R.I.P. Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury has died at her home in Los Angeles, five days before her 97th birthday
Aux News Angela Lansbury
Prolific star of stage and screen Angela Lansbury has died. “The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles at 1:30 AM today, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday,” her family shared in a statement obtained by Deadline. “In addition to her three children, Anthony, Deirdre and David, she is survived by three grandchildren, Peter, Katherine and Ian, plus five great grandchildren and her brother, producer Edgar Lansbury. She was proceeded in death by her husband of 53 years, Peter Shaw. A private family ceremony will be held at a date to be determined.”
Born in England, Angela Lansbury fled the country for America as World War II progressed. While still a teenager, she was contracted by MGM, and received an Academy Award nomination for her screen debut as the surly young maid in the 1944 Ingrid Bergman movie Gaslight. She received another nomination the following year for playing Sybil Vane in The Picture Of Dorian Gray.
Through the years, sharp-eyed MGM fans could spot Lansbury in such disparate roles as Elizabeth Taylor’s sister in National Velvet and a dance-hall girl in the Judy Garland vehicle The Harvey Girls. She appeared in the William Faulkner epic The Long, Hot Summer and even the 1961 Elvis Presley movie Blue Hawaii playing the singer’s mother, even though she was only 35 at the time.
Just a year after Blue Hawaii, she inhabited one of her most iconic roles: Communist conspirator Mrs. Eleanor Shaw Iselin, who helped mold her own son into a potential presidential assassin in The Manchurian Candidate. Such was Lansbury’s skill that she was only a few years older than Laurence Harvey, who played her son, yet was wholly convincing as his manipulative matriarch. She received another Oscar nomination, and won the Golden Globe for the role. During the 1960s, she also appeared in TV series like The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and blockbusters like The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Throughout her career she balanced her TV and film work with stage work, from classic Shakespearian dramas like Hamlet to musicals like Gypsy, in which she played Mama Rose. When she took on the role of Mame in 1966, it was her first actual lead; she was 41. Some stage roles were captured for the screen, such as in the Broadway production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, portraying Mrs. Lovett. She won five Tony awards (tied with Julie Harris and bested only by Audra MacDonald) and hosted the ceremony herself five times, more than any other host.
In 1971 she created her own Julie Andrews-type of benevolent, magical caregiver in the hit Disney film Bedknobs & Broomsticks. But her most iconic role arrived in the ’80s; when offered both a sitcom and a detective series, she wisely chose the latter, and the rest is TV history. Most American TV viewers know Lansbury as the intrepid Jessica Fletcher, homespun detective of the unusually crime-laden small town of Cabot Cove, Maine. The series ran for 12 years, from 1984 to 1996, followed by a few TV movies. Lansbury was nominated for a Best Actress Emmy 12 times for the role, never winning; she also received 10 Golden Globe nominations as Jessica Fletcher, winning three times.
After Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury’s next iconic turn came as the voice of the teapot, Mrs. Potts, in the Disney classic Beauty & The Beast. Although she was also Emmy nominated for a later role on Law & Order, she didn’t win. As she also received an honorary Oscar in 2014, as well as a Grammy for the Beauty & The Beast soundtrack, she was only a hair away from becoming an EGOT winner.
Angela Lansbury was married twice. Her marriage to first husband Richard Cromwell only lasted a year; she found out he was gay after the marriage ended, and they remained good friends. Her second marriage, to Peter Shaw, lasted 53 years until his death in 2003. They had two children: Deidre Shaw, who is a writer and producer on Jane The Virgin and Anthony Pullen Shaw, who worked with his mother on Murder, She Wrote, as did David Shaw, Peter Shaw’s son by his first marriage.
Even in her ’90s, Lansbury scarcely slowed down: In recent years she has shown up as the Balloon Lady in Mary Poppins Returns, the voice of the mayor in The Grinch, and Aunt March in the Little Women mini-series. Her final role will be in the forthcoming Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. Rest in peace to a showbusiness legend.
145 Comments
RIP. Greatest TV Serial killer ever.I probably should be ashamed to say this, but I loved Murder, She Wrote.
If this news has hit you in the (queen of) heart(s), you can always pass the time by playing a little solitaire.RIP to a got damn legend.
David O. Russell expresses regrets . . . that he never had time to insult her.
I used to watch Murder, She Wrote with my grandmother; I lived with her for a brief time while my parents were going through a difficult patch. To this day those are some of my nicest childhood memories, sitting in front of the TV eating Riesens and doughnuts and watching Angela Lansbury solve crimes. Rest easy and in peace.
I used to watch it with my Grandmother also!
Great memories. RIP.
It really seems like Murder, She Wrote is a show that – more than most – transcends generations and interests. I had the usual surliness of a teenager, but I have very distinct and fond memories of watching the show with my parents, and I’m pretty sure in the 14-16 age range that was one of the few times I was willingly with them and not rolling my eyes or huffing.
It was like watching Colombo if he was your grandmother. I had no idea it ran that long but it was absolute comfort food every time out.
This is also Vera
In the first episode of Derry Girls, Erin’s intention of going to a gig shocks Orla because “Murder She Wrote’s on tonight, you never miss Murder She Wrote.”
I was a surly teenager in the earlier part of its run. I think I might have watched an episode or two and determined it was not for me.
In fact, looking at some clips I noticed that Erin has an Angela Lansbury poster on her bedroom wall!
I had seen an episode here and there in my life but during quarantine my wife and I dove into the series. Like any formulaic show that runs 12 seasons, it got weird towards the end but it was a lot of fun
Damn, I never had that experience or even watched the show and that still made me tear up.
Going to grandma’s house on the weekends meant nothing but mystery shows. Columbo, Perry Mason, Diagnosis: Murder, that show where the guy gets tomorrow’s neswpaper today, etc. Murder She Wrote was always the most fun.
J.M. Straczynski wrote for Murder She Wrote.
My grandpa got divorced over Murder She Wrote. His wife didn’t like the show but the neighbor did. Spent time with the neighbor and fell in love with her.
Damn, I don’t think I’ve had a Riesens since my grandma died 8 years ago.
we werent able to get cable in the rural area I grew up in so I watched that show out of necessity. It was on syndication on one of our two channels so I watched it a lot and still like to
I had the privilege of seeing her onstage in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit. Even at age 86, she had a tremendous physicality and just threw herself into every moment.And a nice piece of career bookends, singing about balloons in both Gaslight and Mary Poppins Returns.
The term GOAT gets thrown around far too much these days, but she absolutely earned it. What an absolute legend in everything she did. I first came to know her as Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast – true story she didn’t want to record the title song at first, but ended up doing it in one take – her work in musical theater is what I’ve loved the most as I’ve grown up. It’ll be Mame, Gypsy, and Sweeney Todd on repeat this evening.RIP to the great Dame Angela Lansbury. Eternally grateful that she walked into our lives…
IIRC, she didn’t want to do it because they sent her the demo of the pop version by accident.
She did a fantastic version of For We Need a Little Christmas also in Mame.
One of my favorite Christmas songs!
One of my favorite parts of the musical. Jerry Herman never got enough credit for his writing.
I tear up every time I hear Angela sing Beauty and the Beast in that movie. And I’m a grandma now. The first time I saw Angela was in National Velvet on tv back in the 50s. But probably my two favorite movies of hers are The Manchurian Candidate and The World of Henry Orient. Honorable Mention: Death on the Nile, where she gets to camp it up like a total lunatic. It’s the best kind of escapist fun, plus it also has (among an altogether great cast) Bette Davis and Maggie Smith in it.
Ive always found her rendition of the title song to be this timeless indescribably beautiful time capsule paired with a wonderfully animated sequence. Reduces me to tears with its beauty, and for the memories it conjures up. Its somehow sadder now with her gone, a grandmotherly love saying goodnight forever.
You beautifully put into words what I’m feeling.
The World of Henry Orient!!! Been ages since I’ve seen it. Good catch!
Thanks. I saw that movie when I wasn’t much older than the girls in that movie and I was of that generation. The story really spoke to me, and the movie has stayed with me ever since. Angela gave a depth to her character that a lesser actress wouldn’t have been able to convey.
Death on the Nile is soooo fun.
God, she was wonderful. Her Salome in DOTN is a master class in acting drunk—as well as consistently hilarious. (I think she sets the record for mispronouncing Poirot’s name the most times in a Christie movie.) And her awful socialite mom in Henry Orient gave that movie surprisingly serious emotional stakes.
One of the most versatile actresses of her generation and others as well. And she made it look so easy.
Was about to comment about singing Beauty and the Beast in one take but you beat me to it. :)Remarkable talent. Extraordinary career. Legend.
My Sunday night childhood was watching Murder She Wrote with my parents, always after 60 Minutes. Had to go bed once it was over so I never liked the music.She narrated Company of Wolves, pretty good 80s werewolf fairy tale.
“Had to go bed once it was over so I never liked the music.”Hearing Night Court’s closing theme always gives me the same vibes.
I’m very old, so mine is the Get Smart closing music (which is sort of scary-lite); in particular, I had a very bad childhood scare (of nothing real, you know, a scary comic book) one Saturday afternoon and I associated the music with “can’t sleep, clowns will eat me [it was not a clown]”.
In the fall, it was NFL, 60 Minutes, and Murder… Was Magnum P.I. also on Sundays? CBS had a monster of a lineup, there
Yes, Magnum PI after Murder, She Wrote. I seldom was allowed to stay up to watch Magnum.I love the tuba solo in the middle of the M,SW opening theme.
Please tell me you were at least allowed to watch the Murder She Wrote/Magnum crossover!
I don’t remember seeing the crossover first run, but I’ve subsquently seen it in reruns in the last year. All M,SW episodes are on Freevee streamer and my wife has been binging it right now as good TV comfort food.
Oh when was Simon and Simon aired? Also does that mean at one time you got to watch back to back Jessica Fletcher? What with the Magnum PI/Murder She Wrote crossover an’ all.
She had a crossover episode with Magnum, too.
The two crossovers were even plot related!
That theme tune is the most jaunty theme tune ever created. Is MSW the only British-style murder mystery show made in America to succeed? I can’t think of any others.
Without her the killer is probably going to get away with it.
Don’t worry – Richie Cunningham’s Dad will be on hand to catch ‘em!
Um, I should’ve probably checked to see if Tom Bosley is still alive before my comment!
Can’t help but notice the recent increase in crime. Surely not a coincidence with her declining health.
If Fletcher wasn’t the real killer after all. I mean, people ended up dead wherever she went. Cabot Cove, New York, Los Angeles, London…
Beauty and the Beast got me through so much in my life. One of the first songs I played when my mom died. A song that reminds me I know the voice of Belle very well. Happy days and sad days, all connected to one of the most beautiful of songs sung by a kindly woman. Oh how I knew this day would come. But I never could be ready. Fare thee well Angela.
RIP Angela Lansbury. Bedknobs and Broomsticks was my jam as a kid – must’ve worn out the VHS tape back then … I think I can still remember entire chunks of dialogue from that film. (“No fried foods? ‘Ow dyou keep your elf?” “Filigree Apogee Pedigree … Perigee!”) In memory, I’m going do what, in my mind, I imagine Dame Angela was fond of doing in the evenings in her living room after having had a glass of sherry or two: close my eyes as I dutty wine enthusiastically to the Chaka Demus and Pliers’ hit “Murder She Wrote” …
miss price: that’s my nightgown!
prof. brown: is it really?
miss price: yes, and i’m not responsible for its behaviour!
I was struggling to think whether it was in Bedknobs and Broomsticks or in Mary Poppins that dude (who was in both films) took off his shoes and we could see the holes in his socks …Then I remembered he was Mr Banks in Mary Poppins, so he sure as hell didn’t have holes in his socks in that film!
Pouring one out for a legend…
Well played.
i know it’s thought of as a low-rate ‘mary poppins,’ but bedknobs and broomsticks is probably my favourite movie of all time. owned the vhs, the dvd, and it was the first movie i watched when i got disney+.incredible voice.
“low-rate mary poppins”? who said that? how very dare they!
Yeah that title is reserved for the Emily Blunt/Lin-Manuel movie.
I mean no disrespect to them but… they were low rent Mary and Bert.
It’s astonishing how closely MPR follows the original, almost scene by scene. Except for the deep sadness of the opening about Michael’s wife, and a very long bit of plot at the end, the closeness is downright embarrassing. Like, Uncle Albert becomes another relative who has trouble with gravity, at pretty much the same point in the “plot”; instead of the working-class chorus going up, to the rooftops, they go down, to the tunnels, but it’s in the corresponding point in the film after accidentally running into not-Bert. It was much clearer to me just after I’d seen Returns so I’ll spare everyone the further obvious parallels.
Bird Lady is now the Balloon Lady, magical animated world at roughly the same point. What a waste.
great summary. it was embarrassing how unoriginal MPR was. It would have been a better message if the family lost the house in the end, and realise a location isn’t what matters, but being with the people you love is.the film makers blew their chance on making a film with more original thought.
Blunt and Miranda? Yes…that definitely wasn’t Poppins. She smiled waaay too much.
The greatest climax in movie history. How do you beat centuries of British military history teaming up to kick Nazi ass?
Plus a ten minute musical number about the street where the troops on leave go to hook up with sex workers
I’m not sure if the films bring it up, but the Paddington books bring up the fact that he is fond of Portobello Road and its market. I naively thought that he was just excited about the many stalls selling all sorts of wares, but maybe he was after “companionship” instead.
Plus a ten minute musical number about the street where the troops on leave go to hook up with sex workers“…anything and everything a chap can unload…”
Troops of all colours and creeds were able to indulge in multicultural dancing and soliciting in the Portobello Road – it was ahead of its time.
See a Nazi, punch a Nazi.A motto to live by.Well, at least until you need reconstructive surgery on your knuckles.
She had an amusing friendly rivalry with Julie Andrews. Angela tried to be Mary, Julie tried to be Ms. Price. Julie tried to be Ms. Potts. Angela shows up in Mary Poppins 2. It was cute, Bednobs and Broomsticks is a lovely film she rises above its origins.
I feel bad that she shows up in Mary Poppins 2 because its a role that was so clearly written as being the cameo for Julie Andrews but she said “Fuck that, I am going to voice a monster in Aquaman instead”. It was a good call on her point because Aquaman was a far better movie then Mary Poppins Returns but its still a suprise since Julie Andrews doesn’t seem opposed to making a quick buck.
I like to think Angela heard Julie turned it down and went I’M GOING IN! She was wildly amusing from all the cast stories.
Julie reportedly turned it down because she didn’t want to steal attention from Emily Blunt.
Loooove Bedknobs. Watched it on repeat as a kid (we had the VHS in one of those puffy early-clamshell cases). I’m like 90% sure that movie turned me gay.
i could have wrote this message 🙂 x
That’s the first movie I remember seeing in a theater when I was six.
I watched “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” also, when I got Disney+. I wasn’t expecting much, but I truly loved it. I cried when David Tomlinson couldn’t handle his new “family” and decided to spend the night alone on a cold bench at the train station instead of with them. Age does funny things to you sometimes.
My parents took me to see Bednobs & Broomsticks when I was about 6 and I loved it, and loved Angela. I was stunned when 5 or so years later I realized she was the same actress in Gaslight, and even more stunned when I saw Manchurian Candidate a few years after that. She could do everything and did it all so well. I only wish I had gotten to see her live on stage.Fun fact – I slept with a man who had slept with her when he was 19, in the late 60’s. She was apparently a little randy, probably a secret to the success of her second marriage.
Rest in peace, madame.
Now that’s just hilarious mean.
I loled
A network mystery series where McCartney solves murders while on tour? I can kind of see that.
Would these mysteries be…magical?
also pops up in The Court Jester, a movie my brother and I wore out as kids.
No offense to Dame Lansbury, but Danny Kaye absolutely owns that film.
Yet later, in Beauty And The Beast, it was she who had the brew that is true.
RIP. Seriously, watch The Manchurian Candidate in honor of Angela Lansbury. One of the great cinematic villains of all.
What a deliciously BONKERS performance.
What a deliciously BONKERS performanceSpeaking of deliciously bonkers performances – don’t forget SALOME OTTERBOURNE!!!(the elbow shoving with the doctor is still hilarious!)
Oh man, that film and her performance are SO good.
Adorable interview once with her and Frank Sinatra. The host asks her about the kissing son scene. She says all polite and lady like about how its ambiguous but it does hold for a while implying a lot. Frank just says cut the crap your banging the kid. Hilarious.
A reminder for people who complain about Hollywood aging up actresses once they reach a certain point; it used to be FAR worse.
Did it? Look at the sequence of actresses playing Aunt May.
To be fair, it’s _Aunt_ May, not Grandmother May. That role’s skewed too old for a long while.
You know their first choice was Lucille Ball. Not to take anything away from Lansbury, who KILLED, but Ball was an inspired choice, or would have been. She was fierce, and easily can be imagined as just terrifying.
Rest in peace.
The first Broadway play I saw was the original production of Sweeney Todd, starring Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou.She was hilarious, sympathetic and a little scary. The play was so weird, wonderful and entertaining that every musical I have seen since has not even come close.
I saw that production in Los Angeles with my mom, a Saturday matinee that brought in many senior citizens. They applauded long and loud for Lansbury. Not so much for the bloody effects. There was a lot of complaining during intermission. Great show.
I wish I could have seen all her major broadway plays live. She was so talented from just the taped shows.
i saw her in it when the national tour came to boston. i wrote her a fan letter & i’m sure it was a secretary that wrote it but i did get a brief signed note back. priceless.
She will ALWAYS be Mrs. Lovett to me. She gave the perfect rendition of a woman who is both caring and damn frightening in her own way. The ‘offness’ she brought out was perfect.
“ Yes, yes. I know my love”. She was dazzling off center in it.
And now there’s no one around to solve her death.
By all accounts she was a nice person, and I believe that, but…. holy moly is she the embodiment of villainy in The Manchurian Candidate. The whole movie’s good, everyone’s good in it, but Lansbury blows them all away.
(As mentioned in the article she was only a few years older than Laurence Harvey, who played her son. And I suppose they did a bit of makeup/hairstyle magic to make her seem older, but they didn’t need it. She effortlessly IS Raymond Shaw’s mother.) Bedknobs and Broomsticks holds up wonderfully – I got the DVD recently despite having access to it on Disney+ because you just never know.
For some reason, I want to say her rather angular chin made her look more mature at a relatively young age.
It’s weird though because she has this “always been old” yet “damn she looks fine and I have no idea what her age is” look.
That probably helped her maintain an extremely long career in show business.
Looked perpetually 40 from age 20 onward and even at 90 only looked 70. Miracle of nature.
The thing about her is that she looked 50 when she was 30, which gave her the Blue Hawaii and Manchurian Candidate mother roles, but she still looked 50 well into her 70s, so it evened out, I guess.
She saved her daughter from Charles Manson and drug addiction. I’m definitely going to say she was a good person.
I used to date this African woman who learned English by watching “Murder She Wrote” and “Barney Miller.” I was at her apartment and saw all these DVDs. It seemed so weird that somebody would learn English by watching 40 year old tv shows. She loved Angela Lansbury. And by the way, she learned to speak English very well.
Um, what country was this woman from, out of curiosity?(A pet peeve I have – hearing “this African woman” or “He lived in Europe” or “I’m travelling to Asia” always has me wondering which of the 40+ countries in that continent the person means. Tunisia isn’t anything like Madagascar, Ukraine isn’t Scotland, and India isn’t South Korea …)In this case I’m going to rule out the English speaking countries in Africa, which probably already show Murder She Wrote in English on their local TV … and guess … Senegal, maybe?
Togo (right next to Ghana). She grew up speaking French. She came to the Chicago area speaking very little English, but in 5 years picked it up by watching “Murder She Wrote” and “Barney Miller.” I actually texted her today when I heard about Angela Lansbury lol.
Thanks for replying. I was on the right track guessing a French-speaking country, but I’d never have guessed Togo, even though, coincidentally I also dated someone from Togo back in the day when I lived in Paris (actually half-French, half-Togolese). I’m in Brazil struggling with my limited Portuguese. Maybe I should try the ol’ Murder She Wrote/Barney Miller tactic, although I have tried watching Netflix shows dubbed and subtitled in Portuguese, but don’t feel like I get much out of that. Probably doesn’t help that the shows I like tend to have quirky dialogue. I guess that’s the strength of Jessica Fletcher et al: clear crisp dialogue!
She was the only female I can think of who belongs to that exclusive club of actors, including Ed Asner, Wilford Brimley and Morgan Freeman, who could convincingly play much older characters than their actual age.
I’m looking forward to re-watching her in The Court Jester.RIP
But her most iconic role arrived in the ’80s; when offered both a sitcom and a detective series, she wisely chose the latter, and the rest is TV history.Now I want to know what sitcom it was, and if it made it to air with someone else in the Lansbury role.
i’m goin to assume it was 227.
Per WP, “a Norman Lear sitcom opposite Charles Durning”, which based on the rest of Lear’s output looks like it never got made with anybody.
Lear was well past his peak by the mid-’80s, so Lansbury definitely made the right choice.
I always thought of Cabot Cove when there was a Law & Order episode involving Hudson University, which is clearly a college only parents wanting to get rid of their children in violent fashion would send them to. I bet life insurance was completely unavailable in that town.
So there was 2 weeks of mourning for Elizabeth. This requires at least 4, right?
I was thinking the same thing. Fuck Queen Elizabeth and 11 days of morning. Dame Angela Bridget Lansbury deserves a month of morning and even longer que for lying in state. She was the empress of the stage, radio and film goddamn it!
Um, hearing you say this had me as scandalised as Tupac’s backup singers on Hit Em Up … https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dKWzWVYFYa4
Oh good, those of us living in fictional coastal Maine towns can finally relax. RIP, you evil temptress.
Nearly 100 comments in, and no-one has mentioned this camp classic yet …altogether now …la-la-la-LA! la! LA! la!
She could do no wrong that Angela.
*whispers* the whole film is on YouTube, as is the black-and-white Hitchcock original (tried linking here, but YouTube links aren’t working, for some kinjafied reason)
You speak the truth its on YouTube and that’s glorious.
One of my briefest but most-cherished celebrity encounters: Some friends and I were driving through West L.A. and one of them pointed out her house on Bonhill Road. As we neared, we saw the garage door was open, and there she was in a light blue velour jogging suit. We waved, and she waved back with that sweet smile – didn’t have the nerve to stop and say hi, but it felt like we could have. R.I.P. Ms. Lansbury!
I usually don’t touch my phone after lunch so I just learned
about Angela passing. Damn. I really hoped she’d be around for a few more
years. She’s one of those very rare people whose death I can’t mourn but
only celebrate because she had a truly great run.While she’s best remembered for roles she played in middle age
and beyond I strongly recommend checking her out in both “Gaslight” and “The
Picture of Dorian Gray.” God she was a saucy little dish.Oddly, I just picked up the DVD of the first season of “Murder
She Wrote” last week. I only caught the show in passing during its first run
but binged a bunch during the early days of the pandemic having discovered at
that time what great comfort food eighties TV is and I wanted at least one
season on the bookshelf.She was a fantastic evil bitch of a Republican mom in
“The Manchurian Candidate” but I always had a softer spot for her in “The World
of Henry Orient” where she brings a surprising shade of sympathy to an
otherwise unsympathetic character. If you haven’t seen the film, which is an
absolutely beautiful movie about two 14 year old girls in early sixties New
York ( or as I call it, “That Girl” New York) do yourself a huge
favor and check it out. It’s like a better “Parent Trap” era Disney film than
anything Disney ever made and the only film I’ve ever seen that captures the
dizzying thrill of the years bridging childhood and adolescence (it’s also a
great not-a-Christmas-movie that takes place over the holidays that you can
watch at that time of the year if you are tired of the usual chestnuts).Rest well Angela.
The legend has earned her rest. Cheers to an amazing career filled with so many memorable roles!
As she wasn’t afraid of sex!https://youtu.be/79sCTXVWVs8
Well I’ll be.
So bummed that she was not a EGOT winner. It could have happened, she had the talent.
Why does everyone keep saying she was in Gaslight? I don’t remember that.
She was Nancy, the scheming new maid trying to usurp Ingrid Bergman’s mistress—and nail psycho master-of-the-house Charles Boyer.
Galight. Think about that.
Just a fucking delight. In everything.
Man I really wanted her to play the main character of a script I wrote but this has been a shit year for queens ain’t it, we lost Betty White like 10 months ago now we’ve lost the Great British Queen Angela Lansbury.
She really was British Betty White, that beloved lady nobody could imagine being without.
I always found it a bit ironic, but understandable, that so many people fondly remember their grandmothers when they rewatch Murder…She Wrote. I suppose Jessica Fletcher cast a certain eye of restrained judgment and curiosity that generations X through Z might view as grandmotherly, but her character was groundbreaking in that a widowed woman of a certain age was as active, if not more so, than anyone she shared the screen with.She jogged, she fished, she didn’t even own a car. Despite a career spanning almost 80 years, I think Lansbury’s best remembered for MSW – which I don’t think she’d mind – because Jessica Fletcher was in many ways Angela Lansbury. In a refined way indicative of her generation, she often spoke from her 50s onward about the importance of staying active and seeking pleasures as we age, dare I say even sexually.MSW wasn’t always a great show. It waxed and waned between small town hijinks and soapy melodrama. We all remember Seth, Amos, Mort, and of course, Cabot Cove, but the vast majority of the series was set in New York or exotic locations chock full of guest stars. For those reasons, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what made it so memorable. It was Angela Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher, with 12 Emmy nominations and no win.While others of her era were becoming Golden Girls she was challenging the ineptitude of local sheriffs, a busybody but always busy. Later generations approaching middle age would get their groove back or recapture their youth under the Tuscan sun, but Jessica Fletcher and Angela Lansbury didn’t just age gracefully, they aged as if it didn’t exist. It’s a unique character that hadn’t existed before and hasn’t since, one in which a female’s age is entirely and truly incidental. Actresses over 50 have two choices: play grandmothers or defiantly prove she’s still got it going on. In both instances, age is the main character, instances that Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher cast aside as irrelevant for over a decade. In that regard, it’s astonishing to know that Lansbury was hesitant to even take on the role, though less so when you realize exactly how much of herself she insisted get baked into it. Though producers tried, Lansbury refused to allow her character to ever appear vulnerable or victimized. With a few minor tweaks, the role could have been filled by a 30 year old man, but the fact that Lansbury’s appearance and age defied convention that would otherwise have her hiding behind the veil of the sheriff’s office she so routinely upended is exactly what gave it such a punch, and why we remember it so fondly. In a heartfelt interview a year before her passing she speaks of all the things she still longs to see, understanding she probably won’t. It’s sad if you let it, but I don’t think Angela Lansbury would want it to be. Maybe you just turned 25, or 30, or the hallmark of middle age – 45 – her life was a testament to challenging age: wearing silly costumes and living every day as a teenager, even if your litmus for teen age is 1930s London.
I understand why we fondly remember our grandmothers when we rewatch MSW, but I don’t think we love Jessica Fletcher so much because she reminds us of our grandmothers. I think we love Jessica Fletcher so much because we all hope to be just as relevant as she was when we reach her age.