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Angela Lansbury
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Angela Brigid Lansbury, CBE (born 16 October 1925) is a British actress and singer whose career has spanned six decades. She made her first film appearance in Gaslight (1944), for which she received an Academy Award nomination, and expanded her repertoire to Broadway and television in the 1950s. Highly respected for her versatility, Lansbury has won four Tony Awards and six Golden Globes, and has been nominated for eighteen Emmys and three Academy Awards.
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Encyclopedia
Angela Brigid Lansbury, CBE (born 16 October 1925) is a British actress and singer whose career has spanned six decades. She made her first film appearance in Gaslight (1944), for which she received an Academy Award nomination, and expanded her repertoire to Broadway and television in the 1950s. Highly respected for her versatility, Lansbury has won four Tony Awards and six Golden Globes, and has been nominated for eighteen Emmys and three Academy Awards.
Her more popular films include The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) and Beauty and the Beast (1991) and she was successful in such Broadway musicals as Gypsy, Mame and Sweeney Todd. Lansbury is more recently known for her role as mystery writer Jessica Fletcher on the American television series Murder, She Wrote, in which she starred from 1984 until 1996.
Early life
Born in Poplar, London, England, 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. She is a cousin of the late English animator and puppeteer Oliver Postgate (another grandchild of George Lansbury). Her cousin, the academic Coral Lansbury, is the mother of the Australian federal Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull. Her earliest theatrical influences were the teenaged coloratura Deanna Durbin, screen star Irene Dunne, and Lansbury's 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 enrol her in the Ritman School of Dancing and later the Webber-Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art (later the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art).
Following her father's death from stomach cancer, her mother became 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 bombing campaign of London, Lansbury's mother was presented with the opportunity to take her children to North America, and under cover of dark of night they fled from their unhappy home and sailed for Montreal, from there they headed to New York City. When her mother settled in Hollywood following a fund-raising Canadian tour of a Noel Coward play, Lansbury (and later her brothers) joined her there.
Lansbury worked at the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles. At one of the frequent parties her mother hosted for British émigré 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 nomination for her portrayal of Sibyl Vane in The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Career
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 24 May 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. In addition, Lansbury's version of one of the play's songs, "We Need A Little Christmas", became the definitive version and has received substantial radio air-play around Christmas time every year since its release.
Lansbury won additional Tony Awards for Dear World (1969), the first Broadway revival of Gypsy (1974), and her English music hall turn as affection-starved meat pie entrepreneur Mrs. Lovett in Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd (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".
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 released 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 in the run.
She had been announced for the lead role in the Kander-Ebb musical The Visit, to open on Broadway in 2001, but withdrew from the show before it opened because of her husband's health.
Lansbury returned to the Broadway stage for the first time in more than 25 years in Deuce, a play by Terrence McNally, co-starring with Marian Seldes. The play previewed at the Music Box Theatre in April 2007 and opened on 6 May 2007 in a limited run of 18 weeks. Lansbury received a Tony nomination in the category of Leading Actress in a Play for her role in this production.
Lansbury currently portrays the psychic Madame Arcati in the Broadway revival of Blithe Spirit, which began previews on February 26, 2009, and will open at the Shubert Theatre on March 15.
Film and television
Lansbury has enjoyed a long and varied career, often in roles generally older than her actual age, appearing in everything from Samson and Delilah (1949) to Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). She appeared as Alvera Dunlear in the 1963 episode "Something Crazy's Going on in the Back Room" episode of the NBC medical drama about psychiatry, The Eleventh Hour. A notable film was 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 performance, and received her third Oscar nomination. (Lucille Ball had been considered for the role; a decade later, Ball coincidentally landed the title role in the film version of Mame, the 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.
Lansbury's popularity from and association with Mame on Broadway in the '60s 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.
After many years focused on the theatre, Lansbury returned to film, playing 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 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 song written by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. She reprised the role in "Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas" (1997), and again 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, with the exception of her nomination for Deuce in 2007, she has been less successful with the Oscars and Emmys. The Oscar has always eluded her, and Lansbury holds the record for the most primetime Emmy nominations (twelve) as Best Actress without a single win. Yet, 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. Lansbury also assumed ownership of the series in 1991 and acted as executive producer of the series from that season onwards.
In 1983 Lansbury starred opposite Sir Laurence Olivier in a BBC adaptation of the Broadway play A Talent for Murder. According to The Complete Films of Laurence Olivier (Author Jerry Vermilye, Publisher Citadel), Lansbury later stated that the production was "a rushed job", and her only reason for participating was the opportunity to work with Sir Laurence Olivier.
Honors
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.
She has received these additional honors and recognition:
- the New Dramatists Lifetime Achievement Award on May 16, 2000.
- the Acting Company's First Lifetime Achievement Award on November 11, 2002.
- the Actor's Fund of America Lifetime Achievement on October 30, 2004.
- the degree Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa from the University of Miami on May 9, 2008. She was also the guest speaker at the commencement ceremony.
Personal life
In 1945, Lansbury married American actor Richard Cromwell when he was 35 and she was 19. Unbeknownst to her, Cromwell was bisexual, and the marriage dissolved after a year, but the two remained friends.
In 1949, Lansbury married British-born actor and businessman Peter Shaw, who was a former boyfriend of Joan Crawford. Shaw was instrumental in guiding and managing Lansbury's career. Until his death in January 2003, they 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 a rural area of County Cork in Ireland, where her children were separated from the hard drugs with which they had been experimenting. Her son Anthony Shaw, after a brief fling with acting, became producer/director of Murder, She Wrote and presently is a television executive and director. Her only 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 brothers, twins Edgar and Bruce, are successful theater producers (Edgar Lansbury was instrumental in bringing Godspell to Broadway, and Bruce Lansbury was also a television producer, notably for shows like Mission: Impossible).
She had knee replacement surgery on 14 July 2005.
Lansbury was a long-time resident of Brentwood, California, and supported various philanthropic groups in Southern California. In 2006, Lansbury moved to New York City, purchasing a condominium at a reported cost of $2 million. The following year she returned to Broadway in Deuce.
Lansbury's papers are currently housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.
Work
Filmography
Theatre
Television films
Awards and nominations
Academy Awards
Nominations
CableACE Awards
Wins
- Actress in a Theatrical or Musical Program (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1982)(TV)(musical), 1983)
BAFTA Awards
Wins
- Britannia Award (Lifetime Achievement, 2003)
Nominations
Drama Desk Awards
Wins
- Outstanding Actress in a Musical, Sweeney Todd, (1979)
- Outstanding Actress in a Musical, Gypsy, (1975)
Nominations
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) (12 Consecutive Nominations)
- 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)
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 - Drama (The Manchurian Candidate, 1963)
- Best Supporting Actress - Drama (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, 1984)
- Best Motion Picture Actress - Musical/Comedy (Bedknobs and Broomsticks, 1972)
- Best Motion Picture Actress - Musical/Comedy (Something for Everyone, 1971)
Hasty Pudding Theatricals
Wins
National Board of Review
Wins
Screen Actors Guild Awards
Wins
Nominations
Television Critics Association Awards
Wins
- Career Achievement Award (1996)
Tony Awards
Wins
- Best Actress in a Musical, Sweeney Todd, (1979)
- Best Actress in a Musical, Gypsy, (1975)
- Best Actress in a Musical, Dear World, (1969)
- Best Actress in a Musical, Mame, (1966)
Nominations
- Best Actress in a Play, Deuce (2007)
See also
Other 1925 births
External links
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