A Look At Angela Lansbury's Life And Career Through The Years
Words like icon and legend get thrown around a lot, but both superlatives apply to Angela Lansbury, who died October 11, 2022 at the age of 96. A star of film, television and Broadway, Lansbury's career spanned a staggering eight decades, from her earliest film roles in the 1940s to her final screen credits in 2018. And what credits those are, from her electrifying screen debut in 1944's "Gaslight" to her devious turn in "The Manchurian Candidate" to foiling the Nazis with witchcraft in Disney's "Bedknobs and Broomsticks," and then delightfully voicing a singing teapot in "Beauty and the Beast." Of course, Lansbury will always be best remembered for one role: mystery novelist and amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher, who enchanted television viewers for more than decade in the mega-hit drama series "Murder, She Wrote."
Along the way, she earned three Oscar nominations and a staggering 18 Emmy nominations — while winning none of either. Tony voters, however, were far more enamored of her sparkling stage presence, awarding her with five Tony Awards for her various Broadway performances.
As she celebrated her 95th birthday in 2020, Lansbury reflected on her extraordinary journey. "What a fortunate life I've had the pleasure to be part of, doing the thing I most enjoy — acting and entertaining great audiences all over the world," she told the Mirror. As fans mourn her and remember favorite performances, just keep on reading for a look at Angela Lansbury's life and career through the years.
Her big break in Hollywood
After Angela Lansbury and her mother fled Britain during the Blitz, noted her BBC News obituary, they made their way to Montreal and then New York and eventually to Los Angeles. It was there that the 17-year-old aspiring actor attended a party where she caught the eye of an MGM executive. He introduced her to George Cukor, who cast the teenager as Mary the maid in the classic psychological drama "Gaslight," in which she'd be holding her own opposite such established movie stars as Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, and Joseph Cotten. "I was wrapping Christmas parcels in a department store one minute, then playing opposite Ingrid Bergman the next," she told the Daily Mail of her meteoric launch into Hollywood stardom. "It was incredible."
She was signed as a contract player, earning a salary of £125 a week (almost $140) — a considerable sum at the time, which immediately made her the breadwinner of the family at age 17. "I grew up fast because I had to," she explained.
While most contract players in the old Hollywood studio system typically made their way up by appearing in so-called B movies before being cast in more prestigious fare, Lansbury jumped to the head of the line. "That was a thrilling experience, really, to work with an absolute ace director, George Cukor," she said during a Q&A at a screening. "It's a great experience for a first movie."
Back-to-back Oscar nominations
Not only was "Gaslight" her first Hollywood movie, it also earned Angela Lansbury her first Oscar nomination. From there, MGM cast Lansbury in "National Velvet," then in an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" — with the latter earning her a second Academy Award nomination. While receiving a nomination as a teenager for one's first movie is beyond impressive, two nominations in a row instantly made her a force to be reckoned with.
Interestingly, when Lansbury attended that crucial audition for "Gaslight," she had prepared to audition for "Dorian Gray." While she was being interviewed, Lansbury recalled in an interview with NPR's "Fresh Air," the head of casting entered the room and whispered in the ear of the man who was interviewing her, suggesting that she be sent over to meet director George Cukor to discuss his movie. "And so right then and there, I was whipped off to meet George Cukor. And so, well, the rest, as they say, is history."
Crafting her performance in "Gaslight," she explained, was simply an example of a director and actor being on the same wavelength. As she told "Fresh Air," "In most instances, I was pretty quick to pick up directorial indications from somebody like George Cukor because he was extremely clear and funny and helpful. And what he said I understood. So you could say I was fortunate in that I could understand what he wanted and then deliver it."
Aging up throughout the 1940s
The acclaim that Angela Lansbury experienced from her first two movies placed her in high demand; as her jam-packed roster of IMDb credits made clear, she cranked out movie after movie for the remainder of the 1940s. Including her 1944 screen debut, between then and the end of the decade, she made two or three movies a year, ultimately appearing in 13 pictures.
While not all of those movies were of the same caliber as those first three — "Gaslight," "National Velvet," and "The Picture of Dorian Gray," all considered classics — Lansbury wound up working with many of the biggest actors in Hollywood during that era, ranging from Spencer Tracy to Gene Kelly. She was also, she told NPR's "Fresh Air," being cast as characters who were considerably older than she was. "I was playing older women," she said. "So I was never going to get to play the girl next door. And I was never going to be groomed to be a glamorous movie star."
That can be seen in several of her films during the 1940s. As the Oscars.org website pointed out, in Frank Capra's "State of the Union," Lansbury was just 23 when she portrayed a 45-year-old newspaper mogul who becomes romantically involved with Spencer Tracy, then in his late 40s. In addition, just a year later, in Cecil B. DeMille's "Samson and Delilah," she played a character older than Hedy Lamarr, although Lamarr was 11 years her senior.
A doomed marriage and a quick divorce
In the midst of establishing herself in Hollywood, in 1945 Angela Lansbury married handsome actor Richard Cromwell, 15 years her senior when she wed at 19. There was one somewhat significant problem with their marriage, however; Cromwell was gay, something Lansbury hadn't realized until after saying, "I do." As she told NPR's "Fresh Air," "I was in love with love," she said, admitting that when the knot was tied, she had no sexual experience whatsoever.
"So when it turned out that he was, I never blamed him for it in any way," said Lansbury, ultimately realizing it was she who was at fault for jumping into a marriage at such a young age without knowing her husband nearly as well as she thought she had. However, she held no regrets about her brief first marriage, which ended when Lansbury filed for divorce a year later. "I realized that I had just made an excruciating error, you know, an emotional error," she admitted.
Even though the marriage was a failure, Lansbury preferred to focus on the positive. "But I give him credit for introducing me to so much that, in my life, I wouldn't have known about had it not been for him," she explained. "So it was a good experience."
Lasting love with second husband Peter Shaw
Angela Lansbury's second time walking down the aisle proved to be far more successful than her first. Three years after her divorce from Richard Cromwell, she wed Peter Shaw, an actor who went on to become a top Hollywood agent before becoming a producer. The couple went on to have three children, and, eventually three grandchildren, and then five great-grandchildren. As Lansbury's People obituary noted, she and Shaw were married for 53 years, until his death from heart failure in 2003 at age 84.
Reminiscing about her late husband in a 2014 interview with the Daily Mail, Lansbury described their marriage. "We had the perfect relationship. Not many people can say that," said Lansbury of her five-decade union. "He was everything to me: we were partners at work as well as husband and wife and lovers. I don't know how we had such a long marriage, but the simple fact was that we were devoted to one another."
According to Lansbury, their marriage was a true partnership, and their primary focus was always their children. "We made all decisions jointly and we helped and supported each other constantly," Lansbury said. "My career was important to me, but our children, Anthony and Deidre, always came first."
A career resurgence with The Manchurian Candidate
Throughout the 1950s, Angela Lansbury remained an in-demand working actor. However, as her IMDb credits indicated, the 1950s saw her ping-ponging back and forth between film and the still relatively new medium of television. Her films during that time were largely forgettable — 1958's "The Long Hot Summer" being an exception, although it should also be noted that Lansbury was credited sixth on the marquee, well below stars (and future spouses) Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.
Everything changed when she was cast in "The Manchurian Candidate," in which she played the domineering, right-wing mother of a Korean War veteran (Laurence Harvey) who's been brainwashed by communists (one of whom, shockingly, was Lansbury's character) to assassinate the president. Lansbury hit it out of the park, delivering a performance so powerful she was nominated for her third Oscar — definitely a way to land oneself back on Hollywood's radar.
One interesting factor to note about "The Manchurian Candidate" is that it continued Lansbury's tradition of playing characters who were quite a bit older than she was. As the Deseret News reminded, she was only 36, while Harvey was 33 — just three years older than the actor playing her son.
Angela Lansbury fled Hollywood for rural Ireland
By the late 1960s, Angela Lansbury had been witnessing her children, then teenagers, begin to get seduced into the Hollywood fast lane — her daughter, in fact, had even fallen in with the followers of Charles Manson. That was why she and her family picked up roots and moved to County Cork, Ireland in 1970. "Moving to Ireland was like beginning all over again and it afforded us that time to get back to basics really," she explained in an interview with the Daily Mail.
It was during those years that she rediscovered her love of the stage when a local theater company was looking to land a well-known actor to star in an upcoming production. "We had heard Angela and her family were living in Conna," John O'Shea, a founding member of Cork's Everyman Theatre, told the Irish Examiner. "It was a bit of a long shot, but we made contact with her and she jumped at it, no questions asked."
Lansbury also relished the opportunity to live a life apart from the glitz and glamor of Hollywood. "Angela would never see herself as a star, she just likes putting on her wellies, walking down to the shop, and getting a pint of milk or whatever," observed O'Shea. "She is a very ordinary person who likes to be just that. The fact that she has this amazing talent and success is kind of by the way."
Casting a spell on Disney fans with Bedknobs and Broomsticks
During the years when Angela Lansbury and her family were living in Ireland, she was seen in "Bedknobs and Broomsticks," a 1971 Disney film that broke new ground in blending live action with animation (she actually filmed the movie years earlier, when she was still living in Malibu). Lansbury played an apprentice witch (she's been studying witchcraft via correspondence) who is reluctantly charged with looking after three children during the London Blitz, using her magical powers to cast a spell that will crush the Nazis.
While the film received mixed reviews at the time, starring in a Disney children's film opened up a whole new avenue of fandom for Lansbury. "It was delightful," Lansbury said of her experience on the film during an interview with the Archive of American Television. However, she noted that it was also somewhat limiting, in that the footage shot had to follow the movie's storyboard to the most minute detail, since animation would later be integrated with the actors' performances.
Despite the limitations, Lansbury was proud of the final product once the movie was finally released. "A delightful movie for everyone," she declared during an appearance on "The Dick Cavett Show." "It's kind of a sweet movie," she said, adding, "It's a doozy."
She became the toast of Broadway
While Angela Lansbury's screen credits during the early- to mid-1970s may appear somewhat sparse, that's no reflection on the amount of work she was doing — she was just doing it on the stage, not the screen. After making her Broadway debut in 1957, Lansbury continued to appear on the Great White Way, regularly if somewhat sporadically, starring in "A Taste of Honey" in 1960, "Anyone Can Whistle," in 1964, "Mame" in 1966 (for which she won her first Tony Award), and "Dear World "in 1969 (winning Tony No. 2).
In the following decade, she returned to Broadway with a vengeance, headlining a string of hits that were highlighted by the 1974 revival of "Gypsy," and her Tony-winning role in "Sweeney Todd," which opened in 1979 — each of which won her Tony Awards. Her next Tony came three decades later, when she won her fifth for "Blythe Spirit" in 2009. This was capped off in 2022, when the Tonys honored her with a special Lifetime Achievement Award.
Throughout her career, Lansbury continually returned to the stage to find both success and solace, something she explained in a 2009 interview with Katie Couric for CBS News. Asked if she felt that Broadway was an escape that freed her from the limitations of Hollywood, Lansbury replied, "Oh, no question about it. I felt liberated the moment I came to Broadway."
Even bigger success on TV with Murder, She Wrote
In 1984, Angela Lansbury stepped into the role that would define her for the next decade and beyond: sleuthing mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher in CBS drama "Murder, She Wrote." The show proved to be wildly popular with viewers; as The Washington Post pointed out, the series spent 11 of its 12 seasons cozily enmeshed within the top 20 in the all-important Nielsen ratings.
Interestingly enough, "Murder She Wrote" wasn't meant to be a vehicle for Lansbury but had originally been written with "All in the Family" star Jean Stapleton in mind. As Lansbury explained in a 1984 interview with People, when Stapleton was reluctant to step into another series, having just lost her husband, Lansbury immediately connected with the character. "When I read it, I felt that [series creator Peter Fischer's] script could have been written for me," she recalled. "Besides, there are so few decent roles for women on television, and I was immediately taken by Jessica."
While Lansbury had to adjust to the relentless pace of television — "If I can do it, at the age of 59, it will be a small miracle," she said — she also recognized an opportunity that simply could not be ignored. "I felt that it would have been a gap in my acting experience if I had never done a television series," she said. "I wanted to play to that huge audience just once."
A return to Disney in Beauty and the Beast
While in the midst of playing Jessica Fletcher on "Murder She Wrote," Angela Lansbury proved she wasn't done with creating iconic performances when she signed on to voice a talking, singing teapot in Disney's animated musical "Beauty and the Beast." In the role of Mrs. Potts, Lansbury's musical theater background shone through in her performances of such songs as "A Tale as Old as Time," and the show-stopping "Be Our Guest." The film proved to be a massive hit; according to Box Office Mojo, the movie's international box office topped $424 million.
Over time, Lansbury came to recognize how large the film loomed in her career. "It's never been very far away from me," Lansbury said of "Beauty and the Beast" during a red-carpet interview at an event honoring the film's 25th anniversary. "It will be remembered, I think, as one of the great movies that I've been involved with."
Lansbury also understood just how significant Mrs. Potts had become in her own body of work. "Among the movies that I will be remembered for, I'd say this is No. 1 or 2, anyway, absolutely," she added.
Finally an Oscar winner
After two back-to-back Oscar nominations in 1944 and 1945, and another in 1962, winning one of those prestigious gold statues had eluded Angela Lansbury. In 2013, however, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to right that particular wrong by presenting her with the Governor's honorary Oscar recognizing her lifetime achievement in the movies.
In her tear-filled acceptance speech, Lansbury reflected on being able to work with — and learn from — some of the world's most talented actors over the course of a career spanning decades. "You know, during the long course of my career in film, and television, and theater, I have known and worked with the very best of their time," she told the audience, listing off such legendary stars as Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Orson Welles, Sir Laurence Olivier, Paul Newman, Frank Sinatra, and others.
She concluded by referencing her own experience as a multiple Oscar nominee who'd never actually won. "You can't imagine how happy and proud indeed I feel, really underserving of this gorgeous golden chap ... and to be here in the company of my beloved family and friends, instead of sitting shivering with hope and disappointment in Grauman's Chinese Theatre in the 1940s and '60s."
A Damehood from the queen
While receiving an Academy Award is about as prestigious as it gets for any actor, Angela Lansbury managed to top herself the following year when she received a Damehood — the female equivalent of a knighthood — from Queen Elizabeth II.
"It is a very proud day for me to be recognized by the country of my birth, and to meet the Queen under these circumstances is a rare and lovely occasion," Lansbury told Sky News at the time, addressing the regal honor of being made a Dame Commander during an investiture ceremony held at Windsor Castle. She also pointed out just how different that becoming Dame Angela was from being awarded an Oscar. "One [the Oscar] is for my work in motion pictures," she explained, "and this is for the overall accomplishments of my life as an actress."
She also offered her gratitude for a career that has given her the opportunity to enjoy life in America, her adopted home for the bulk of her life, while still maintaining her ties with the U.K., where she was born and raised. "It has afforded me the joy of working in America and also in England a great deal," she said of her career.
Her final roles — and final interview
Retirement was never something Angela Lansbury had pondered, and she continued working into her 80s and 90s. In fact, her final roles included a 2014 stage production of "Driving Miss Daisy" co-starring with James Earl Jones; playing Aunt March in the 2017 television miniseries "Little Women;" and small but memorable roles in "Nanny McPhee" and "Mary Poppins Returns," both of which were released in 2018.
Even after her death, Dame Angela had one more sweet surprise for fans. In 2010, she sat down for an interview with the The New York Times for what she intended to be her final interview, instructing that the interview not be made public until she was gone. "She spoke with us with the understanding the interview would be published only after her death," the Times tweeted, releasing the video, according to her request, 12 years later on the day of her death.
"What would you like your legacy to be?" Lansbury is asked for her final question. "That through my acting I enabled people to get out of their own lives," she responded. "To be transported into other areas of life that they otherwise would never have. I'd love to be able to feel that I enabled people to do that. Life is so hard for so many people."