Angela Lansbury, the London-born star of stage, film and TV who earned three Oscar nominations and will perhaps be best remembered for her long-running role in TV hit Murder, She Wrote, has died. She was 96.
Lansbury was born on October 16, 1925, in central London to Irish actor Moyna Macgill and MP Edgar Lansbury, whose father George Lansbury led the Labour Party in the 1930s.
She was nine when her father died. Aged 14 Lansbury, her mother and two siblings were evacuated from the Blitz. The family sailed from Liverpool to New York, where they were supported by an American family for the remainder of the war.
Lansbury attended the Feagin School of Drama and Radio in New York and found immediate success with her debut feature role in Gaslight, which brought a first supporting actress Oscar nomination in 1945. Two more followed for The Picture Of Dorian Gray in 1946 and The Manchurian Candidate in 1963, and in 2014 she received an honorary Oscar.
Gaslight turned Lansbury into a talent of great interest to Hollywood and, having signed to MGM, she appeared in a number of films for the studio throughout the 1940s including National Velvet with Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor, and State Of The Union opposite Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.
Career feature credits include Bedknobs And Broomsticks, Beauty And The Beast in 1991, and Blue Hawaii, in which she played the mother to Elvis Presley’s character.
Lansbury’s versatility enabled her to switch between mediums and she enjoyed huge mid-career success as a Broadway musical star. Her stage roles earned five Tony Awards for the likes of Mame in 1966, Gypsy in 1975, and Blithe Spirit in 2009. Earlier this year she was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Tony Award.
Lansbury and her second husband and MGM executive Peter Shaw (her first marriage to US actor Richard Cromwell was short-lived) moved from California to Ireland in the 1970s. Away from Hollywood she focused on her family and took stage roles in London and New York.
In the 1980s Lansbury took on her most famous role as the widowed, bicycle-riding mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote. Despite early misgivings among CBS executives who feared the show lacked wide appeal, it became a massive hit and ran from 1984-96.
Shaw died in 2003. Lansbury is survived by her sons Anthony and David, her daughter Deirdre, brother Edgar, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
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