Angela Lansbury - Interview on her life, career, & retirement...

on larry king now the legendary iconic angela lansbury i like to think that jessica was kind of every woman she was very sort of straightforward and had a great mind and a good brain she'd been a writer but she also had a twinkle in her eye i'm an empty vessel i i am a very straightforward plain thinking doing person but i fill myself with all of these things that uh that create a character the whole business of making movies it's all gone in those days if you were under contract to a studio they supported you you go to some of the little movie houses around town and all the stars would go and sit in the back row and watch their movie with an audience for the first time plus you ever think of retiring i don't think so i'll i'll probably pass away you know with one hand one hand on my script all next on larry king now it's another edition of larry king now but a very special one because today we welcome the legendary angela lansbury angela has had a prolific career both on screen and on stage she's beloved for her starring role as jessica fletcher in the popular detective series murder she wrote the voice of mrs potts in disney's animated beauty and the beast her work is one of five tony's six golden globes and she's been nominated for 18 emmys at 93 years old angela is still going strong appearing in disney's mary poppins returns as the balloon lady it is set to hit theaters december 19th well thank you so much and you look great it's lovely to be with you you and i go back so many years oh first time i interviewed you we were children we were children exactly in mary poppins you sing a song right you get to sing again yes i do you're the balloon lady does she sell balloons yes she does or she does and at the end of the end of the movie i've sold everybody a balloon and everybody sails up into the air um and i stay on the ground but mary poppins i give mary poppins and i are kind of friends and uh i give her a balloon off she goes and everybody else is out there that's a that's an incredible series of books right the traverse oh yes yes lovely lovely lovely lovely story you have a history with disney right you've worked with them with beauty and the beasts bed knobs and broomsticks bed knobs and broomsticks was really an enormous success still is to this day because why because it involves children and i've discovered that if you have a movie with a good child's role in it you're you're off and running you know and that is true in this in that instance did you always sing yes i did i've sung from the day i um got out of my crib i think i've been singing and still do you have a lovely lilting voice in beauty and the beast that that his wonderful song oh yes although you you must you have to remind yourself that you do it in a little tiny compartment with a microphone over your head and that's how you do it and that's how you sing it but in your mind's eye of course is the picture of where you are and what your character is doing and she was a teapot you know and uh imagination helps a lot you're from great britain right i was born in london yeah what brought you to the states the war world war ii we were evacuated from britain in 1940 and we came to america without a penny in our pockets really we were completely supported by a wonderful american family who took care of us during the years of the war did you saw the bombs dropping on london thank god i did not uh liverpool the city that we we embarked from on the ship to come to america was bombed the night we we left our ship and our ship uh was also uh bombed and was lost at sea after we got off how old were you young i was 14. when did you start acting uh when i was about six i'm kidding my sister bless her heart was very enthusiastic about doing home theatricals so i did a lot of home theatricals and we'd bring the house down every christmas doing you know playing this and that and everything else and uh i don't know i just loved make believe how did you get your first american film was gaslight which was an incredible thriller charles boyer trying to kill ingrid bergman you're the maid in the house what was that like thank goodness uh you know i'd had enough training as an actress had gone to drama school so i wasn't a total newcomer to be to acting and here was a wonderful part if you think about nancy and gaslight oh wow you know i mean she embodied everything that was sexy and beautiful oh you know she she really had it what was it like shooting it was it a good time oh it was an incredible time imagine imagine what it was like to be appearing in a film at mgm studios in the 19 early 1940s and you know no dressing rooms i i had to dress in a little sort of black fabric house that was on the set and i didn't have a dressing room or anything this first time i'd ever been in a in a in a movie in in you know in hollywood it was huge huge adjustment okay tell me how murder she wrote came about that incredible series how many years 12 and still going yeah and it was everywhere did you have any idea it would be the hit it was oh no no you know mystery is is is always interesting and the person who's perfect you know perpetrating the the the plot uh or is involved shall we say in the flop in the plot it can be it can be very riveting you know it's hard to leave that screen if you get involved you know and if you make it as interesting as possible it's an it's an ongoing piece of entertainment she connected with the audience though didn't she she she had a quality i like to think that jessica was kind of every woman you know well you know what i mean by that she had a little bit of everything you know she was very sort of straightforward and and uh yeah had a great mind and a good brain she'd been a writer driven but she also had a twinkle in her eye yeah she didn't uh you know [Laughter] when we return angel lansbury on what keeps her going and if she ever plans to retire plus her advice for young people in the business we'll be right back with this edition of larry king now we're back with angela lasberry the new york times referred to you as the first lady of musical theater that was in the 1960s was theater your first love yes it was i i trained to be a stage actress and uh thank goodness i did because otherwise i could never have come back to broadway after many years in in bad motion pictures at mgm uh so when i went to broadway i was ready for it you know what was your first time absolutely absolutely well it it actually was a little musical uh oddly enough uh anyone can whistle it was called by stephen sondheim and that was the first time i ever appeared on stage you did a sondheim musical yeah was maim your breakthrough name was my breakthrough yes definitely definitely because thank god goodness uh jerry herman had seen uh the the the one that i did which was anyone can whistle and uh from that he he absolutely decided i was gonna do maim you take the gloom right out of the room yeah what a great show that was yeah and fun to do fun to sing wonderful to sing in that uh great songs and the other great great actress who was with me um oh be arthur yeah funny the arthur and i launched into that i never was maude oh she was great yeah she was mod it's fun to do the same thing every night although great theater actresses and actors have told me it's not the same every night oh no every night's different it's absolutely true every audience is different every reaction from the audience is different on each performance there's no question about it i mean there are some sure laughs as we say in in comedy and if you don't get them trouble in river city but uh all things being equal you know to be able to entertain an audience is one of the great dreams of actors and to get the feedback from that audience is believe me you know food and drink to the average performer how has hollywood changed since you started oh behind hard hard to define how hollywood has changed there are no studios there are none of the the things that we held dear at the time to be under contract to a studio to be owned by them and to be put into their movies and of course in those days there were so many movies every uh you know every week there was a new one coming out and the whole business of making movies it's all gone i mean i it does exist but in a totally different very impersonal way in those days if you were under contract to a studio they supported you you know and you you went out there and you went to previews at nights you go to some of the little movie houses around town and all the stars would go and sit in the back row and watch their movie with an audience for the first time i asked robert taylor did he i loved did did he like that time those red carpets and the he said he loved it he loved the contract days of the studio but they told you what you were going to play right you didn't have a choice you did not you did not have a choice and uh i ran into problems with being cast in movies that i had no interest whatsoever in being in but because i was under contract i couldn't fight them on it and i tried what was it like to go into a movie you didn't want to do it was it was rough and tough uh but you did it i mean if you're if you're a professional actor which i was you know i was a trained actor i wasn't a a peach queen uh the queen of the peaches or you know anything like that i was an actress so i was prepared to put on the clothes take on the character and be something other than myself what keeps the wonderful angela lansbury going uh you're 93 i'm 85. yeah i know what keeps me going is i love what i do what keeps you going i think that i'm interested in in every part of life in other words not just acting but everything that is given to us as human beings to indulge ourselves in in our lives that's what interests me my grandchildren my life cooking driving being independent i think is very much part of my credo i lost my darling husband many years ago and i've had to create a life for myself without him but i have what do i have in place of him oh nobody could replace him but but i mean i have my grandchildren now and their lives interest me greatly you ever think of retiring uh no i i don't think i don't think so i'll i'll probably pass away you know with one hand one hand on my script now you're in two big movies the grinch and mary poppins are small parts but you keep on keeping on well you do you know it was a lovely experience to go to britain and uh to shoot the movies there and uh i i you know i never turned down a good offer so next we're going to put angela lansbury in kind of a hot seat as we play if you only knew you could see angela in the grinch that's currently in theaters and mary poppins returns which will be released on december 19th stay right there with the delightful wonderful talented beautiful historic iconic old and old wow we throw sitting here folks they have to carry us out angela lansbury by the way is did you ever want to roll badly that went to someone else oh i'm sure there were dozens of them certainly when i was at mgm yes a lot of a lot of uh yeah i remember having to go and and talk to lb mayor who was the head of the studio at that time what was he like well uh we got along you know but uh he wasn't uh you couldn't change his mind you know he decided what you were going to do and uh how many movies did you do ah gosh i never die and i never counted them to be truthful probably about 20 at mgm do you feel 93 no no no no way no way jose no i don't we're going to play a round of if you only knew what's your proudest accomplishment being alive i'm being alive yes what's a food you can't stand that's a hard one i i'm a big foodie yeah i eat eggs do you yeah really i must had a bad experience as a child you must have you must so there's no food you hate no what's the best piece of advice marzipan what marzipan marzipan yeah a lot of people love muslims i know they do i don't understand why best piece of advice you ever got learn your lines worst piece of advice you don't want to go into acting [Laughter] who's someone from history you wish you could take to lunch several there'd be a whole crowd outside the door who pops out the queen of england any regrets no is there someone you've been star struck by oh many many people when you came out to hollywood you must have been in a while oh yes because you know all of them right i got to meet them all if you weren't an actor what would you be a politician really i think so what do you think of what's going on in american politics now well it's hard to get up in the morning considering what we're facing at the present time i think it is it really really is it's very very depressing and i i hope we can get through this period that we're in at the present time favorite film favorite film ooh um i've got a lot of faves i have to say that i i wouldn't want to hurt anybody's feelings who's still alive i'm i'm still around but you know a lot of people are gone who are admired inordinately katherine hepburn for instance and what was she like to work with oh she was fantastic we got along very very well became very close friends actually in the last years of her life i was very much there with her i mean you know she lived in new york and uh i was a friend of hers and we were we were good pal you have a guilty pleasure eating ice cream try not to do that at eight o'clock at night it's very difficult to not go to the refrigerator and take out yes ah fletcher when we come back angela lansbury will answer your social media questions we've got a lot of them you can see angela and mary poppins returns in theaters december 19th we'll be right back we're back with the great angela lansbury we have some social media questions aaron shapiro on twitter what was it like to work with frank sinatra and judy garland frank sinatra was in the great movie um from here to eternity no no no no well that he was in that no the one movie we were in together was the manchurian candidate oh you were the villain oh my oh yeah i hated you of course you i hope you did you were the chinese and you you a husband you wanted a shot absolutely the works the works you didn't have any scenes together no that's what i wanted to say at the one time we did work in the same movie we were never in the same sea we were actually we were in a cloud crowd scene as they say and i remember kind of ruffling past him but we never were face to face so i never got to play a scene you know i'll tell you a little story about frank which i think is so interesting i went to a party before i went to new york to to play maim and one we were sitting and he came and sat down beside me and we started talking and i told him what i was doing he said angie i will go with you i will teach you every single song that you're going to sing i will help you to do this wasn't that an extraordinary thing that he did i i such a generous man what was judy garland like well julie she was great we were kid you know we were very much of the same era we grew up practically in the same area and uh she and i got along very well we used to drive back and forth on location when we were making films like what a life you've had stephen stonebreaker on twitter favorite episode of murder she wrote do you know how many murders she wrote that i was he was in um i'm trying to think i i really don't have a favorite no i don't thomas owens on twitter what keeps you motivated to keep acting why do you still like it i only really come alive in as an interesting person in my estimation when i'm acting because i can take on all kinds of physical emotional attributes which i personally don't have i'm an empty vessel i i am a very straightforward plain thinking doing person but i fill myself with all of these things that uh that create a character and that to me is the fun of being an actor is you you're not yourself you're a 50 different people and you take these people and you you use them and characterize uh a a an individual's always but it's always me yes but you know being somebody else is it's the greatest thing in the world because you don't have to really let on who you who i am anthony quinn told me if you're an actor it's childlike yeah children are good actors absolutely you watch them play cops and robbers you know love taking on all their kids and they're not afraid to fall no no miss bridges on twitter as a young actress did you think you'd have a long career i had no conception of what of of the length of a career that i would uh end up having i've had been given so many opportunities by people not me directors producers writers who say i would like her to play that role and it was those people that i thank am so thankful to because they wanted to work with me you have to find something to like in the character you play right yes sometimes the person doesn't dislike themselves well hopefully no no so was it hard to play that woman in manchurian candidate as an actress no as angela i couldn't believe what she got up to you know but as an actor i was able to create this illusion of a woman who i wouldn't give ugh wouldn't have let her in my house you know because she was evil you know yeah incarnate absolutely robert arthur on facebook any interest in returning to broadway at this time in my life i would have to say no would be rugged to do it every night yeah it would be i'm not saying i couldn't but i i wouldn't all right and jeffrey ewell on facebook i saw you a few years back in the role of madame arcati and noel coward's comedy bligh spirit how did you have so much energy that's that's not a fun play to do oh great fun yes great great great fun i i thoroughly enjoyed playing madame mccarty she was a wonderful character you are an icon and a delight and i love you i love you too darling we're of the same era our lives we've shared all these years and it's such a great pleasure to be with you today big thanks to angela lansbury for joining me today be sure to see her in two films this holiday season the mayor of whoville in the grinch and the balloon lady and mary poppins returns that's out december 19th you can always follow me on twitter at king's things i'll see you next time [Music]

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Length: 24min 13sec (1453 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 02 2021