The American actress of English origin Angela Lansbury, who was the unforgettable interpreter of a detective novelist in the series Arabesquedied Tuesday, October 11 at the age of 96, his family said.
Angela Brigid Lansbury was born on October 16, 1925 in Regent’s Park, London. She is the daughter of Moyna MacGill, a great London actress, and Edgar Lansbury, a well-known politician, whose father, George, was the leader of the Labor Party in the first half of the 1930s.
Edgar Lansbury dies when she is 9 years old. She then lived for a few years with her half-sister in Ireland, where they attended theater school. Soon World War II broke out. The bombardments of London and its region during the 1940 blitz forced Angela Lansbury and her family to leave England for the United States. Based in New York, she resumed acting classes.
In 1944, she obtained her first contract at MGM to play in the film haunting, by George Cukor, with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. The role of maid she played earned her a nomination for the Oscar for supporting role in 1945. Meanwhile, at 19, she married the American actor Richard Cromwell with whom she lived for a year. At 21, her career took off and she was nominated a second time for the Oscar for best supporting role for her interpretation of a singer in The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Albert Lewin, in 1946.
She then chained the roles on the screen, in The Harvey Ladies, by George Sidney, in 1946, or even The three Musketeers, by the same director, two years later. She met British actor Peter Shaw, whom she married on August 12, 1949 after her divorce from Richard Cromwell. She will have two children with him, Anthony and Deidre.
Classical plays and musicals
That year, she toured under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille in the epic Samson and Delilah. Then, her life as a mother mobilizes her, and she becomes rarer on the screens. However, she appears in a few films like summer fires, by Martin Ritt, in 1958, where she plays the alcoholic mistress of Orson Welles, or in What does mom understand about love?, by Vincente Minnelli, in 1958. Her talent was dazzling and she obtained a third Oscar nomination in 1963 for her role as a mother in the film A crime in the head, by John Frankenheimer.
At the same time, Angela Lansbury made her theater debut in 1957 and quickly became known on Broadway stages. She plays both in classical plays and in musicals. In a few years on the boards, she won four Tony Awards, American theatrical awards given by the American Theater Wing.
In the 1960s, she appeared in the cinema alongside prestigious actors such as Elvis Presley in Under blue Hawaiian skies (1961), by Norman Taurog, or Charlton Heston and Max von Sydow in The Greatest Story Ever Told, by George Stevens (1965). In the two decades that followed, she was more present on the small than on the big screen, with a notable participation in Death on the Nile, by John Guillermin, in 1978. She also distinguished herself in another genre, children’s cinema, which she would later resume with, among others, The Witch’s Apprentice, by Robert Stevenson, in 1971.
But it is finally on the small screen that she obtains the role of her career, that of the detective novelist Jessica Fletcher in the detective series Arabesquewhich begins in 1984. It is a international triumph and “his greatest success, at least in terms of audience”, pointed out, in 2014, The Daily Mail. If the series stops in 1996 after 264 episodes, it is then widely rebroadcast in many countries, including France. Lansbury’s performance earned him four Golden Globes.
But she would never give up acting, earning a Tony Award in 2009 for her role in the play Blithe Spirit (“the mind has fun”), and made a comeback to the cinema from 2005, after more than twenty years of absence. She participates in particular in films aimed at young people, such as Nanny McPhee, by Kirk Jones, in 2005, or Mr Popper and his penguins, by Mark Waters, in 2010.
Angela Lansbury in 5 dates
October 16, 1925 Born in London
1944 “Hantise”, and first nomination for the Oscar for best supporting role
1984-1996 “Arabesque” series
2014 Honorary Oscar for his career
October 11, 2022 Death in Los Angeles