Dame Angela Lansbury, the star of stage, film and television, is being fondly remembered following her death at the age of 96.
Her family announced she’d passed away peacefully at her home in Los Angeles. The British born actress made the move to Hollywood to escape World War II and found success in a wide range of films including musicals and serious dramas.
Among her memorable roles were as a communist agent, and mother of the title character in The Manchurian Candidate, her voicework on the Disney animation Beauty and the Beast and playing a good witch in Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
She found success on the Broadway stage in the musicals Mame (which made her an eternal gay icon), Gypsy, and The King and I. Lansbury was the first actor play the role of Mrs Lovett in Sweeny Todd when it made its Broadway debut in 1979.
Her most enduring role however would come in the 1980’s when she signed up to play murder mystery author Jessica Flether in TV series Murder She Wrote. The show ran for 12 seasons from 1984 until 1996. Each week Fletcher would stumble over a murder and then proceed to work out who did it.
Lansbury continued to act on stage and screen into her 90’s. She appeared at His Majesty’s Theatre in Perth in 2013 alongside James Earl Jones and Boyce Gaines in a production of Driving Miss Daisy. In 2014 she appeared in a production of Blythe Spirit that had seasons in The West End, and a tour across America.
In 2019 she made her final Broadway appearance in one night only staging of The Importance of Being Earnest raising funds for the Roundabout Theatre Company. Her final film appearance was a cameo in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery which was released earlier this year.
Lansbury is remembered for her support of many organisations that raised awareness of HIV and support for people living with the virus. The actor’s support for HIV charities began in the 1980s and continued throughout her life.
Lansbury was married to actor Richard Cromwell in 1945, the coupled divorced in the following year, but remained life-long friends until his death in 1960. In interviews it has been stated that Cromwell was gay or bisexual.
She married her second husband actor and producer Peter Shaw in 1949 and they remained together until his death in 2003. She is survived by her stepson from Shaw’s first marriage alongside the couple’s two children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
OIP Staff
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