Angela Brigid Lansbury is a British and American film actress and singer.
Background
Lansbury, Angela Brigid was born on October 16, 1925 in London. Came to United States, 1940. Daughter of Edgar and Moyna (Macgill) Lansbury. Actress Angela Lansbury is the granddaughter of George Lansbury, onetime leader of the British Labour Party, and daughter of the mayor of Poplar. In fact, entertainment ran more strongly in her family than politics, and early in the war she was evacuated to Los Angeles, there to continue drama training.
Education
Student, Webber-Douglas School Drama, London, 1940. Student, Feagin School Drama, New York City, 1942. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Boston University, 1990.
Career
In 1944, after a screen test, she made her debut as the sly maid in George Cukors Gaslight. It was the start of a career as a supporting actress in which, pouting at the thought that she was not pretty enough to be a lead, she stole film after film from their advertised stars. Malicious, wittv, fractious, bitchy, and highly attractive, she is a constant delight, and it is a sadness that Cukor or Minnelli never made more of her. She was very hardworking, and this list can only note some favorite moments: as the singer in Albert Lewin’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (45): in George Sidney’s The Haney Girls (45); singing “Mow’d You Like to Spoon With Me?” in Till the Clouds Roll By (46, Richard Whorf); in Capra’s State of the Union (48); as an extravagant princess in The Three Musketeers (48, Sidney); The Red Danube (49, Sidney); as a Philistine in Samson and Delilah (49, Cecil B. De Mille); contemplating Danny Kaye in The Court Jester (55, Melvin Frank and Norman Panama); with Tony Curtis in The Purple Mask (55, Bruce Humberstone); with Randolph Scott in A Lawless Street (55, foseph H. Lewis); regaling Orson Welles in The Long Hot Summer (58, Martin Ritt); as an aristocratic Mama in The Reluctant Debutante (58, Minnelli); Australian for Summer of the 17th Doll (59, Leslie Norman); in Delbert Mann’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (60); in All Fall Down (61, John Frankenheimer); impervious, chilling, and in heat for her son as Mrs. Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate (62, Frankenheimer)—only three years older than her “son Laurence Harvey, but looking more interested in life; enjoying herself in The World of Henry Orient (64, George Roy Hill); the selfish mother in Harlow (65, Gordon Douglas); acid and peremptory in Something for Everyone (70, Hal Prince); and scarcely able to believe the magic of Bedknobs and Broomsticks (71, Robert Stevenson).
In the sixties, she had a great personal success on stage in Maine, but the movies could find no way of using her beyond Death on the Nile (78, John Guillermin) and Miss Froy in The Lady Vanishes (79, Anthony Page).
For Lansbury, the eighties meant Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote, a hit series since its launch in 1984, a way station for semiretired players, and—let it be said—a waste of Miss Lansbury. She does comfortable sugar as decently as anyone, but she is a real actress who is more interesting with a touch of lemon juice, or acid.
She has made a few more films, mostly for TV: The Mirror Crack’d (80, Guy Hamilton); excellent again as Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in Little Gloria—Happy at Last (82, Waris Hussein); The Pirates of Penzance (82, Wilford Leach); The Gift of Love: A Christmas Story (83, Delbert Mann); Lace (84, Billy Hall); The Company of Wolves (85, Neil Jordan); as an Italian in Rage of Angels: The Story Continues (86, Paul Wendkos); Shootdown (88, Michael Pressman); The Shell Seekers (89, Hussein); and The Love She Sought (90, foseph Sargent).
Then she won a new generation of fans by being the sweet singing voice of the housekeeper teapot in Beauty and the Beast (91. Gariy Trousdale and Kirk Wise). In 1999, for TV, she was The Unex¬pected Mrs. Pollifax (Anthony Pullen Shaw).
Married Richard Cromwell, September 27, 1945 (divorced August 1946). Married Peter Shaw, August 12, 1949 (deceased January 29, 2003). Children: Anthony, Deirdre.
Named Woman of Year, Harvard Hasty Pudding Theatricals, 1968, Commander of British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II, 1994. Named to Theatre Hall of Fame, 1982, television Hall of Fame, 1996. Recipient British Academy award, 1991, Silver Mask Lifetime Ach.
Award, British Academy Film and television Arts, 1992, Lifetime Achievement award, Screen Actors' Guild, Hollywood, 1997, Special citation for contribution to American theater, New York Drama Critics' Circuit, 2009, 16 Emmy Award Nominations, 8 Golden Globe Nominations, 6 Golden Glode Awards. Received National medal of the Arts from President Clinton, 1997.
Named Woman of Year, Harvard Hasty Pudding Theatricals, 1968, Commander of British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II, 1994. Named to Theatre Hall of Fame, 1982, television Hall of Fame, 1996. Recipient British Academy award, 1991, Silver Mask Lifetime Ach.
Award, British Academy Film and television Arts, 1992, Lifetime Achievement award, Screen Actors' Guild, Hollywood, 1997, Special citation for contribution to American theater, New York Drama Critics' Circuit, 2009, 16 Emmy Award Nominations, 8 Golden Globe Nominations, 6 Golden Glode Awards. Received National medal of the Arts from President Clinton, 1997.