Proud to be a Gay Icon: Angela Lansbury's Life & Legacy

she solved 286 murders I'm nosy and helped commit even more to make you sick she spoke to ghosts she captured a unicorn she plotted a secret takeover of the US government you ought to shoot the presidential nominees through the head you may know Angela Lansbury as a sexy seductress from her early film roles or as a scheming villain s there's no way of proving if I killed Joe or from her most popular role as the sweet grandmotherly Jessica Fletcher from Murder She Wrote I'm simply a mystery writer from Cabot Cove Maine cabaco nice touch has a real ring of truth about it but in real life Dame Angela's life has been nearly as tumultuous as those of her characters from fleeing the Nazis as a child to marrying young only to discover a husband was gay to rescuing her cat from a fire and her children from a gang of serial killers to proudly accepting her status as a gay icon Angela Lansbury lived a nearly century-long life of adventure upheaval and constant reinvention hey I'm Matt I make videos about pop culture and this is the story of of Angela Lansbury like you have never seen her before I would like to spoon with me Angela was born October 16 1925 the daughter of an Irish actress named moyni Mcgill and Edgar Lansbury a mayor suffragent and lifelong communist she was the second of four siblings and young Angela grew up surrounded by arts and culture from her mother and politics from her father her mother moyna would host lavish salons at their homes inviting actors and artists Angela recalled I was quite used to seeing glorious red-headed ladies with enormous bosoms lying on our couches being painted her father and grandfather meanwhile would take Angela to political rallies around London and she'd watch them give speeches about social justice workers rights and extending votes to women from an early age Angela's parents instilled in her in appreciation for the Arts and also a sense of integrity and looking out for those in need with each foot in two very different worlds Angela initially planned to follow her Father's Footsteps and go into politics but then tragedy struck when she was nine years old her father passed away Angela was heartbroken she lost one of the most important figures in her life a leader who'd helped her establish her own moral compass his death also left the family in a dire situation this was the 1930s and her mother moina was now a single woman with four children acting work was getting harder to come by money was running out for the family and with her mother struggling to support them it was up to Angela not even yet a teenager to take care of her siblings today we tend to recognize Angela Lansbury for playing older characters but even back then she said I was an old lady at 10 when my father died I became the partner with my mother in bringing up my brothers I had to grow up fast as she mourned the death of her father Angela discovered an escape from her grief acting at first it was just something she did as a distraction from her sadness when she rode the bus through London she'd adopt different personas acting like she was a famous film star or a gangster's girlfriend moina noticed that her daughter had a talent for playing characters and started coaching her she taught Angela a few songs and the next thing she knew her now 12 year old daughter had created an entire song and dance routine to entertain the family and friends seeing how happy acting made her moina managed to scrape together some money and sent Angela to a dramatic art school in London it was there that she started to hone her knack for performing she also made friends with another aspiring actress around the same age glennis Johns who would go on to play the mom and Mary Poppins and also reunite to work with Angela again half a century later still just a teenager Angela's career was starting to take shape she dreamed of one day becoming a star but this was a dangerous time to be in London by the time Angela was 14 World War II had broken out Germany had launched a bombing campaign over England moyna sent her two youngest kids to live in the country an arrangement that was common at the time and coincidentally appears decades later in the movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks and she found work driving an ambulance and saving the lives of londoners during bombing raids moina told Angela you can either go to the country to get away from the bombs or you can stay here and Angela stayed but by the fall of 1940 the bombings had become so bad that moina was desperate to get her family out of the country she secured passage on a ship what turned out to be the last one to leave England before a German blockade and the family made their way to New York City refugees weren't allowed to bring much with them including money and the Lansbury's had virtually nothing to their name when they arrived in New York they had to start their lives over completely from scratch the family settled in Greenwich Village surrounded by Bohemians and artists and numerous gay men a group that always surrounded moyna and whose company she adored I was around a lot of gay men Angela said my mother knew a ton of them it was astonishing how many actors older actors were gay New York in the 1940s was an epicenter of art and culture and theater and Angela dreamed of making it there as a star possibly on Broadway but the reality Was Not So Glamorous for her they had few connections or job prospects for a time moina and Angela supported the family by performing scenes from Shakespeare at local schools for 25 a show Angela who was now 16 years old looked after her brothers during the day and by night she found work in nightclubs by claiming to be several years older the two years that they spent New York were rough but it wouldn't be the last time that Angela would have to figure out how to start from scratch and reinvent herself after struggling New York for two years moina thought there might be work for her in movies so in 1942 she moved the family to Los Angeles Angela now 17 arrived with twenty dollars to her name as within New York the family found a home near one of the city's gay enclaves and started looking for work at first and both worked in a department store and Angela picked up a second job at a local theater that put on gory horror themed plays but they didn't hire as an actress her job was to go up and down the aisles during the shows and give smelling salts to everyone who fainted then a stroke of luck through a friend Angela managed to get an audition at MGM and she caught the eye of director George qcor he was casting a devious horny maid in the movie Gaslight which is about a man who's trying to make his wife think that she's losing her mind at first everyone else in the studio thought if Angela was too young for the maid part but at the audition she carried herself like an older woman something she'd have to learn to do to get work in nightclubs in New York I can take care of myself when I want to she got the part and when she told her manager at the department store that she was leaving for a better paying job he offered to match it until she told him that her new job at MGM meant a raise from 27 a week to 500 a week being in a movie was a totally new experience for her privately she said I didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground and was still so young that they had to postpone scenes where her character smokes until she hit her 18th birthday to cover for inexperience Angela adopted a cool confident Persona and it worked her co-stars were impressed by how professional this teenager was and even up against Stars Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer she steals the show for her very first film role Angela earned an Oscar nomination and just like that it seemed like she'd hit the big time her dreams of being a star were about to come true next she appeared in the film The Picture of Dorian Gray based on the Oscar Wilde story about a beautiful man who never grows old because he has a secret portrait that ages in his place Angela was to play Sybil Vane a naive young woman who falls in love with Dorian Sybil was a small Time Cabaret singer just like Angela had been in England [Music] and Producers cast her because they thought she looked like women in Victorian pornography once again Angela steals the show and she got another Oscar nomination and she won a Golden Globe for the role by now she was under contract with MGM and her career was looking brighter than ever but something was missing despite all the positive attention MGM Executives didn't consider her star material and kept casting her in supporting roles instead of leads they also left her out of the publicity that they gave other actresses Angela wanted to be a star but the Hollywood Machine seemed to have made up its mind that she would always be a sidekick but her career seemed like it might get a jump start when she met an actor and artist named Richard Cromwell Richard had appeared in a couple of silent films and when he saw her in Picture of Dorian Gray just like the character in that film he became infatuated with her Angela was Starstruck she recognized Richard from the fan magazines that she collected when she was younger they started dating and quickly got married she later said she wasn't thinking at all about the ramifications of this fast-paced romance just that it came her way and she did it because it felt good at the time she said I was a young woman looking for glamor and attention and I didn't really get it so what did I do I got married at 19. at first the marriage was great Richard was friends with lots of huge celebrities like Joan Crawford and Cary Grant and Gary Cooper and William Holden and he introduced his new wife to all of them but unbeknownst to Angela the marriage was intensely stressful for Richard because he was a closeted gay man there were hints many of his friends were gay like Jerry Asher the head of publicity of Warner Brothers and tabloids had long printed insinuations about Richard they couldn't come right out and say that he was gay so they used coded language noting how he was known to cry all the time or that he was a man who admired flowers but Angela was oblivious to all that for the time being she was just happy to bask in the attention Richard tried to make the relationship work but after just nine months Angela came home one day to find a note reading I'm sorry darling I can't do this heartbroken Angela blamed herself for the marriage falling apart oh I mean it was like the end of my life she was so desperate to know what she might have done wrong that she went to Richard's psychiatrist to ask why he had left psychiatrists wouldn't say he'd only tell her it was a hundred percent not her fault and that the marriage could never have worked for reasons he couldn't disclose Angela was confused about that until it suddenly dawned on her that Richard's entire Social Circle was gay men and that he'd become obsessed with her after seeing her play a romantic interest for a coded gay character in an Oscar Wilde film it was like a light bulb just suddenly turned on for her looking back on it she said I know that he himself was carried away with this glorious idea that he was marrying Sybil vain that I would straighten him out the desperate part was that I was so in love with him it never should have happened it was something that he as an individual really tried to will himself into but it was not possible because he was a gay man that realization started a Reconciliation between them they became friends over the next few years and were close until Richard's death in 1960. Angela later called the marriage a mistake fake but a very good lesson she realized from then on that she'd have to make decisions about her life and her career more carefully instead of just accepting whatever came her way and hoping for the best so realizing that nobody else was going to advocate for her Angela started pushing MGM to give her better roles she told them she wanted to be a lead she said I want to play a scene with Clark Gable or Jimmy Stewart in which he breaks down the door and I'm behind it I want to be the reason he broke down the door MGM Executives said okay if she just played a few more background roles they'd give her something better she took them at their word but somehow those better roles just never materialized throughout the 40s and into the early 50s she was only cast as what she later called on Wheels and people's mothers in the Three Musketeers she played the villainous elderly Queen Anne in Samson and Delilah she played a minor Philistine who gets speared to a wall in the film if winter comes she desperately wanted the Glamorous lead but got cast instead as a character more than 10 years older than her real age a part that she described as the dowdy she was still in her 20 but a New York Times article noted that much of her mail Miss Lansbury says is from fans who thinks she's in her 40s even her singing roles were insulting because even though she had a good singing voice they kept dubbing her like in 10th Avenue Angel and Harvey girls and the hoodlum Saint the one time she got to sing for herself was with this utterly Bonker song Until the clouds roll by [Music] not all those better roles that MGM Executives promised just never came but there was one bright spot around this time one weekend heard Hatfield her co-star and Picture of Dorian Gray invited her to a housewarming party he had an ulterior motive he wanted to set her up with a friend an actor named Peter Shaw they immediately fell for each other they started dating and eventually after plenty of time and discussion and making sure they weren't rushing into it this time they got married she soon had two kids Anthony and Deirdre Angela found that she loved being a mother but they desperately needed money as an actor Peter wasn't getting much work and he was transitioning to working as an agent but their salaries together could just barely support the family Angeline finally managed to get her personal life into a shape that made her happy but her professional life still needed a lot of work the final insult came when MGM finally started featuring her in publicity materials but their angle was that Angela was Hollywood's glad girl glad she isn't pretty or beautiful glad she has had to work for a living that was the last straw in 1952 Angela left MGM figuring that she couldn't do any worse as an independent actor but she was working against a decade of typecasting and still couldn't find leads there were some truly terrible films during this period like the purple mask which she called a new all-time low point that one featured Tony Curtis as a sort of French Lone Ranger but with a Brooklyn accent for some reason if ever I can show my gratitude someday soon come to show back when this reign of terror is over and the Frenchman is again safe on the soil of France then she had an even worse experience on a film called please murder me which was filmed almost entirely in a supermarket because it go cheap these roles paid so poorly that after the last day of shooting on please murder me Angela drove straight to a welfare office to get on government assistance the one solid role during this time was in The Manchurian Candidate in 1962 where she got some very intense intimate acting moments she got another Golden Globe for the role but she was again playing an older woman in a supporting role instead of the lead and it still wasn't the kind of work that she wanted it was an incredibly frustrating time she knew that she could act she advocated tirelessly for herself but nobody in Hollywood would give her the chance to prove herself but then she got an unexpected opportunity to return to the place where her career began the stage a letter arrived one day from Arthur Lawrence a playwright from New York who'd written the book for West Side Story the letter said would you be interested in appearing in a Musical on Broadway Steven Sondheim is writing the music and lyrics I'm writing the book the show was called anyone could whistle it was created by two of the most exciting talents on Broadway the opportunity of a lifetime she was ecstatic Angela packed up and left LA right away as far as the movies are concerned I've had it she said I always fancied I had a sexy singing voice but no one would ever let me use it she dove into rehearsals in New York the show was extremely challenging and nearly ruined her voice but she pushed herself harder than she ever had before Sondheim and Lawrence turned out to be great fit for her as collaborators and she was very comfortable working with them Arthur Lawrence in particular had similar politics to those of her family like her father he had ties to Communism as a member of a Marxist study group and he had been blacklisted for years but there were some bad Omens over the show early in the run one of the theater bathrooms caught on fire one of the lead actors had Henry let's go had a heart attack on stage and died soon after a dancer fell into the orchestra pit and landed on a saxophone to had a heart attack and died worst of all audiences hated it when the curtain went down after the first show Angela could hear the audience shouting disgraceful and it closed after just a handful of shows and with that Angela's Broadway dreams were over or were they there's a line in anything can whistle that goes this time a ripple next time a wave and the wave was about to hit Angela flew back to LA feeling defeated and didn't sing again for a year but then she heard about a new musical seeking a lead the show was Mame about a larger than life woman who charges through life totally unafraid never letting anyone get in her way Angela desperately wanted that part and she paid for her own flight out to New York to audition producers listen to her sing and made up their minds they thought she was awful that her voice was weak she was too old back she went to LA but she wasn't ready to give up she started taking intensive voice lessons and she reached out to her brother who was now the producer of the show The Man from Uncle and arranged for him to cast her in a role that was just like the one in Maine to prove that she could do it but always I'm on Safari or I'm making someone removing or among hunting tripping Gabi desert that appearance in those lessons got her a second audition for maim this time she met with maim's Lyricist Jerry Herman Jerry loved her and is a favor He Slipped through the sheet music for a song from the show something no other actress had been able to audition with after this second audition The Producers were a little warmer to her but the director Gene sacks wanted someone else for the lead his wife a former Marine named B Arthur struggling to choose between the two The Producers made Angela audition a third time she was getting tired and she called them the next day exasperated and said I'm going back to California unless you tell me yes or no I want an answer I must know before I leave New York because I'm not coming back a few hours later they gave her the part B got the best friend roll it was the hardest Angela had ever fought for a job and it finally paid off with a lead Mame was an exhausting show there were nine songs to learn and tons of dances it was the most challenging role she'd ever had but she told herself I survived the London Blitz quite possibly I can survive this nobody knows become great International stars or scream the radio television Etc name opened on May 24 1966 and from the moment that she descended the stairs it was a Smash Hit critic Rex read was the opening night and described the audience reaction when people got tired of whistling and clapping like thunder they stood up and screamed as the brassy indomitable maim Angela had proved everybody wrong the MGM execs who thought that she belonged in bit Parts the producers who thought she was too old or that she didn't have the range for the first time angel had become a star through a mix of hard work determination and insisting that people give her a chance but while she was so focused on her career she didn't realize that back in California her family was in terrible danger as Angela's career finally took off there was a cloud hanging over children's lives her kids now teens were falling in with a bad Crowd by the time her son Anthony was 15 he was using cocaine and heroin and two of his friends had died of overdoses her daughter Deirdre was also using drugs and a befriended group of hippies living on a nearby Ranch Angela could tell there was something off about that group and particularly about their leader a Drifter named Charles Manson frantic to get them away from the bad influences Angela flew the kids out to New York to live with her while she was on Broadway she sent Anthony to a drug treatment center and got Deirdre away from the Manson family just before their murder spree began but it wasn't enough despite their mother's efforts the kids had difficulty kicking their drug habits exhausted Angela stepped away from maim and moved everyone back home to LA to spend more time with him during the day she worked on a Disney film that not some Broomsticks in that one she plays a witch who looks after children sent to live in the countryside to escape the Nazi bombing of London a situation that Harkens back to her own real life experiences here are the kids from the film reuniting decades later and remembering the influence that Angela had on and Angela sort of set the town very much an inspiration for me I remember thinking very much our mother and at first it was good to be back home with family around her and to be a good influence on everybody around her but then disaster Struck One Day in September of 1970 as she was driving home with her husband she saw a brush fire in the Hills near their home firefighters were already there and stopped her from getting any closer so she and her husband drove up the side road and climbed the hills to the house she rushed inside and grabbed whatever she could documents art their cat named nosy and she got out just in time to join up with her husband Anthony and Deirdre at the bottom of the hill there they watched the fire rush over their home and completely Burn It To The Ground nothing was left once again Angela was gonna have to rebuild then came the worst setback yet Anthony overdosed on heroin and wound up in a coma it was a nightmare and for Angela none of her recent Career Success meant anything compared to keeping her family whole that was now what she knew she had to fight for she knew something big needed to change so she packed up what she had and she flew to Ireland to the little town that her mother was from she found a remote farmhouse in the country bought it and brought the whole family out to join her Anthony was in such bad shape that he had to be brought off the plane on a stretcher but they're in the countryside where four Bears had lived Angela and her husband Peter dedicated themselves completely to giving their kids what they needed to rebuild their lives they secured intensive drug treatment brought books in for them to read and once they were improving kept the kids busy with repairs to the new home for the next year Angela turned down all job offers and focused exclusively on helping her kids get their lives back together as far as acting was concerned she said I was quite prepared to stop I seriously believed I would never go back to work again she was ready to sacrifice everything she'd worked for in order to protect her family and it worked Anthony and Deirdre kicked the drugs for good this time and eventually Angela felt that it might be time for her to consider the job offers that were still coming her way there was one in particular that many people were pushing her to pursue Mama Rose in a Revival of gypsy the role was a powerful woman who pushes her kids to succeed while neglecting her own needs and it had been originated on Broadway a few years earlier by Ethel Merman when the producers of gypsy approached Angela she turned them down because she didn't think she could possibly measure up to Ethel Merman she mentioned that to her friend the critic Rex Reed and he blew up are you nuts he said the musical was going to open in London where audiences never seen Ethel Murray and it was a chance to work with her old friend Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Lawrence again so she reconsidered she said she'd take the part if they also gave her Anthony a job on the production as a dialect coach they agreed and rehearsals began on opening night it was Anthony who pulled the Rope to raise the curtain for his mother's return to the stage Gypsy was another challenging show culminating in one of the most raw emotional scenes in musical theater when Mama rose has a breakdown and sings about everything that she sacrificed well someone found me why this is my turn don't I get a green now it's Gotta Be My Turn got away one get off of my Runway Angela was incredible on opening night she got a 15-minute Standing Ovation the show was a hit Angela was back it was a great opportunity for Anthony too he said it gave me enough of a sense of self-worth that I entered drama school finally her professional life and her family life both of which she'd fought so hard for were both thriving together Angela toured with Gypsy for the next two years taken from London to Chicago to Broadway it was like a nationwide Victory Tour and by the way during this time she found out that one of the guys in the course was single and helped him find a date at a gay bar if you want more about that story I've got the details on my patreon that's at patreon.com mattbaum Gypsy was followed by a decade of work in theater and one-off rolls and TV and film on stage she reunited with Sondheim for Sweeney Todd a gory musical about a barber who kills people and a woman who bakes the corpses into pies she was hesitant about that role at first because she was concerned it was a step back to supporting roles rather than starring but Steven Sondheim came to her home saying worst pies in London for her and she was in on the condition that she got to do some comedy so he wrote the song Have A Little Priest which turned out to be one of the highlights of the show Have A Little Priest is it really good so it's too good at least Angela had a blast in this role and you can see how much fun she's having it harkened back to the style of body stage shows that she enjoyed as a little girl and she loved playing around on stage she used to throw bits of pie at the conductor during the show one night the audience wasn't reacting enough so Angela molded the dough into male genitalia and dangled it over the edge of the table letting gravity pull it down slowly toward the floor she and her co-star George Hearn would tease each other by passing gas at one another during the show Angela also popped up in a few movies and TV shows around this time many of them mysteries in 1978 she did a movie version of death on the Nile where she plays a mystery novelist I am here to absorb local color for my grand Opus snow on the Sphinx's face then she did a talent for murder where she plays a mystery writer again well I like the image of the helpless old woman everybody dancing attendance and kissing her behind she did a remake of the Hitchcock film The Lady vanishes that woman is wearing my clothes and a miss marble mystery called the mirror cracked world of the cinema The Village it's all quite the same really she also got into animation voicing mommy Fortuna in The Last Unicorn Let Me Go a quick show business first none of these projects was particularly successful but they foreshadowed the roles that would take her from a star and make her into an icon around the early 1980s Angela was considering doing a TV series she said a small number of people have seen me on the stage I'm interested in reaching everybody I don't want to reach just the people who can pay 45 or 50 for a theater ticket and as luck would have it she got two unexpected job offers at the same time one was for a Norman Lear sitcom normally it was huge at this time one of the top TV creators any project with him seemed like it was going to be a sure hit the other offer was for a weird little Mystery Show which seemed like a long shot is about a retired English teacher who solves murders this is my latest book my name I think you know JB Fletcher everyone told Angela take the sitcom but Angela found the project called Murder She Wrote intriguing she loved the character an older woman thoughtful kind and still sexy Jessica Fletcher there was something about it that I found very attractive and I thought I can do something with this over everyone's advice she turned down Norman Lear and that project wound up going to her old friend B Arthur and it never made it past the pilot Murder She Wrote on the other hand was a huge success the pilot was the number one in its time slot it got great ratings for its first season second season it went up against Steven Spielberg's show Amazing Stories and beat it every single week Angela was nominated for outstanding lead actress every year Murder She Wrote was on the air as for the show came from how much Angela identified with the main character Jessica Fletcher Jessica was pretty similar to her strong-willed hard-working and always family oriented hello cousin Angela was playing a role but there was a lot of the real her on screen too and over the years the show played with elements from Angela's real life they reprized some of the songs that made her famous like goodbye little yellow bird [Music] and how'd you like to spoon with me they gave her a cousin named Emma McGill in tribute to her mother moina Miguel even the production logo at the end of the show has a little in-joke reference it includes notes from her signature song in maim it's a Time and a lot of the show is just plain fun from her odd familiarity with party drugs okay to the time she goes to a drag bar have you noticed there's something a little strange about this place I can explain everything to her experiments with virtual reality welcome to Hastings Rock I think it's perfect from its very first episode Murder She Wrote brought her to millions of people and made her a huge star the dream that she'd had her whole life what an unexpected pleasure I have spent many happy hours between the covers of your books and she didn't keep her good fortune to herself she shared it with others like her son Anthony whose life she saved and who now after graduating from drama school started working in the TV industry and became a director on Murder She Wrote she also used the show to help her fellow actors when the actress Madeline Roo was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis she found it hard to get enough work to qualify for Screen Actors Guild insurance so Angela not only ranged to have Madeline appear on the show so that she could keep her health coverage she had to build guardrails and ramps so Madeleine could more easily get around the set Angela also arranged to hire many of the actors she'd work with back in the old MGM days many of whom couldn't always find Reliable work in their later years heard Hatfield from Picture of Dorian Gray was on multiple times as both a killer and a victim there's also Janet Lee her old classmate Glynis Johns Roddy McDowell Leslie Nielsen Mickey Rooney both of the Sweeney Todd she'd worked with on stage George Hearn and Lynn carryou for the 12 years that the show was on it had nearly 2 000 guest stars as actress Jane Meadows said Angela's success with the show has opened the doors to employment of shall we say seasoned actresses of my age Angela also used her high profile to raise money for causes that were important to her Chief among them was fighting HIV since it had touched the lives of so many of her close friends through the 80s and 90s she appeared at countless HIV AIDS fundraisers when Murder She Wrote hit its 200th episode CBS and Universal wanted to throw a huge party but Angela told him instead to donate fifty thousand dollars to amfar the country's leading HIV organization when she was invited to Christen a cruise ship she did it under the condition that the cruise line donate one million dollars to amfar she arranged for CBS to run messages about HIV awareness before episodes of Murder She Wrote you may think you can't get AIDS because you're not in a high-risk group but risk comes from what you do not who you are get the facts her friend Rex Reed called her a general in the war against AIDS she also dipped her toe back into animation voicing Mrs Potts and Beauty and the Beast for that film she wore closely with Howard Ashman the gay composer who created the music for The Little Mermaid and Aladdin and several Broadway shows for 11 years Murder She Wrote was a Sunday night institution but by the mid 90s CBS was getting worried that it made the network seem old a critique that Angela had been hearing for nearly 50 years at that point the network moved to show up to Thursday putting it against friends and ratings plummeted CBS moved to cancel it the next year Angela was Furious CBS Executives were apologetic about the change and they asked what they could do to make it up to her inwardly I was seething she said but outwardly she was calm and polite and a clever businesswoman she told them she wanted them to give her a series of tv specials and that's exactly what they did first some Murder She Wrote TV movies and then a project that was very close to her heart around the time that Murder She Wrote ended she heard that her old friend Jerry Herman who had helped her land her breakthrough role in maim was very ill he was HIV positive and this was the days before the cocktails that make HIV a manageable condition when Angela saw him she realized how dire it was and her drive to protect people she cared about kicked in she said he doesn't think he's going to live much longer he needs something he's crying out and we can help him so she arranged for one of her tv specials to be based on his work a Christmas movie called Mrs Santa Claus it was cheerful and upbeat and set in the time that Angela knew from her childhood it also weaves in themes that were a part of her life growing up issues that she watched her father work tirelessly on like women's suffrage and labor protections work on the movie was tough they were filming in the middle of a summer heat wave in heavy winter clothes and at one point Angela attempted a move that a stuntwoman was supposed to do and she nearly killed herself you can check out my patreon for that whole story but those challenges aside the movie was a huge success CBS re-ran it every year and the best news was that Jerry Herman's health started to improve he responded well to new treatment wound up bleeding 20 more years by the mid 90s Angela was now firmly cemented as a TV and film icon beloved by millions and her career was Secure her family was strong she could finally take it a little easier she kept working and mostly took theater roles that were personally meaningful to her or just fun like blight spirit for which she got a Tony it's all about the body and it's all about this or reuniting with Steven Sondheim for A Little Night Music getting another Tony nomination I thought yes I should do this my time has come to play this old bird and of course she spent the next three decades collecting lifetime achievement awards she got one from the Tonys from sag the Oscars she got a national medal of the Arts a Britannia award a Kennedy Center award a Disney Legend award and among all those who recognized her Angela was particularly treasured by gay men thanks to all the work that she did to fight HIV here she is getting an award from the gay men's chorus presented by her old friend Jerry Hermann she certainly has always been there for us she was one of the first people in Show Business to lend her support to gay rights and to AIDS awareness in 2013 Angela looked back on all the work she'd done and said she was so proud to have become a gay icon after nearly a century-long career Angela passed away earlier this year in her sleep a few days shy of her 98th birthday the news was met with an outpouring of love everyone who knew her just watched her on stage and Screen had a story about how much her work meant to them because she'd worked so hard for so long in so many roles that it's hard to find anybody whose life she hadn't touched with a close family and friends whose lives she saved colleagues whose careers she supported and the millions of strangers who knew her through her characters and that's just how she would have wanted it here she is talking about how she wanted to be remembered I'd like to be remembered as somebody who entertained who took one out of oneself for a few minutes a few hours transported you into a different venue gave you relief gave you entertainment and gave you Joy and laughter and tears all those things I would like to be remembered as somebody who is capable of doing that foreign [Music] this is all just a small slice of the incredible experiences throughout Dame Angela landsberg's life there are so many more I just didn't have room for in the script like the sexy party trick that she learned in her 20s her bizarre Feud with actor Tony Curtis and why she initially turned down her role in Beauty and the Beast and how a couple of kids convinced her to change her mind I'll have all those stories over on patreon at patreon.com mattbaume Big thanks to everybody who makes these videos possible and now if you'll excuse me I've got a meeting with Quentin Tarantino he just had told me that he had a foot fetch it

Channel: Matt Baume

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Length: 33min 6sec (1986 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 30 2022