Angela Lansbury on Aspel & Co (1990)

[Applause] hello again and now i'm very happy to welcome home star who although she found fame and fortune in america was born in london and is indeed the granddaughter of a distinguished politician who was a cabinet minister in a pre-war labor government but i ironically it is the words of harold mcmillan that come to mind as far as her career is concerned these days she has never had it so good ladies and gentlemen miss angela [Applause] [Applause] lansbury well we saw you solving a mystery earlier tonight you're a rather dangerous person to be around don't you well i'm getting a dreadful reputation you know people see see me coming and hide their children and they're friends that seed doesn't look too safe julian now when you get a script um do you go right to the end and see who done it no i sort of read a script rather like i would a detective story i'm just as interested as the audience is going to be i hope as to the outcome and who who the murderer is i sort of take it step by step you know it's it's more fun that way are you curious david about the villains of your pieces yes you know i i get very excited when i get a script because i i go through it very carefully and i and i although i've read the short story i try and approach it as prairie would approach it and try and pick up what clues i can on the way how many ways are there in fact to do somebody in well how many ways indeed how how many ways they say that there are five plots you know that there are five whodunit plots and they're simply reworked and reworked and reworked because if you had to think up an original way well of course granted occasionally you get a very original murder you know but on murder she wrote it isn't so much how the how the uh the crime is committed it's how it's solved yes and by whom there's not much doubt about that one uh is there a favorite way that they they go out well as far as i can see and we've done about 125 of these now uh the the the mode of uh bumping the the poor devil off is becoming more and more simple and generally we end up with the old poker or hitting the head against the mantle piece it's very simple and often i say oh but that wouldn't have killed her for goodness sakes i'm falling down all the time and i'm not dead you know not not the way you think i might be falling down i mean one does you know you do fall and you do hit your head but you're not necessarily dead but in our plots you're dead because that allows the springboard to to take off on solving the crime i mentioned the fact you were born in london and your grandfather was george lansbury this famous mp did you ever see him in action yes i yes i did i was very young but i did i went to many meetings when he was campaigning and i i saw him talk for instance in the albert hall and that was that was uh made an impression on me that remained as with me to this very day i'll never forget it he he had such an overpowering personality an extraordinary ability to to rally a crowd and to make an incredible speech he had a wonderful voice and a great great presence and voted everybody adored him well the women did i'm sure because he votes for women was was one of his platforms oh absolutely but not just the women i never forget uh traveling with him on a bus once in london and uh he just stopped all the traffic i mean we were coming down regent street i said i wasn't in bus i was in a car that was the thing and he waved to a bus driver he always said hello brother you know everybody talk to everyone and that stopped the traffic and we had to get out of the car and everybody got out of the bus and the whole of regent street was just a mass of people who all wanted to shake his hand he was that he had that kind of charismatic personality was an ordinary sort of bloke did he was he cockney was he that kind of london he was a londoner he was an absolute eastender uh he actually wasn't from the east end but uh he i think he came from suffolk really and essex that sort of area but he lived in beau 39 bow road that qualifies yes yes as a small girl then did you did you go home and pretend to be a politician after seeing him well yes you know what how one is when you're a child you're very impressionable and i certainly was and my sister and i used to do you know bits and pieces at home she was very good she was very good director and she used to make paper costumes and we we sort of danced to all bing crosby records but one of the things we did was i would get up and make speeches we did these sort of home entertainments at christmas and easter and those times you know and uh i would get up and i from listening to these speeches that i'd seen and heard so many times i would get up and make speeches you know but they were rather humorous i would make speeches about the reasons why the lcc should build new toilets you know and things of that sort of very kind of you know kind of london voice like this you know what we need is more toilets and uh it's all sort of rubbed off but of course he was responsible for the leader you know in in in the park the serpentine when he was the first minister of works in the labour government he he decided that the people of london uh didn't have a place where they could could go for a swim where they could have picnics all the knobs were in the parks you know but none of the none of the real londoners are the the working class people didn't have a look in but uh he opened up to serpentine and it was called lansbury's leader which was about so he left his mark oh indeed he did did you have a famous grandfather he did some startling things yes i i have a famous grandfather called james joshe and he was the one of the first photographers to ever use the 35 millimeter camera in fleet street and uh he he covered such uh scoops as balerio's landing and he did one of his other scoops was photographing crippen in the dark through a little hole in his top hat he was quite an extraordinary extraordinary man a very brave man very courageous enormous charm actually he was um amateur wrestling champion as well i mean they used to say uh you know in his day when you were a photographer you really had to get in hard to get your pictures then his thing was of course when armstrong jones came now we've married into the royal family it makes life easier but he was an extraordinary man this is all very impressive what about your grandparents i only knew my grandma on my mother's side and she was a bit dully but she had two strokes my brothers used to say at the third stroke of course she's making us laugh even though so she's that she's done something well actually you moved to new york when you were 14 and not long after that you decided to take to the stage what did you do first of all what did i do oh goodness well i went to new york as an evacuee you know i was awfully lucky i got a scholarship to a good training uh school in in in new york called a drama school you know and uh a friend of mine in drama school decided that i really wasn't just a straight actress that really i i could sing and you know move around a little bit so he devised this act for me and he really pushed me he was kind of a mama rose type of young man and uh i didn't have any ambition to do this sort of thing but i went along with it he was on those very insistent people so he he took this piece of material it was called i went to a marvellous party it's by noah coward you know and you went to my marvelous party with luna and out of now and into that piece of musical fabric he built in all of the things that i could do i could do takeoffs of gracie fields you know singing walter walter and uh i did wagnerian singers and all kinds of imitations and impressions and utilized every little bit of my new talent i had in those days but anyway i got a job so my first job actually was at the age of 16 pretending to be 19 in a place called the sam of our night club in montreal and i went up on the train and i made my first 60 bucks a week and that was the beginning yes now david have you been tempted by hollywood yet i like going over there but i like i like coming home have you worked in hollywood really no no i've been there to promote things but uh and i must be i love first of all i went to new york and i loved new york i thought it was wonderful and then i went to l.a and my first time i went there i wasn't too keen on it but i've been i've been put in the beverly hills hotel it was so possible i hadn't got any money and obviously there was enough gold around the pool to revive the british economy and and i hadn't got any clothes to wear in the polio at the polo once a nurse always so it was so but then and it was such a strange place it's like a great i mean there was no center to it and i couldn't drive and you know everything but then when i like it better now i know people there and so but i've never worked there but it's a good place to work you've specialized almost in in mothers you mean you were lawrence harvey's mother in the manchurian canada that was ludicrous because you were about two or three years older than him warren bait his mother and elvis presley's mum as well but they're naughty boys been bummed to them all well they're all different you know they're all lovely lads i was i must say that elvis was really he was a he was an enchanting young man in the days when i knew him because he just come out of the army after the korean war and he his manners were beautiful he was a typical young southern gentleman he really was a revelation with all of that swiveling around he still had you know he was the essence really just a delightful person in fact for years afterwards he used to send me a mother's day card i thought it was terribly nice of him yes women of to use the phrase that you use women of a certain age seem to be taking over hollywood these days don't they well yeah we're not doing too badly actually no yes you can see that and one of the sidelines you've done a jane fonda type video oh no that's a dirty word i love jane please don't call my taper jane fonda with your mind my tape is for the women who don't want to exercise that sounds good that's appealing it appeals to me well there you are you see and i found that most women they talk about it a lot but to really get put on the gear and go to the place and pump the iron and all of that is really it's a pain in the back put it mildly so i've devised a very laid back sort of form of exercise which is what i call stretching and it has to do with just feeling good and when you get to be my age you're very pleased if you just feel good so most women i think are that feel the same way they want to feel good about themselves and so my tape is really addressed to those women who up till now have fallen between the cracks when it came to exercise tapes and that sort of thing because they're just worth the forgotten group but we are now rising and we're becoming an enormously strong huge group of women who are very active and want to stay looking and feeling terrific and being attractive to their husbands and maintaining their attractiveness but not in a stupid way it's got nothing to do with losing weight and being terribly slim or like a reed don't go for the burn no i don't go for the burn any of that stuff i think lovely zoftic women are very attractive and so do men don't you yes yes so i'm all for being fit but not necessarily thin as a read certainly perfectly well expressed thunder if your pardon the fraser has actually done a tape for a pregnant woman did you know about that did you use it julian oh no jane pharmaceutical no no i hadn't done a day's exercise since about 1974. but i did do a little bit during pregnancy and grant did it with me in fact he was much better i think he'd have been much better at giving birth he was very good at breathing and concentrating on all of that and i think he'd got the hips for it sitting back but i didn't do that much because then i heard i was going to have a cesarean so i stopped which is probably very naughty but i just started recently but pumping iron is so boring isn't it i think it's very boring and very unfeminine really yes oh in the gym you know they've got all those terrible records you know put bird so almost to quote the sort of um line from a musical you might have done for you you've only just begun in a sense yes it's a fascinating thought and uh i don't see any signs of of stopping or slowing down slowing down yes because obviously you have to balance all of the activity of a career with other things and i have tremendous other interests like my house my garden i'm a tremendous gardener and my grandmother you know and there are a lot of things i love to do but i try to sort of mix it and match it and uh i'm very fortunate my goodness i get to do what i love to do i think you've got the answer it's been a great pleasure talking to you thank you angela lansbury thank you i'm david susha and julie walters [Applause] and thanks for your company until next week good night so you

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Length: 14min 36sec (876 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 08 2020