Oscar Profile #620: Angela Lansbury Revisited

Born October 16, 1925, the daughter of actress Moyna MacGill and socialist politician, Edgar Lansbury, whose father was 1930s Labor Party leader, George Lansbury, aspiring actress Angela Lansbury was greatly influenced by the careers of Hollywood stars Deana Durbin and Irene Dunne. After her father’s death, she, along with twin brothers Edgar and Bruce were evacuated to Montreal on the last boatload to leave England during the blitz. From there they went to New York and eventually to Hollywood where she worked in a department store while her mother became part of the British émigré establishment. There she met the casting director of Gaslight and The Picture of Dorian Gray who put her in both for which she would earn Oscar nominations in 1944 and 1945.

Briefly married to actor Richard Cromwell, she excelled in other films of the mid-1940s including
National Velvet, The Harvey Girls, State of the Union and Samson and Delilah. She married second husband Peter Shaw in 1949 with whom she would have three children.

The actress continued to play strong character roles in major films, with an occasional lead in a B film through the 1950s and early 1960s. Her best roles during this period were as Orson Welles’ mistress in The Long, Hot Summer, Robert Preston’s mistress in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Warren Beatty and Brandon de Wilde’s mother in All Fall Down and of course,, Laurence Harvey’s mother in The Manchurian Candidate, for which she received her third Oscar nomination.

She won good notices for her Broadway roles in A Taste of Honey and Anyone Can Whistle, before becoming a Broadway legend with Jerry Herman’s Mame for which she won the first of five Tonys in 1966. She would win again in 1969 for Dear World, in 1975 for the revival of Gypsy, in 1979 for Sweeney Todd and in 2009 for the revival of Blithe Spirit.

She returned to the screen in starring roles in the 1970’s Something for Everyone and 1971’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks, was part of the starry ensemble of 1978’s Death on the Nile amd even played Miss Marple in 1980’s The Mirror Crack’d was led to her 14-year stint in TV’s Murder, She Wrote beginning in 1984, which brought her even greater fame.

It was during the run of Murder, She Wrote that she lent her voice to 1991’s Beauty and the Beast, later doing the same for 1997’s Anastasia. She was seen more recently in 2018’s Mary Poppins Returns and can currently be seen as herself in 2022’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.

Given an honorary Oscar in 2013 and made a Dame of the British Empire at the Queen’s 2014 New Year’s Honors, Angela Lansbury died October 11, 2022 at the age of 96. At the time of her death, she was the oldest surviving Oscar nominee. She is succeeded by 92-year-old Ann Blyth whose last acting appearance was as a guest star in a 1985 episode of Murder, She Wrote.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1945), directed by Albert Lewin

In the first film she was cast in, but the third she filmed, Lansbury plays Sybil Vane, the discarded first love of Oscar Wilde’s outwardly beautiful but inwardly ugly title character. It’s a brief, but heartbreakingly beautiful performance for which she received her second Oscar nomination at the age of twenty. She reprised her lovely song, “Good-bye, Little Yellow Bird” on Murder, She Wrote many years later. Dorian himself, Hurt Hatfield, was one of the many guest stars she personally invited to play a character in the long-running TV series. She lost the Oscar to Anne Revere who played her moth in National Velvet.

STATE OF THE UNION (1948), directed by Frank Capra

She was only twenty-three when she played the worldly-wise newspaper heiress and political kingmaker who attempts to take the much older Spencer Tracy away from his loyal wife, played by Katharine Hepburn. Although Hepburn has our sympathy and the film’s best speech in a role she took over from an ailing Claudette Colbert, it’s Lansbury who has the strongest role in a film populated by major stars including Van Johnson, Adolphe Menjou, Lewis Stone, Howard Smith, Charles Dingle, Margaret Hamilton, and Art Baker. Lansbury’s next role was as the older sister of the older in real life Hedy Lamarr in Samson and Delilah

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962), directed by John Frankenheimer

Lansbury had her most challenging and memorable screen role as the mother of a Korean War POW who is brainwashed into becoming an assassin for the Communists. Although only three years older than Laurence Harvey who played her son and ten years younger than Frank Sinatra who played Harvey’s contemporary, Lansbury once again, without stage makeup, convinces us as she always did, that she was the character she was playing, this time around a cold, calculating, manipulative bitch. It’s both one of the great screen villains and one of the greatest performances by a character actress ever committed to film for which she received her third Oscar nomination.

BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS (1971), directed by Robert Stevenson

For her starring role in this Disney classic, they got her the director (Stevenson) and songwriters (Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman) who had created movie magic with Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins seven years earlier. Playing an apprentice witch in World War II London and environs, Lansbury sings the Sherman Brothers score, including the Oscar nominated “The Age of Not Believing”, with the same verve she brought to her Broadway triumphs. The film which has entertained several generations of youngsters since, was her last made in Hollywood film.

MURDER, SHE WROTE (1984-1996), created by Peter S. Fisher, Richard Levinson, and William Link

Lansbury had the role of her life as the amateur sleuth in 254 episodes of this beloved series in which she starred. Semi-regulars included William Windom, Tom Bosley, Len Cariou, and Jerry Orbach. The who’s who of guest stars included Julie Adams, June Allyson, Carroll Baker, Diane Baker, Martin Balsam, Richard Beymer, Theodore Bikel, Ann Blyth, Ernest Borgnine, George Chakiris, Cyd Charisse, Jackie Cooper, Laraine Day, Nina Foch, Anne Francis, Betty Garrett, Kathryn Grayson, Hurd Hatfield, George Hearn, Florence Henderson, Ken Howard, Van Johnson, Dean Jones, Evelyn Keyes, Shirley Knight, Martin Landau, Hope Lange, Carol Lawrence, June Lockhart, Roddy McDowall, Patty McCormack, Vera Miles, Ricardo Montalban, Ron Moody, Mildred Natwick, Patricia Neal, Lloyd Nolan, France Nuyen, Margaret O’Brien, Betsy Palmer, Eleanor Parker, Jane Powell, Lynn Redgrave, Cesar Romero, Martha Scott, Jean Simmons, Constance Towers, John Saxon, Dean Stockwell, Claire Trevor, Robert Vaughn, Ray Walson, Stuart Whitman, Mary Wickes, Cornel Wilde, and Paul Winfield.