Angela Lansbury discusses Mame - TelevisionAcademy.com/Interviews

ah it was just a number of wonderful circumstances the thing that really brought me to Maine was anyone can whistle because nobody had ever seen Angela Lansbury on stage singing dancing playing a leading role and they didn't know whether I could do it know I could do it didn't know I had the capacity or the voice or anything else and several people saw me even though there were only nine performances and one of those people was Jerry Harmon the composer who just had an enormous success with Hello Dolly and he saw me and he was one of the few people who saw anyone come crystal and thank goodness he did as I say because when the time came he and Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee were writing the musical version of Auntie Mame it's going to be called they didn't know it was going to be called name in fact they were going to call it all sorts of other things and I said I'll call it name I said just call it MAME so they did and I sort of feel slightly responsible for the making that a grodd's Rosalind Russell originated the room she had originated it on in the theatre certainly she was and he made and many other great actresses have taken it on the road and you know everybody knew Auntie Mame and then they made a movie out of it and she also played the role in the movie but when it came to the musical it was offered to her and she said no thank you very much I don't want to I don't want to eat yesterday's dinner or some wonderful remark like that so she didn't do it and the search went out to find somebody to play the role and a lot of lot of actresses were asked including up till the very last minute Mary Martin and Mary was going to play play it right up until the end then suddenly she bowed out and Lucille Ball's thought of I think at the time and southern all kinds of people but Jerry Harmon wanted me God blessing and uh after a lot of shenanigans I got the part I had to work hard for it to audition a lot and thank goodness Josh Logan was the original director and he really didn't want me for that and finally he was replaced with another director and that was gene Sachs the director New York director and thank goodness gene said yes and so we off we went I was named I was ready for it that it was everything that I had envisioned for myself accomplishing in the musical theater because what I haven't told you is that all during the years at MGM when I was battling long-playing battle axes and so on I was running in and watching rehearsals all of the musical rehearsals for the great Musical movies that were being made on the lot at that time with Gene Kelly and you know and I Leslie Caron and all those and I knew all of the musical people involved and I I thought oh gosh this is it this is what I really want to be doing this is what I'm going to really love to do one day and I really visualize myself doing it until I did I found myself up on the stage playing me I think in my my gut feeling was yes it was going to be okay the audiences were so overwhelmingly encouraging and they loved the show they loved the book of names a wonderful story about a little boy and his aunt you know it it's a winner you can't go far wrong with me however I had to prove that I could really beat the big star and I'd never done that never had that opportunity to really be the star of the show and it took me quite a while to take stage to become that character and to become a star not just Angela Lansbury playing the role of name but I had to be this larger-than-life person and I'd never really done that before it took all of those weeks on the road for me to really garner the strength and the understanding and the mouse as my friend Kate Hepburn would say to take stage you know that's a wonderful moment when you decide you're going to do it you go for it and you do it it's like running the mile and for right when I saw my name first when it was written up over the marquee of the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway it said Angela Lansbury in Maine you know my name was in the same sizes me and that was a day to remember I mean that was it I derived because I was carrying the show and it was working and we were sold out you know it was very thrilling very very exciting you

Channel: FoundationINTERVIEWS

Views: 80,981

Rating: 4.9055119 out of 5

Keywords: Angela, Lansbury, Interview, Mame

Id: thVCuucg_Cw

Length: 5min 27sec (327 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2010