actors | American film actors | American musical theatre actors | American stage actors | American television actors | Commanders of the Order of the British Empire | Corymore Productions | Disney Legends | English American actors | Hollywood Walk of Fame | Irish-American actors | Kingdom Hearts cast members | Law & Order: Special Victims Unit cast | Law & Order: Trial by Jury cast | Living people | Naturalized citizens of the United States | People from London | Royal National Theatre Company members | Tony Award winners | United States National Medal of Arts recipients
