“I can say this in all honesty,
I was too good an actress. I was primarily an actress
and not a pretty face.” “I’m not going to sleep in
the same room with her. See the way she looked at me?” She earned an Oscar nomination
19 and a Tony award at 83. In between, Angela
Lansbury’s career spanned seven decades and
countless transformations on stage, screen
and television. Her lasting popularity
was a testament to the determination
and talent of a woman whom
Hollywood studios did not see as their leading lady. “I am a character actress
first and foremost, although the one area that I
was not a character actress, really, was playing
Jessica Fletcher.” “And the proof is right here. The photograph
of your fiancée. This photograph. It was missing the
night of the fire.” “Jessica Fletcher was
probably about as close not to me, but to
the sort of woman that I might have been
had I not been an actress.” Angela Brigid Lansbury was
born in London in 1925. Her mother, Moyna Macgill,
was a successful London actress. Her father, Edgar
Lansbury, a businessman. But her happy childhood
was cut short at age 9 when her father
died of cancer. “The business sort of
fell off appreciably, and my mother found herself
a widow with four children and her income was
very much reduced. She sold everything,
books, everything.” World War II had begun. The family emigrated to the
U.S. After a dangerous
ship crossing, they made their
way to New York. Eventually, they
moved to California, where Moyna hoped
she and her daughter could break into movies. While working in
a department store, 17-year-old Angela
was called in to audition for a role in MGM's
“The Picture of Dorian Gray.” “So I went out to MGM
Studios with my mother because I was a minor,
and by golly, we are immediately, not
taken to see the director, producer of ‘The
Picture of Dorian Gray,’ but we’re rushed in
to see George Cukor, who is going to direct
the movie ‘Gaslight,’ with Ingrid Bergman
and Charles Boyer.” “This is Elizabeth, the cook.” “Hello.” “You’ll find that
she’s a little deaf.” “I really didn’t know
what I was doing. I look at the picture
now and I say, ‘How the devil did you
have the experience?’” “See you Sunday?” “Perhaps.” “Usual place?” “Usual place.” “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.” “I had not been
around the block. I didn’t have boyfriends.
I didn’t know anything. And yet, here was this
woman, you know — this girl, because
I was only 17 — behaving as if, you
know, I knew it all. I didn’t. But I knew how
to act knowing it all.” “Oh no, sir, not with me. I can take care of
myself when I want to.” For her very
first film role, she was nominated
for an Oscar in 1944. ♫ “He told her the advantages” ♫ She also won the singing role
of Sibyl Vane in “Dorian Gray,” and the next year she
was nominated again. She didn’t win either time,
but saw it as a blessing. “You once said that you
are lucky you didn’t win, because you might not
have become as good an actress if you had won.” “I believe that. I’ve often felt
earning an Academy Award too early is a
terrible deterrent, because you don’t
know what to do next.” But while her professional
life flourished, behind the scenes were
personal setbacks. When Lansbury was 19,
she wed for the first time to actor Richard Cromwell. But the marriage
quickly fell apart. “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, and therefore he walked away from it. And I was absolutely —
oh, I mean, it was like the end of my
life when that happened. So it was a terrible,
terrible shock to me.” Not long after, she
met Peter Shaw, a young actor who would
be the love of her life and have a profound
influence on her career. “When he came into my
life on a blind date, we just kind of locked
emotionally together and we never looked back. He was really not a
good enough actor, and I’m quite well known
for having said this to him, and he’ll be the first — he would have been the
first person to agree. I said, ‘Peter, you’re
a terrific guy, but you’re not an actor.’” He left acting to
become an agent and eventually managed
his wife’s career. “He became my mentor,
my manager, everything.” But after a promising
start in film, she was typecast in
second-level character roles, often much older than herself. “They weren’t going to groom me
to be an over-the-title star, but then I never was really
that kind of material. If I had been
knock-down fantastic, you know,
Betty Grable legs, and, you know, this
and this and this, maybe I would have
been able to force them to put me up there and to
build me into a big movie star. But I was hampered by
the fact that I was, and I can say this
in all honesty, I was too good an actress. I was primarily an actress
and not a pretty face.” In 1961, director
John Frankenheimer offered what would be her
most famous film role. Mrs. Iselin in “The
Manchurian Candidate.” “You are to shoot the
presidential nominee through the head.” “And I really have to give John
Frankenheimer full credit. He was relentless
in his passion to make this woman
the essence of evil.” “But now we have come
almost to the end. One last step.” “Those speeches in which
she talks about, you know, what they have
done to you and —” ”— ground into dirt for
what they did to you. And what they did
in so contemptuously underestimating me.” “We did it in one take. Why? Because the preparation
was so intense that it had to come
that way or no way.” “I want to talk to you
about that communist tart.” “Shut up with that, mother.
Shut up!” “It was one of the great,
great roles of my career. I’m forever thankful that
I had the chance to do it.” “I want the nominee to be
dead about two minutes after he begins his
acceptance speech.” “You were a favorite to win the
Oscar for supporting actress that year, and you
didn’t that night. It went to Patty Duke in
“The Miracle Worker.” “That was a night that
I wouldn’t want to have to live through again. You know, there are times
in your life you think, ‘This could be it.
‘This could be it.’ And I had a special dress
made and, oh, I don’t know, It’s just — I think soon after that,
I came to New York.” In the mid-’60s, Angela Lansbury
returned to the theater. In 1966, she played
the title role in Jerry Herman’s
musical “Mame.” ♫ “If he walked into
my life today.” ♫ The show was a smash hit, and
she won her first Tony Award. “That was very heady
business for me. I had to take on a
mantle of stardom. It was all about
glamour, and glamour was something that I
never kind of allowed myself to be associated with. It was not the happiest time. My life, in a sense, has
always been kind of divided into two parts:
family and career. The sad part in my
mind was that I didn’t succeed particularly well. The family suffered. The career soared. The children, we discovered,
had fallen into the same traps that many, many kids
during that period of our social history, which
they were into drugs, and we had no recourse
in those days. I mean, really, we did
not know what to do. It was a terrible,
terrible time.” She decided to bring her family
to her ancestral land, Ireland. “I found this house. It had 20 acres and
a walled garden. And I mean, I said,
‘Well, we can all live here,’ so I bought it. Finally, everybody,
we all came over and we started our
life anew. Absolutely.” In Ireland, the family
found stability. “Well, yes, we can
do that, of course.” Then in 1979 came the stage
role for which she strongly felt she would be best
remembered on Broadway: Mrs. Lovett in “Sweeney Todd.” “She was not an evil woman.
Well, she’s pretty naughty. But nevertheless, I think that
her fun and the humor that was so marvelous in
‘A Little Priest’ appealed to
audiences worldwide. ♫ “Save a lot of graves,
do a lot of relatives favors” ♫ “And then, of course, when
the show was put on film, a whole generation
of youngsters saw it who otherwise
wouldn’t have known who the hell
Angela Lansbury was.” “Diana, I’m so sorry
you’re not feeling well.” But it would be
another five years before Angela Lansbury would
become a true household name with the debut of
“Murder, She Wrote.” “I hate to impose on
you like this, but I really do need
clarification on —” Her role as the gentle
but wise amateur detective Jessica Fletcher
would last 12 seasons. “She noticed things. She
had an ability to pick up on little bits and pieces of
information, which solved crimes.” “I couldn’t help but notice
the ‘No Smoking’ sign on your desk
in the office.” “How much of Jessica Fletcher
was Angela Lansbury?” “Well, not really any of her. Not really any of her. But let’s say my
sensitivity, yes, at times, because those things are
going to reveal themselves.” “And any time
you’re in Maine, you let me cook you
up some lobster stew.” “I’ll do that.” “Yes, certainly. That’s me responding
to a situation. I’m going to reveal a side of
myself which is real, you know? Yes, certainly.” “You managed to exercise
a lot of creative control on the show. For instance,
several times it was suggested that Jessica
Fletcher have a love interest and you rejected
it completely?” “Yes. I did.” “This is all moving
just too fast for a widow woman
from Maine.” “I can respect that.”
“You sure?” “I felt that the minute
I got into something like that, I was destroying,
I was destroying the mystique of Jessica.” “I'm sorry, Jess.” “Not that she was a flirt. Don’t misunderstand
me, but I wanted to feel always that
circumstances just didn’t allow it to
happen, sadly.” Her husband, Peter Shaw,
died in 2003. They had been
wed for 53 years. After his death,
she grieved deeply. A few years later,
she moved to New York and returned to Broadway. In 2009, she won her fifth
Tony Award for playing Madame Arcati in “Blithe Spirit.” Ms. Lansbury
was 83 years old. “What would you like
your legacy to be?” “That through my acting,
I enabled people to get out of
their own lives and to be allowed to
be transported into other areas of life that they
otherwise would never have. I’d love to be able to
feel that I enabled people to do that. Life is so hard
for so many people.”
