The great known unknown
Angela Lansbury in December 2014
Those: dpa / Casey Curry
Angela Lansbury became legendary with “Murder is her hobby”. The British film and musical actress has died at the age of 96. Somehow she was always there – and somehow she survived them all. She was always busy, but rarely in leading roles. An obituary.
Isomehow she was always there. No wonder if you shot your first and already important film in 1944. She later received an (honorary) Oscar and three nominations, six Golden Globes, three Grammys, five Tonys and was a “Disney legend”, but was by no means always in the front row. She was English but became famous in America. She has been an actress in film, on the theater and musical stage, on New York’s Broadway and in London’s West End. She was known for her face as well as her voice. She was a maid and a grand lady, a murderess and a hobby inspector, a tragedian and a comedian. For a long time she was also one of the muses of legendary composer Stephen Sondheim. She was Angela Lansbury.
Somehow she survived them all. As one of the last stars from the great, not always glorious time of the Hollywood studio system, she has seemingly effortlessly adapted to today’s multi-channel entertainment world. She was always busy, but rarely in leading roles. Angela Lansbury, who was born in London on October 16, 1925, only became truly legendary when she was old with the role of Jessica Fletcher in the television series “Murder is Her Hobby”, which was shot from 1984 to 1996 as one of the longest-lasting crime thrillers. And it was actually much too late, only in 2014, that she was elevated to the English nobility as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Perhaps even more than her never really pretty appearance, the round face and the bulging eyes that make her unforgettable, Angela Lansbury defined herself through her voice: It was always a bit rough and raspy, but had an unmistakable, distinguished British tone that made her especially as the years progressed, helped to give older, somewhat quirky ladies a sharper profile: from the non-conformist, yet life-wise book, musical and film heroine “Mame” as the protector of an orphan boy, to the murderous and cannibalistic pie maker Mrs. Lovett in Sondheim’s Victorian barber-and-blood-string “Sweeney Todd” and amateur detective Jessica to granny magnanimous Madame Pottine, who in the Disney animated film version is a very lively teapot singing the theme song of “Beauty and the Beast”.
Angela Lansbury was made a Dame Commander by Queen Elizabeth II in April 2014
Source: dpa / Jonathan Brady
Angela Lansbury’s Irish mother Moyna MacGill was already a successful actress. So she slipped into business somewhat naturally, first in cabarets and nightclubs in Montreal and New York, since the family had emigrated to the USA in 1940 as a result of the World War II bombings. At the age of 17 she landed her first Hollywood role – and in a classic: In “The House of Lady Alquist” (1944) she was Ingrid Bergman’s cheeky Cockney housemaid. The result was a first Oscar nomination and a seven-year contract with Metro Goldwyn Mayer.
Her second Oscar nomination came a year later for The Picture of Dorian Gray. But then bigger roles, like a nasty newspaper owner in Frank Capra’s The Best Man or a nymphomaniac daughter in Danny Kaye’s hilarious clothes, The Court Jester, were the exceptions. She was considered a B-list actress for mostly unsympathetic, often older, women. The stars of her films were Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamar, Lana Turner, Sandra Dee and Elvis. But things got better when Angela Lansbury had the prospect of an Oscar for the third time in 1962: as abysmally evil, calculating mother and communist slayer who would stop at nothing in John Frankenheimer’s still great political thriller “Ambassadors of Fear”, which was remade in 2004. Suddenly she was even one of the 25 greatest villains of the silver screen.
Angela Lansbury sang for the first time in the cinema in 1971 in the Disney classic “The Daring Witch in Her Flying Bed”. And at the latest, when she was in her mid-forties dividing her time between Ireland and New York, she voluntarily occupied the old ladies’ subject for herself – whether in opulent Agatha Christie films like “Death on the Nile” (1978) and two years later in “Mord im Spiegel” or as a grandmother in “Die Zeit der Wolves” (1984). In 2018, she appeared as the balloon woman in Mary Poppins Returns alongside Emily Blunt and Dick Van Dyke.
But by then she’d been busy on television, most notably in the 264-episode “Murder, She Wrote” as a snooping ex-teacher in New England. But Angela Lansbury also had a prosperous and long-lasting career in the theater, with leading role highlights such as 1966 in Jerry Herman’s “Mame” (in the bad film adaptation she was outdone by the better-known Lucille Ball) and in “Dear World” (1969), Herman’s musical adaptation of Giraudoux’s Madman of Chaillot, as Mama Rose in Gypsy, and most notably as the Sondheim star in Anyone Can Whistle (1964), Sweeney Todd (1979) and A Little Night Music” (2009).
In 2007 she returned to Broadway after 23 years with Terrence McNally’s Deuce. In 2009, Angela Lansbury was celebrated there and – again after 40 years – in London in Noël Coward’s “Blithe Spirit”. She played the weird spiritualist Madame Arcati until 2015. Only her voice was prominently heard in the 1982 cartoons “The Last Unicorn” and 1997 in “Anastasia”.
The 1990 release of “Positive Moves” as a mix of autobiography, wellness wisdom and positive thinking was accompanied by a training video. A guide to the design of celebration and wedding speeches followed. On Tuesday, Angela Lansbury died in her home in Los Angeles, this well-known unknown with a career spanning eight decades, a golden girl as an eternal grandmother, but also a gay icon. Lansbury would have turned 97 on Sunday.