The family of the able actress Angela Lansbury announced her death at the age of 97, and she is known for her diverse roles that have dazzled generations of fans.
“The children of Mrs. Angela Lansbury are saddened to announce that their mother passed away peacefully in her sleep at her home in Los Angeles at 1:30 a.m. today, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, just five days following her 97th birthday,” the family said in a statement.
Angela Lansbury, Queen of Stage
Angela Lansbury, the London-born actress, has been ranked as one of the most decorated actors in the history of American theater.
She won 5 Tony Awards, most recently in 2009 for Best Actress for Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit”, and Best Actress in a Musical in 1979.
She won the other three Tony Awards for Best Actress in “Mammy” in 1966, “Daisy World” in 1969, and “Gypsy” in 1975.
Lansbury brought her singing skill from Broadway to the big screen, with the 1991 animated musical Beauty and the Beast.
She took to the stage at Lincoln Center in New York in 2016 to celebrate the film’s 25th anniversary, and broke the hearts of the audience by performing the film’s theme song.
Lansbury on American TV
Lansbury had a long and successful career when she took on a role on TV that many Americans will remember – as mystery writer and crime fighter Jessica Fletcher on CBS in Murder…She Wrote It.
The series ran for 12 seasons, from 1984 to 1996, in which Lansbury played a mysterious writer and a widow with a superb observational ability who always outsmarted criminals and even the local police before the real killer was revealed within an hour.
The show was a staple of Sunday evening television at 8 p.m., and was one of CBS’ biggest hits of the 1980s.
Shows like “Murder…She Wrote It” ushered in a new era of television, with more female players taking on leading roles on America’s small screen.
The Lansbury Television Academy was nominated for 12 Emmy Awards for the series, although it never received them, and was inducted into the American Television Hall of Fame in 1996.
‘The murder has given me,’ she said in 2013 while receiving her Honorary Academy Award, writing ‘more global attention than any other role I have ever played in films or on stage.’ ‘It’s great to be known in Spain, Portugal, Paris, France, Germany and everywhere.’
Lansbury in the cinema
Lansbury has become such an important TV personality that some fans may have forgotten the important films she made in the era of black and white films, and her 3 Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominations in Legendary Business.
Lansbury played the maid in the 1944 classic “Gaslight,” regarding a woman, played by star Ingrid Bergman, who is manipulated into questioning her own mind.
Gaslight, which means psychological manipulation of lies and false narratives, has become a common term in 21st century American vocabulary.
This role earned Lansbury her first Academy Award nomination before she received another nomination for her short and vital role in the 1945 film “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”
With director John Frankenheimer in the 1962 film All Fall Down, Lansbury played Lady Eleanor Eislin, a cunning and domineering mother – a role that brought Lansbury her third Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Origin and beginning
Angela Brigid Lansbury was born on October 16, 1925 in London, the daughter of actor Moina McGill and lumber executive Edgar Lansbury.
Her father and grandfather (George Lansbury) were active in liberal British politics, Edgar Lansbury was mayor of Poplar in London, while George Lansbury served as Labor leader in 1932-1934.
“My grandfather was a very big figure in my life when I was a child,” Lansbury told the Academy of Television. “He was an extraordinary person who was admired and loved by the British labor movement, which he led, and because he was the most charismatic, simple and very kind man, he never drank and never smoked.”
At the age of nine, her father died in 1935, and following the outbreak of World War II a few years later, Lansbury’s mother was afraid that Germany would bomb London, so she moved her family to Canada in the summer of 1940, and they immediately boarded a train to New York.
Lansbury landed at Lucy Fagan School in Rockefeller Center, overlooking the rink and what seemed like a perfect snapshot of quintessential American life.
Despite Lansbury’s long and honorable career in the United States, she has never lost touch with her roots, and the United Kingdom has never forgotten her.
The late Queen Elizabeth II awarded Lansbury the title of DBE (Dame Commander of the British Empire) in 2014 during a ceremony at Windsor Castle.
Lansbury said on that day: “It is a very proud day for me to be recognized by the country of my birth, and to meet the Queen under these circumstances is a rare and wonderful occasion.”
