Angela Lansbury

Early life and education

Angela Brigid Lansbury was born to an upper-middle-class family on October 16, 1925. Although her birthplace has often been given as Poplar, East London, she rejected this, stating that while she had ancestral connections to Poplar, she was born in Regent's Park, Central London. Her mother was Belfast-born Irish Moyna MacGill (born Charlotte Lillian McIldowie), an actress who regularly appeared on stage in London's West End and who also appeared in several films. Her father was the wealthy English timber merchant and politician Edgar Lansbury, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and former mayor of the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar. Her paternal grandfather was the Labour Party leader George Lansbury, a man whom she felt "awed" by and considered "a giant in my youth". Angela had an older half-sister, Isolde, from Macgill's previous marriage to Reginald Denham. In January 1930, Macgill gave birth to twin boys, Bruce and Edgar, leading the Lansburys to move from their Poplar flat to a house in Mill Hill, then Middlesex; at weekends, they would stay at a farm in Berrick Salome, Oxfordshire.

When Lansbury was nine, her father died from stomach cancer; she retreated into playing characters as a coping mechanism. Facing financial difficulty, her mother entered a relationship with a Scottish colonel, Leckie Forbes, and moved into his house in Hampstead. Lansbury then received an education at South Hampstead High School from 1934 until 1939, where she was a contemporary of Glynis Johns. She nevertheless considered herself largely self-educated, learning from books, theatre and cinema. Lansbury became a self-professed "complete movie maniac", visiting the cinema regularly. Keen on playing the piano, she briefly studied music at the Ritman School of Dancing, and in 1940 began studying acting at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art in Kensington, west London, first appearing onstage as a lady-in-waiting in the school's production of Maxwell Anderson's Mary of Scotland.

That year, Lansbury's grandfather died, and with the onset of the Blitz, Macgill decided to take Angela, Bruce and Edgar to the United States; Isolde remained in Britain with her new husband, the actor Peter Ustinov. Macgill secured a job supervising 60 British children who were being evacuated to North America aboard the Duchess of Atholl, arriving with them in Montreal, Canada, in August 1940. Macgill then proceeded by train to New York City, where she was financially sponsored by a Wall Street businessman, Charles T. Smith, moving in with his family at their home at Mahopac, New York. Lansbury gained a scholarship from the American Theatre Wing to study at the Feagin School of Drama and Radio, where she appeared in performances of William Congreve's The Way of the World and Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan. She graduated in March 1942, by which time the family had moved to an apartment on Morton Street, Greenwich Village.

Career

1942–1951: Career beginnings and MGM contract

Macgill secured work in a Canadian touring production of Tonight at 8:30 and was joined by her daughter. There, the 16-year-old Lansbury landed her first theatrical job as a nightclub act at the Samovar Club, Montreal, claiming to be 19 and singing songs by Noël Coward. Lansbury returned to New York City in August 1942, but her mother had moved to Hollywood, Los Angeles, to resurrect her cinematic career; Lansbury and her brothers followed. Moving into a bungalow in Laurel Canyon, both Lansbury and her mother obtained Christmas jobs at the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles; Macgill was sacked for incompetence, leaving the family to subsist on Lansbury's wages of $28 a week. Befriending a group of gay men, Lansbury became privy to the city's underground gay scene. She and her mother attended lectures by the spiritual guru Jiddu Krishnamurti – and at one of such lectures, they met the writer Aldous Huxley.

At a party hosted by her mother, Lansbury met John van Druten, who had recently co-authored a script for Gaslight (1944), a mystery-thriller based on Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play Gas Light. The film was being directed by George Cukor with Ingrid Bergman in the lead role of Paula Alquist, a woman in Victorian London being psychologically tormented by her husband. Druten suggested that Lansbury would be perfect for the role of Nancy Oliver, a cockney maid; she was accepted for the part, although, since she was only 17, a social worker had to accompany her on the set. After getting an agent, Earl Kramer, Lansbury signed a seven-year contract with MGM, earning $500 a week. Gaslight received critical acclaim, and Lansbury's performance was widely praised, earning her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Her next film appearance was as Edwina Brown in National Velvet (1944); the film became a major commercial success, and Lansbury developed a lifelong friendship with co-star Elizabeth Taylor. Lansbury next starred in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), a cinematic adaptation of Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel of the same name, which was again set in Victorian London. Directed by Albert Lewin, Lansbury was cast as Sybil Vane, a working-class music hall singer who falls in love with the protagonist, Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield). Although the film was not a financial success, Lansbury's performance once more drew praise, earning her a Golden Globe Award, and she was again nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards, losing to Anne Revere, her co-star in National Velvet.

1952–1965: Mid-career mature roles and Broadway debut

Unhappy with the roles that MGM was assigning to her, Lansbury instructed her manager, Harry Friedman of MCA Inc., to terminate her contract in 1952. That same year, she gave birth to her first child Anthony. Soon after his birth, she joined the East Coast touring productions of two former Broadway plays: Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's Remains to be Seen and Louis Verneuil's Affairs of State. Biographer Margaret Bonanno later stated that at this point, Lansbury's career had "hit an all-time low". In April 1953 her daughter Deirdre Angela Shaw was born. Shaw had a son, David, from a previous marriage and brought him to California to live with the family after gaining legal custody of the boy in 1953. Now with three children to care for, Lansbury moved to a larger house on San Vicente Boulevard in Santa Monica. Lansbury did not feel entirely comfortable in the Hollywood social scene, later commenting that as a result of her British roots, "in Hollywood, I always felt like a stranger in a strange land." In 1959 the family moved to Malibu, settling into a house that had been designed by Aaron Green on the Pacific Coast Highway. There she and Peter escaped the Hollywood scene and sent their children to public school.

Returning to cinema as a freelance actress, Lansbury found herself typecast as an older, maternal figure in most of her films during this period. She later stated that "Hollywood made me old before my time", noting that in her twenties she was receiving fan mail from people who thought her in her forties. She obtained minor roles in such films as A Life at Stake (1954), A Lawless Street (1955), and The Purple Mask (1955), describing the latter as "the worst movie I ever made." She played Princess Gwendolyn in the comedy film The Court Jester (1956) before taking on the role of a wife who kills her husband in Please Murder Me (1956). From there she appeared as Minnie Littlejohn in The Long Hot Summer (1958) and as Mabel Claremont in The Reluctant Debutante (1958), which was filmed in Paris. Biographer Martin Gottfried has claimed that it was these latter two cinematic appearances which restored Lansbury's status as an "A-picture actress." Throughout this period she continued making television appearances, starring in episodes of The Revlon Mirror Theater, Ford Theatre, and The George Gobel Show, and she became a regular on the game show Pantomime Quiz.

In April 1957 she debuted on Broadway at the Henry Miller Theatre in Hotel Paradiso, a French burlesque directed by Peter Glenville. The play only ran for 15 weeks, but she earned good reviews for her role as Marcel Cat. She later stated that had she not appeared in the play, her "whole career would have fizzled out." Into the 1960s she followed this with an appearance in a Broadway performance of A Taste of Honey at the Lyceum Theatre, directed by Tony Richardson and George Devine. Lansbury played Helen, the boorish, verbally abusive mother of Josephine (played by Joan Plowright, only four years Lansbury's junior), remarking that she gained "a great deal of satisfaction" from the role. During the show's run, Lansbury developed a friendship with both Plowright and Plowright's lover Laurence Olivier; it was from Lansbury's rented flat on East 97th Street that Plowright and Olivier eloped to be married.

1966–1983: Mame and theatrical stardom

In 1966 Lansbury took on the title role of Mame Dennis in the musical Mame, Jerry Herman's musical adaptation of the 1955 novel Auntie Mame (written by Patrick Dennis). The director's first choice for the role had been Rosalind Russell, who played Mame in the 1958 non-musical film adaptation, but she had declined. Lansbury actively sought the role in the hope that it would mark a change in her career. When she was chosen, it came as a surprise to theatre critics, who believed that the part would go to a better-known actress; Lansbury was 41 years old, and it was her first starring role. Mame Dennis was a glamorous character, with more than 20 costume changes throughout the play, and Lansbury's role involved 10 songs and dance routines for which she trained extensively. First appearing in Philadelphia and then Boston, Mame opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in May 1966. Auntie Mame was already popular among the gay community, and Mame garnered Lansbury a cult gay following, something that she later attributed to the fact that Mame Dennis was "every gay person's idea of glamour... Everything about Mame coincided with every young man's idea of beauty and glory and it was lovely."

Reviews of Lansbury's performance were overwhelmingly positive. In The New York Times Stanley Kauffmann wrote: "Miss Lansbury is a singing-dancing actress, not a singer or dancer who also acts... In this marathon role she has wit, poise, warmth and a very taking coolth." The role resulted in Lansbury receiving her first Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. Lansbury's later biographer Margaret Bonanno claimed that Mame made Lansbury a "superstar", with the actress herself commenting on her success: "Everyone loves you, everyone loves the success, and enjoys it as much as you do. And it lasts as long as you are on that stage and as long as you keep coming out of that stage door."

Off the stage, Lansbury made further television appearances, such as on Perry Como's Thanksgiving Special in November 1966. She also engaged in high-profile charitable endeavours—for instance, appearing as the guest of honour at the 1967 March of Dimes annual benefit luncheon. She was invited to star in a musical performance for the 1968 Academy Awards ceremony and co-hosted that year's Tony Awards with former brother-in-law Peter Ustinov. That year, Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Club elected her "Woman of the Year". When the film adaptation of Mame was put into production, Lansbury hoped to be offered the part, but it instead went to Lucille Ball, an established box-office success. Lansbury considered this to be "one of my bitterest disappointments". Her personal life was further complicated when she learned that both of her children had become involved with the counterculture of the 1960s and had been using recreational drugs. As a result, Anthony had become addicted to cocaine and heroin.

1984–2003: Global fame with Murder, She Wrote

In 1983, Lansbury was offered two main television roles, one in a sitcom and the other in a detective drama series, Murder, She Wrote. As she was unable to do both, her agents advised her to accept the former, but Lansbury chose the latter. Her decision was based on the appeal of the series' central character, Jessica Fletcher, a retired school teacher from the fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine. As portrayed by Lansbury, Fletcher was a successful detective novelist who also solved murders encountered during her travels. Lansbury described the character as "an American Miss Marple".

Murder, She Wrote had been created by Peter S. Fischer, Richard Levinson, and William Link, who had earlier had success with Columbo, and the role of Fletcher had been first offered to Jean Stapleton, who had declined it. The pilot episode, "The Murder of Sherlock Holmes", premiered on CBS on September 30, 1984, with the rest of the first season airing on Sundays from 8 to 9 pm. Although critical reviews were mixed, it proved highly popular, with the pilot having a Nielsen rating of 18.9 and the first season being rated top in its time slot. Designed as inoffensive family viewing, as despite its topic the show eschewed depicting violence or gore, it followed the "whodunit" format rather than those of most US crime shows of the time. Lansbury herself commented that "best of all, there's no violence. I hate violence."

Lansbury exerted creative input over Fletcher's costumes, makeup and hair, and rejected pressure from network executives to put the character in a relationship, believing that the character should remain a strong single woman. When she believed that a scriptwriter had made Fletcher do or say things that did not fit with the character's personality, Lansbury ensured that the script was changed. She saw Fletcher as a role model for older female viewers, praising her "enormous, universal appeal – that was an accomplishment I never expected in my entire life." Edelman and Kupferberg described the series as "a television landmark" in the US for having an older female character as the protagonist, paving the way for later series like The Golden Girls. Lansbury commented that "I think it's the first time a show has really been aimed at the middle aged audience", and although it was most popular among senior citizens, it gradually gained a younger audience; by 1991, a third of viewers were under fifty. It gained continually high ratings throughout most of its run, outdoing rivals in its time slot such as Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories on NBC. In 1987, a spin-off was produced, The Law & Harry McGraw, although it proved short-lived.

2003–2022: Return to Broadway and final roles

In the years following Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury was increasingly preoccupied by her husband's deteriorating health; it was for this reason that she dropped out of being the lead role in the 2001 Kander and Ebb musical The Visit before it opened. Peter died in January 2003 of congestive heart failure at the couple's Brentwood home. Lansbury felt that after this she would not take on any more major acting roles, perhaps only making cameo appearances. Wanting to spend more time in New York City, in 2006 she purchased a $2 million condominium in Manhattan.

Lansbury appeared in a season six episode of the television show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2005. She also starred in the 2005 film Nanny McPhee as Aunt Adelaide, later informing an interviewer that working on it "pulled me out of the abyss" after her husband's death. Lansbury returned to Broadway after a 23-year absence in Deuce, a play by Terrence McNally that opened at the Music Box Theatre in May 2007 for an 18-week limited run. Lansbury received a Tony Award nomination for Best Leading Actress in a Play for her role. In March 2009, she returned to Broadway for a revival of Blithe Spirit at the Shubert Theatre, where she took on the role of Madame Arcati. This appearance earned her the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play; this was her fifth Tony Award, tying her with the previous record holder for the number of Tony Awards, Julie Harris. From December 2009 to June 2010, Lansbury then starred as Madame Armfeldt in a Broadway revival of A Little Night Music at the Walter Kerr Theatre. The role earned her a seventh Tony Award nomination. In May 2010, she was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from Manhattan School of Music. She then appeared in the 2011 film Mr. Popper's Penguins, opposite Jim Carrey.

From March to July 2012, Lansbury appeared as women's rights advocate Sue-Ellen Gamadge in the Broadway revival of Gore Vidal's The Best Man at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. From February 2013, she starred alongside James Earl Jones in an Australian tour of Driving Miss Daisy, an appearance that resulted in her pulling out from a scheduled role in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel. In November 2013, she received an Academy Honorary Award for her lifetime achievement at the Governors Awards. In 2014, Lansbury was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. From March 2014, Lansbury reprised her performance as Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit at the Gielgud Theatre in London's West End, her first London stage appearance in nearly 40 years. While in London, she made an appearance at the Angela Lansbury Film Festival, a screening of some of her films in Poplar. From December 2014 to March 2015 she joined the tour of Blithe Spirit across North America. In April 2015 she received her first Olivier Award as Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Arcati, and in November 2015 was awarded the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre.

Personal life

Marriages and family

Lansbury defined herself as being "Irish-British". She became a US citizen in 1951, while retaining British citizenship. According to a 2014 article in the Irish Independent, she also held Irish citizenship.

Although adopting an Americanized accent for roles like that of Jessica Fletcher, Lansbury retained an English accent throughout her life.

Lansbury was a profoundly private person, and disliked attempts at flattery. Gottfried characterized her as being "Meticulous. Cautious. Self-editing. Deliberate. It is what the British call reserved". In The Daily Telegraph, the theatre critic Dominic Cavendish stated that Lansbury's hallmarks were "self-composure, commitment and, yes, gentility", approaches he thought had become "in too short supply" in modern times. Gottfried also commented that she was "as concerned, as sensitive, and as sympathetic as anyone might want in a friend".

Lansbury was married twice. Her first marriage was in 1945 to actor Richard Cromwell, who was 16 years older than she. They divorced in 1946 after Cromwell came out as gay. In 1949, Lansbury married actor and producer Peter Shaw, and they remained married until he died in 2003. They had two children together and Lansbury became the stepmother of Shaw's son from his first marriage. While Lansbury repeatedly stated that she wanted to put her children before her career, she admitted that she frequently had to leave them in California for long periods when she was working elsewhere. In the 1970s, Lansbury moved the family to Ireland. In contemporary newspaper interviews, Lansbury stated the move was because of her children's use of drugs, her daughter's involvement with Charles Manson, and a desire to remove them from that environment.

Lansbury's son directed 68 episodes of Murder, She Wrote. She had three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren at the time of her death in 2022. Lansbury was a cousin of the Postgate family, including the animator and activist Oliver Postgate. She was also a cousin of the novelist Coral Lansbury.

Interests and beliefs

As a young actress, Lansbury was a self-professed homebody, who commented that she loved housekeeping. She preferred to spend quiet evenings with her friends inside her house because she did not like to engage in Hollywood nightlife. Her hobbies at the time included reading, riding, playing tennis, cooking, and playing the piano; she also had a keen interest in gardening. She cited F. Scott Fitzgerald as her favourite author, and Roseanne and Seinfeld among her favourite television shows. Lansbury was an avid letter writer who wrote letters by hand and made copies of all of them. At Howard Gotlieb's request, Lansbury's papers are housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.

Lansbury brought up her children as Episcopalians, but they were not members of a congregation. She stated, "I believe that God is within all of us, that we are perfect, precious beings, and that we have to put our faith and trust in that." She supported Britain's Labour Party, to which she had family ties, and the US Democratic Party; she described herself as a "Democrat from the ground up" to quash rumours that she endorsed the Republican Party. She also supported various charities, particularly those combating domestic abuse and rehabilitating drug users. In the 1980s, she also supported charities combating HIV/AIDS.

Health problems

Lansbury was a chain smoker in early life, but quit smoking in the mid-1960s. In 1976 and 1987, she underwent cosmetic surgery on her neck. During the 1990s, she began to suffer from arthritis. Lansbury underwent hip replacement surgery in May 1994, followed by knee replacement surgery in 2005.

Death

Lansbury died in her sleep at her home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, on October 11, 2022, at the age of 96.

Acting credits and accolades

In the 1960s, The New York Times referred to Lansbury as the "First Lady of Musical Theatre". She described herself as an actress who also could sing, although in her early film appearances her singing was repeatedly dubbed; Sondheim stated that she had a strong voice, albeit with a limited range. In The Oxford Companion to the American Musical, Thomas Hischak related that Lansbury was "more a character actress than a leading lady" for much of her career, one who brought "a sparkling stage presence to her work". Gottfried described her as "an American icon", while the BBC characterized her as "one of Britain's favourite exports," and The Independent suggested that she could be considered Britain's most successful actress. In The Guardian, journalist Mark Lawson described her as a member of the "acting aristocracy in three countries" – Britain, Ireland, and the United States.

Gottfried noted that Lansbury's public image was "practically saintly". A 2007 interviewer for The New York Times described her as "one of the few actors it makes sense to call beloved", noting that a 1994 article in People magazine awarded her a perfect score on its "lovability index". The New Statesman commented that she "has the kind of pulling power many younger and more ubiquitous actors can only dream of." Lansbury was a gay icon. She described herself as being "very proud of the fact", attributing her popularity among gay people to her performance in Mame; an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer suggested that Murder, She Wrote had further broadened her appeal with that demographic.

Following the announcement of Lansbury's death, many figures in the entertainment industry praised her on social media. The actor Jason Alexander called her "one of the most versatile, talented, graceful, kind, witty, wise, classy ladies" he had ever met. Actor Uzo Aduba called her an "icon of the stage", while actor Josh Gad noted that it was rare that "one person can touch multiple generations, creating a breadth of work that defines decade after decade. Angela Lansbury was that artist". Screenwriter and actor Mark Gatiss praised Lansbury as "the very definition of a pro," while Douglas C. Baker, the producing director for Center Theatre Group, stated that "Angela was a titan of show business, but at the same time she was one of the most kind and approachable people you would ever meet [...] Impeccably professional, genuine and deeply hilarious." Former Walt Disney Studios CEO Robert Iger described her "a consummate professional, a talented actress, and a lovely person." Others who posted in remembrance of Lansbury included Kristin Chenoweth, Viola Davis, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Harvey Fierstein, Kathy Griffin, Jeremy O. Harris, Brent Spiner, George Takei, and Rachel Zegler. On October 12 theatres across the West End of London, dimmed their lights for two minutes to mark Lansbury's passing.

Publications

Lansbury, Angela; Avins, Mimi (1990). Angela Lansbury's Positive Moves: My Personal Plan for Fitness and Well-Being. New York: Delacorte Press. ISBN 978-0-385-30223-4.