And why is that? One could argue that this was an actress who slipped way too easily into character parts and supporting roles and no one seemed to regard her as a lead actress. There was always talk that she looked far older than her years. Far older? Bull. If she looked a little more mature than her actual age, so did lots of actresses and their careers didn't suffer.
There was versatility in her physicality and frankly, one of those areas included glamorpuss. She could sing and dance (after a fashion), do comedy and drama and in my book that means versatile. But somehow she got pigeon-holed into character roles at a very young age and often played characters far older than herself. In her best film she played Laurence Harvey's mother and is only three years older than he was.
Anyway, I've never fully understood what the problem was... she should have had a glorious movie career just as she would have on Broadway and television.
Lansbury was born in London in 1925 to character actress Moyna MacGill. She had a half sister from her mother's prior marriage and has twin brothers (who became entertainment producers). Her father died when she was nine. She also had a grandfather who was a Labour Party leader. She has said that she didn't share her mother's acting ambitions but ended up enrolling in drama classes in order to avoid being sent off to boarding school.
As England was becoming involved in the war, MacGill was involved in evacuation plans. She moved with her children to the U.S. Lansbury enrolled in drama school in New York. For a short time she performed in a Montreal nightclub before joining her mother in Los Angeles in 1943.
Lansbury was working in a department store when she heard that MGM was looking for an English girl for The Picture of Dorian Gray. She auditioned for the role but then was taken to meet director George Cukor for the part of a young Cockney maid in the grand psychological mystery Gaslight (1944). Cukor who knew a thing or two about acting and actresses in particular called Lansbury a natural. She more than held her own opposite such Hollywood stalwarts as Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer and Joseph Cotten. Better yet, her saucy role would see her nab an Oscar nomination.
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| With Bergman and Boyer in Gaslight |
After playing Elizabeth Taylor's older sister (gee, didn't they look alike?) in National Velvet (1944), she finally made it into the cast of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). For playing the fragile Sibyl Vane she gets to warble the sad little song, Goodbye Little Yellow Bird and capture her second supporting Oscar nomination. Wasn't she on a roll?
Also in 1945 she married actor Richard Cromwell. The marriage only lasted a year. Apparently Lansbury had no idea he was gay. If the marriage was not a success, the friendship afterwards certainly was.
Playing the saloon hostess who takes a dislike to Judy Garland over their mutual attraction to John Hodiak in The Harvey Girls (1946) was a delightfully showy role for Lansbury. It's also one of her most viewed films since it's on television all the time. She says she was actually hissed in public for being so mean to poor little Judy.
She played a savvy political operative in the wonderful State of the Union (1948) where she tries to entice Spencer Tracy away from Katharine Hepburn. Her role so impressed Louis B. Mayer that she asked him for the role of Milady in The Three Musketeers (1948). She was disheartened when the part was given to Lana Turner and Lansbury had to settle for the smaller role of Queen Anne.
She seemed to always be supporting MGM's bigger female stars... Lana, Liz, Judy, June, Janet, Esther. Too bad too because she was a better actress than any of them and far more versatile than a couple of them.
In 1949 she married occasional actor Peter Shaw. They had two children and were married until his passing 54 years later. Around this time, one presumes in an attempt to revive her career, she began appearing in a great deal of television. Why she opted to costar in a Randolph Scott western, A Lawless Street (1955), only she knows but it was far beneath her talents and she looked out of place. The same year she pronounced the costume drama The Purple Mask as the worst movie she ever made. Star Tony Curtis said, as was his frequent custom with others, some very unkind things about her.
She appeared in her first play in 1957 and would intermingle stage work with movies and television forever more. She had a small role as Orson Welles' girlfriend in The Long, Hot Summer (1958) and was Kay Kendall's catty, chatty friend in The Reluctant Debutante (1958). Season of Passion (1959) is the tale of two sugarcane cutters in Australia who enjoy life with their mistresses for the five months each year when they don't work. Of the quartet that included Anne Baxter, John Mills and Ernest Borgnine, Lansbury got the best notices.
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960) is one of my all-time favorite films and she had a wonderful role as a beautician who quietly loves the married but separated Robert Preston in the early 1900's family drama.
Blue Hawaii (1961) was another one of those Angie, what were you thinking movies,while she played Elvis' mother. Then came two manipulative mother roles, one of which would be the film for which Lansbury would rightly become most remembered.
She joined Eva Marie Saint, Warren Beatty, Karl Malden and Brandon de Wilde for the downbeat but absorbing southern family drama, All Fall Down (1962). While the focus was certainly on the younger cast members, I thought she and Malden were thrilling to watch as the controlling parents.
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| Putting Laurence Harvey over the edge |
Doesn't everyone know that Lansbury's best movie role ever was as the evil, manipulative mother of Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate (1962)? Her character is at the very core of his brain-washing. Her delivery is positively chilling from start to a surprise finish. It is one of the best female villain roles ever and she received another very deserved supporting Oscar nomination but was edged out by Patty Duke for The Miracle Worker.
She had a good role as Glenn Ford's pampered, jilted fiancée in the delightful romantic comedy, Dear Heart (1964). She was perhaps the best thing about Harlow, the Carroll Baker version, in 1965, but the script and much of the acting was abominable, although Lansbury came out on top.
Lansbury was already looking elsewhere for employment when something quite wonderful came her way. She would return to Broadway as the captivating star of Mame, a role as perfect for her as the 1958 movie version had been for Rosalind Russell. Without a shadow of a doubt she had never received this kind of acclaim in Hollywood.
The 60's were not all good news for Lansbury or her family. Like gazillions of other families in that decade, drugs came knocking on the front door. Her daughter had even been a follower of the Manson family. She and Shaw moved the family to Ireland for a spell and out of harm's way.
Something for Everyone (1970) is a delightful film with a bit of a cult following. Lansbury plays an impoverished countess who has become captivated by her new butler, a young man with devious ideas. She and Michael York knock it out of the park.
Lansbury began her long association with the Disney organization in Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). It was her first lead in a movie musical and a big success for all concerned.
She turned down the role of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, citing that she didn't think she could handle the role. Well, perhaps, but oh wouldn't she have been wonderful?
In 1978 she joined an all-star cast for Death on the Nile. Her former real-life brother-in-law, Peter Ustinov, played Hercule Poirot who is out to solve the murder of a young heiress on a cruise. It must have been a tight budget because Lansbury had to share a dressing room with Maggie Smith and Bette Davis.
Lansbury had the principal role as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in A Mirror Crack'd (1982). It didn't do well but I found it fascinating because it's premise was taken right out of actress Gene Tierney's life and because it featured Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Kim Novak and the ungallant Tony Curtis. It is most certainly the part that set up Lansbury for her most famous sleuthing role.
And that, of course, would be for television's Murder, She Wrote that ran from 1984 to 1996 and provided Lansbury with more fame
(and money) than she may have ever hoped for. I love whodunits and because for most years it had glittering casts of name guest stars (most past their prime which made it lovely nostalgia fare), I loved it even more. It still runs here about four times a day.
She did no plays nor did she appear in any big-screen movies in the 90's but she was on plenty of television, a great deal of it very classy stuff. She was famously the voice of Mrs. Potts in the 1991 animated film, Beauty and the Beast. I can hear her singing the title song now.
Lansbury returned to films in 2005 for a small role in Nanny McPhee. She had an even smaller role in Mary Poppins' Return (2018) as the balloon lady at the end of the film.
No one could deny that this lady has had a long and varied career. She's had a few lows but the highs must have given her nosebleeds. She has always been a class act. Dame Angela Lansbury will be 94 on October 16.
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