New York City hosted the 75th annual Tony Awards in June, honoring Broadway’s best and paying tribute to the late Angela Lansbury.
The five-time Tony winner’s work was celebrated with a Lifetime Achievement Award, but the audience’s participation in the theme song from her first Broadway smash, Mame, was noticeably absent because Lansbury had chosen not to go to New York to accept the distinction in person.
96 years old and counting, Lansbury enjoyed the honor but found it difficult to get around. A friend of Angela’s commented, “Angela suffers from a number of things, such as arthritis.” And since new cases of COVID keep cropping up, Angela decided that staying at home was the safest option rather than going to a theatre with six thousand other people.
The star of the hit TV show Murder, She Wrote doesn’t need another award to show that she’s had a successful life. You act the part for a play or any event where you are being acclaimed for what you do, not who you are,” Lansbury said.
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Naturally, her career has always been noteworthy. Using her talent rather than capitalizing on her looks, Lansbury found early success in film.
At the age of 19, she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in the film Gaslight, which was released in 1944.
This London-born actress once lamented, “I was never going to get to portray the girl next door.
” And I was never going to be trained to be a beautiful Hollywood actress. Yes, I did realize that.
Angela Lansbury actually blossomed professionally and personally much later in life. In 1962, at the age of 37, she was nominated for her third Academy Award for her role as the manipulative mother in the groundbreaking film The Manchurian Candidate.
She went on to say that any actress would agree that the best roles were the villainous ones. “There were so many of her… It ended up being my last major film part.
Lansbury held her own on set alongside MGM’s other A-list beauties like Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, and Lana Turner.
Nonetheless, she accepted the fact that she was a genuine virgin. Many people were taken aback when she ran away with a man 15 years her senior at the tender age of 19.
“I was madly in love with Richard Cromwell when I married him,” she said, adding that she had no idea he was gay. “I had no sexual experience,” she said.
Cromwell spent their first year of marriage introducing his young bride to his famous pals, including Joan Crawford, William Holden, and Zachary Scott—”wonderful individuals in the profession that I never would have met,” she later remarked.
He also provided musical instruction to Lansbury by having her listen to selections from his extensive library of great albums. His departure from Lansbury with only a “Dear Jane” note left her devastated.
Lansbury met Peter Shaw, an actor who would go on to become her agent and a co-producer on Murder, She Wrote, and her luck would change for the better.
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According to Lansbury, their 53 years of marriage is the “ideal” one. Her explanation for their long marriage was that they were simply committed to one another.
Shaw took over the day-to-day care of their three children—Anthony, Deidre, and Shaw’s son David from a previous marriage—when Lansbury was gone on film sets or in the theatre.
According to David’s confession in Closer, “my father had no interests at all – the family was his hobby.” “They are both very family oriented.”
They put their careers on hold and relocated to rural Ireland in the 1960s so they could get their kids, Anthony and Deidre, away from the dangerous drug scene in Los Angeles. Lansbury, who spent a year caring for the house and learning how to cook, explained that she did it so that her children would be protected from “any more evil influences.”
The offspring of both sexes benefited from the event and made positive changes as a result. After a lengthy hiatus, Lansbury found success in the theatre again with the productions of Gypsy (1974) and Sweeney Todd (1979).
If she hadn’t agreed to play Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote, they might still be her most famous roles. It was Shaw who first thought of the plan.
Lansbury said, “If I had been left to my own devices, I probably wouldn’t have done it,” but she added that Jessica is still one of her favourite characters.
She was courageous, liberal, athletic, exciting, seductive, and all the other things that women of a certain age are not given credit for, she claimed.
Shaw’s untimely death due to heart failure was a crushing blow to the actress’s career. Lansbury said, “Suddenly it happens and that wonderful person is gone,” and that going back to work helped her deal with her loss. I finally said, “All right, enough already. Stop sitting around and do something productive.
Even younger audiences have seen Lansbury’s work thanks to films like Nanny McFee and Mary Poppins Returns. Lansbury has been holed up in her Los Angeles mansion since the pandemic struck in 2020.
That’s where all of her relatives live, and she adores spending time with them, her pal said. She’s got offspring, grandkids, and even a great-grandchild!
Even Lansbury, who is now in his eighties, is still in good health. Because of her arthritis, she can no longer garden, and she has a hard time controlling her weight, but she takes great pleasure in the kitchen, reading, and crossword puzzles.
She claimed, “I get enough sleep and take a lot of vitamins.” I think you shouldn’t let getting older slow you down. You can’t stop me; I just keep on going, like the tides.