RIP Angela Lansbury (1925-2022)

[principehomura]

Just heard the news.
I am really sad, she was one of my eraliest and most fond memories regarding the entertainment.
'Murder She Wrote' was a must when eating at my grandparents when I was a kid.

May she rest in peace.

[stevea]

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/11/e...-lansbury-dead

[Zoneboy]

https://www.theatermania.com/new-yor...ary_69728.html

Angela Lansbury, the five-time Tony-winning actor who originated roles including Mame Dennis and Mrs. Lovett, has died. She was 96, and five days shy of her 97th birthday.

Angela Brigid Lansbury was born October 16, 1925, in Regent's Park, London, the child of the Belfast-born actor Moyna MacGill and English politician Edgar Lansbury. In 1940, she began studying at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art in Kensington, West London. She moved to New York City with her family during the Blitz and received an American Theatre Wing scholarship to study at the Feagin School of Drama and Radio.

Lansbury then embarked on a career in the movies, moving to Hollywood with her mother. In 1944, after a chance meeting with screenwriter John Van Druten, she played Nancy Oliver in the film Gaslight and received her first of three Academy Award nominations. Her screen roles during this period included National Velvet, The Picture of Dorian Gray (for which she received her second Oscar nod), and many other films before her contract with MGM ran out in 1952. One of her most notable screen roles came in 1962, when she was cast as Eleanor Iselin in the Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate, for which she received her third Oscar nomination.

In 1957, Lansbury made her Broadway debut in Hotel Paradiso, and followed it up with an appearance in 1960's A Taste of Honey. Her first musical was the 1964 Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents' flop Anyone Can Whistle. She quickly followed that up with several other musical theater roles and became one of the genre's defining actresses. She won Tonys for originating the roles of Mame Dennis in Mame (1966), Countess Aurelia in Dear World (1969), and Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd (1979), as well as for her 1975 performance as Rose in Gypsy.

Lansbury received global fame for her performance as Jessica Fletcher, the crime novelist and detective on the long-running television series Murder, She Wrote and received four Golden Globe Awards for her work in the role. She unforgettably voiced the role of Mrs. Potts in Disney's Beauty and the Beast in 1991. She also received a pair of Emmy nominations for her performances on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Law & Order: Trial by Jury in 2005.

Her later years were filled with many theatrical appearances. In 2007, Lansbury returned to Broadway to star opposite Marian Seldes in Terrence McNally's Deuce, about a pair of retired tennis pros reuniting to watch a match together. That was followed by her landmark performance as Madame Arcati in Michael Blakemore's revival of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, for which she received her record-tying fifth Tony Award (she shared the record with Julie Harris and Audra McDonald before McDonald claimed her sixth Tony in 2014).

Lansbury also originated the role of Madame Armfeldt in Trevor Nunn's 2009 revival of A Little Night Music and received yet another Tony nomination. She later played the political doyenne Mrs. Sue-Ellen Gamadge in the 2012 Broadway revival of Gore Vidal's The Best Man. She toured Australia opposite James Earl Jones and Boyd Gaines in Driving Miss Daisy and reprised her Madame Arcati for an extended 2014 engagement on London's West End.

On November 16, 2013, Lansbury received an Honorary Oscar recognizing her work of 70 years in the film industry. She was honored with a lifetime achievement Tony Award earlier this year, making it her sixth Tony statue.

Her second husband, Peter Shaw, whom she married in 1949, died in 2003. Lansbury is survived by their children, Anthony, Deirdre, and David, as well as three grandchildren, five great grandchildren, and her brother, producer Edgar Lansbury.

According to the family, a private ceremony will be held at a date to be determined.

[Zoneboy]

Doesn't belong in sitcoms.

Verified here....

https://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards...d.php?t=424148

[TVLegend]

RIP.

[MA]

Cozi TV will be airing Murder, She Wrote marathons all day Wednesday through Saturday, 6AM/5C until 8PM/7C.

[MA]

Can this thread be locked or deleted since it doesn’t belong in sitcoms?

[stevea]

RIP.

[D-Dey]

So that leaves at least two surviving castmembers of the 1964 comedy-drama "The World of Henry Orient" who are still alive; Merrie Spaeth and Tippy Walker. I'm not sure if Jane Buchanan is still alive.

[TMC]

Column: Angela Lansbury's 'Murder, She Wrote' was revolutionary

BY MARY MCNAMARA
CULTURE COLUMNIST AND CRITIC
OCT. 12, 2022 9:09 AM PT

It isn’t every five-time Tony winner and multiple Oscar nominee who is most famous for starring in a CBS mystery procedural. But as the many appreciations that marked her death on Tuesday made clear, Angela Lansbury was in a class by herself, and “Murder, She Wrote” was, all that quaintness notwithstanding, revolutionary.

When Jessica Fletcher first appeared, jogging the streets of Cabot Cove, tapping away on her manual typewriter and putting two and two together in that clear-headed, unsentimental way of hers, no one knew quite what to make of her. Even with “Police Women,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “Cagney & Lacey,” female detectives were thin on the ground, never mind female amateur detectives of a certain age.

“Murder, She Wrote” eschewed car chases, gun fights and gruesome corpses; most of its murderers were as ordinary as its main character and usually went quietly when caught.

Even with Lansbury, beloved star of “Mame” and “Sweeney Todd,” stepping into the role, originally offered to Jean Stapleton, CBS considered “Murder, She Wrote” a long shot, snuggling it into the Sunday night berth following “60 Minutes.”

Who on earth would watch a show about a small-town, New England-based, middle-aged widow who wrote murder mysteries when she wasn’t solving them?

Many, many people, as it turned out. “Murder, She Wrote” came out swinging and went on to become one of the most successful and longest-running shows in the history of television, averaging 30 million viewers in its prime and burning John Addison’s sprightly theme song, with its twiddly piano intro, jolly horns and jaunty strings, into the brains of several generations.

In hindsight, it isn’t surprising at all. (Nor is it the first time television executives have been wrong.)

Almost from the moment of its invention (by Edgar Allan Poe? Wilkie Collins? Arthur Conan Doyle? Debate among yourselves), the murder mystery has been a workhorse of popular fiction. Over the years, its popularity has cycled through film and television. With the almost back-to-back hits of “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Knives Out” (I will draw a veil over “Death on the Nile”), it is currently very much in star-studded vogue on the big screen. “See How They Run” is a murder mystery involving the production of Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap,” the longest-running play in history, and the “Knives Out” sequel, “The Glass Onion,” is one of the fall’s most anticipated films (especially now, since it includes a cameo by Lansbury, in her final performance).

Television may have moved away from the traditional procedural sleuth series in favor of season-long investigations, but never from its love of a good mystery. “Only Murders in the Building” plays with all the iterations of the genre, including the podcast.

“Murder, She Wrote,” created by Peter S. Fisher, Richard Levinson and William Link, premiered in 1984, when streaming did not exist and cable was still a word mostly associated with telephones (Google it.) The show stepped into a template left by the short-lived “Ellery Queen,” and the vacuum left by the more popular “The NBC Mystery Movie,” a wheel series that rotated weekly episodes of “Columbo,” “McCloud” and “McMillan and Wife,” which ended in 1977.

And it was very, very good. Smart, sensible, a bit sassy, very literate and occasionally open to romance, Jessica Fletcher was not rumpled, haunted or conflicted. She was a woman you might know or even be, if only you had her confidence.

Oh sure, the series opens with her nephew swiping a book she had written for the fun of it and getting it published, leaving Fletcher wondering why anyone would want to read it even after it becomes, of course, a bestseller. But by episode three (the pilot is two hours long, broken into two parts), she’s happy to lend a hand whenever Sheriff Amos Tupper (Tom Bosley) finds himself confronted with a murder — and not at all surprised he asked.

Jessica Fletcher was something that is still rare on television: a woman who understands her own worth.

Not in a diva way; far from it. Even as her fame as a writer grows, Jessica refuses to abandon her beloved Cabot Cove. Sure, it becomes the murder capital of the world, but it’s where she takes her jogs, washes her own windows, teaches at the local school and women’s prison, knows everyone. She gets about, visiting friends and family, while fame naturally gives her access to any crime scene, but she always comes home.

Lansbury makes her kind, but not overly emotional. Like Miss Marple before her, she sees the world for what it is, good and bad. She is pained when confronting the murderer (which she often does alone) but never outraged or disgusted. And though comparisons are inevitable (I just made one), she is no Miss Marple.

Both characters have highly rational minds, with a deep understanding of human nature and a sharp eye for detail, but Miss Marple was a bit of a covert agent, using her age and fluffy appearance to travel incognito and disarm potential suspects. Everyone was always surprised when, after a fair amount of disingenuous dithering, she solved even the most complicated problems, often by drawing parallels to her various experiences of village life.

Lansbury’s Jessica, on the other hand, never dithered. She was a force in any room, and solved her mysteries through the simple process of critical thinking and paying attention — particularly to time.

It was fun to try to figure out whodunit, but mostly it was just a joy to watch Lansbury work, particularly among a panoply of guest stars who ranged from Janet Leigh to a very young Joaquin Phoenix.

Conditioned as we are to the cliffhanging demands of the binge model, “Murder, She Wrote,” which is available on Peacock, can seem a bit drawn out, as well as very, very tame even with all the dead bodies. It is far more cerebral than visceral, but the performances are almost always very good (when playing against Lansbury, I would imagine you would bring your A game). One of the last big shows before television began splintering into a million demographics and targeting the younger end, “Murder, She Wrote” was a series the whole family could, and did, watch together.

When, in 1995, CBS fatally moved it to Thursday night against NBC’s “Friends”-led comedy lineup, it proved to be more than the death of a single show; it was the end of an era. “I’m shattered,” Lansbury told The Times when the move was announced.

And so, eventually, would be the traditional model of television.

After “Murder, She Wrote” ended two years later, Lansbury would go on to reprise “Blithe Spirit,” voice Mrs. Potts in “Beauty and the Beast,” take a pie in the face thrown by Emma Thompson in “Nanny McPhee” (because no one else was brave enough to throw a pie at Angela Lansbury) and win an honorary Oscar.

She never did get an Emmy, though, which is insane. But then who needs an Emmy when you’ve won a revolution?

[Dude111]

Very sad........

[MrCleveland]

She was also a Disney legend providing the voice of Mrs. Potts from Beauty and the Beast and starring in Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

[Hawkee]

When I picture Angela Lansbury I picture a proper elegant lady who is always so calm and friendly that always invites you for tea in her house and that's the personality I had always associated Angela Lansbury with because she was always nice and calm and very mannered and friendly and this is probably Disney chose her to voice Mrs. Potts in Beauty And The Beast because when you watch the movie and watch Mrs. Potts you will notice she has a lot of Angela Lansbury's personality in her. And Angela mentioned in the documentary on the making of Beauty And The Beast that if Mrs. Potts was a real human person she would be a wonderful grandmother type of person who would be calm and friendly and be a nice person who would treat you with kindness and respect. I shortly saw Murder She Wrote with my mom when I was six after I saw Beauty And The Beast in the theater and I saw Angela Lansbury and I remember watching the episode of Murder She Wrote with Mom and I said in my little girl voice "Mommy Mommy look at Mrs. Potts solving mysteries" and my mother said that it was Mrs. Potts as a human solving mysteries and I thought Angela Lansbury was very good in Murder She Wrote because Jessica Fletcher was a smart character who loved writing mysteries and solving them. I didn't even know Angela Lansbury was in the movie National Velvet with Elizabeth Taylor because I liked that movie because anything horse related is right up my alley. And Angela was also in Mrs. Santa Claus that appeared on CBS in the 90's too
Bestie

[Shrdlu]

I was sad to hear that Angela has died.

It was terrible of some bigwig at C.B.S. to move Season 12 to Thursday night against that horrible sitcom that was so popular. Angela was mad about that, and wanted to continue past Season 12. Ironically, a fifth season of "The Equalizer" was stopped when some nut at C.B.S. got into an argument about it and "Murder She Wrote".

I have all 12 seasons here, and enjoy watching them again.

The music for Seasons 1 to 7, by Richard Markovitch and David Bell, was excellent. How sad that, when they decided to move Jessica to Manhattan, NY, they hired Jeff Sturges instead. I absolutely hate the noise he makes - so repetitive and dreary. When no-one is speaking, I mute the sound. Sadly, after doing all of Season 8, he pops up a lot in all the future seasons, right up to the end. I wish that the sound was available without the music.

That fly in the ointment aside, I love the series.

[TMC]

Who remembers the time that Vinessa Shaw (AKA Allison Watts in Hocus Pocus) guest starred on Murder, She Wrote:

A post shared by on Jan 01, 2022 at 12:00pm PDT