Angela Lansbury: farewell to a legend of stage and screen

Given her career spanned seven decades, different people will have different abiding memories of Angela Lansbury, who has died at home in Los Angeles, aged 96.

Maybe they’ll remember her as Miss Price in Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1871) or as the voice of the singing teapot Mrs Potts in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991). Maybe it’ll be her Oscar-nominated performance as Eleanor Shaw Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), or even as young Sibyl Vane in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945).

Of course, it could be all of those performances and more. Lansbury’s film career began with Gaslight (1944) and came to an end with Buttons and Mary Poppins Returns (2018). Having received two Oscar nominations by the age of 21, she received a Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 2014, aged 89.

And then there was her stellar stage career. Lansbury won a Tony Award for her lead role in the Broadway show Mame (1966), the first of four wins for the Best Actress in a Musical category, followed by Dear World (1969), Gypsy (1975), and Sweeney Todd (1979).

But it’s safe to say that everyone – everyone – remembers Lansbury in her iconic and long-lasting role as crime novelist and ace sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the beloved TV show Murder, She Wrote (1984–1996), a role for which she received – but never won – an Emmy nomination for 12 consecutive seasons. In total there were 264 episodes and four spin-off TV movies.

‘What appealed to me about Jessica Fletcher,’ Lansbury said in a 1985 interview for the New York Times, ‘is that I could do what I do best and have little chance to play – a sincere, down-to-earth woman. Mostly, I’ve played very spectacular bitches. Jessica has extreme sincerity, compassion, extraordinary intuition. I’m not like her. My imagination runs riot. I’m not a pragmatist. Jessica is.’

At its peak the show was drawing in audiences of more than 23 million people per episode and has continued to enjoy a lucrative afterlife via repeats and global syndication, smashing what had once been perceived as the ‘obstacle’ of having a middle-aged female lead in a prime-time show.

Aged 88, Lansbury appeared on the London stage for the last time in 2014, as Madame Arcati, in a revival of Noël Coward’s 1941 comedy Blithe Spirit.