As a supporting actress at 40, she became the star of a 12-year detective series: Angela Lansbury

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Sweet lady or a harbinger of someone's imminent death? Pretty port town or murder capital of the world? Actress Angela Lansbury, who played a supporting role for up to forty years, managed to create the image of the main character of one of the most successful detective series of the eighties.

Angela Lansbury is a girl from a good family

Before becoming the main detective of Cabot Cove in New England, Jessica Fletcher, or rather, the actress who gave birth to this character, has come a long way, including across the ocean. Angela Lansbury was born in London in 1925 to Edgar Lansbury, a wealthy businessman and politician, and Moina McGill, an actress. When, many years later, Angela plays the heroine of Murder, She Wrote, McGill will be named as Jessica's maiden name.

Angela's childhood years were deeply imprinted by communication with her grandfather, George Lansbury, an influential politician and reformer who led the Labor Party for several years. The father died when the girl was nine years old, and Moina met World War II alone with three children in her arms - Angela and her two twin brothers. In 1940, fleeing the bombing, the family moved to Canada and then to the United States. Once in the New World, Mrs. Lansbury began trying to revive her career as an actress, and her daughter became involved in the events of the world of cinema and theater and enrolled in acting classes.

Her film debut took place in 1944, in the film Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Angela Lansbury played the servant Nancy Oliver in a supporting role for which she was immediately nominated for an Oscar. For her role in the next film - "The Picture of Dorian Gray" - Angela was awarded the Golden Globe and another Oscar nomination. The role of Lansbury began to emerge - as the producers and directors saw him. She constantly played character characters, women much older in age than the actress herself. Angela admitted that Hollywood made her very old.

In New York, Lansbury landed a role in the musical Mame, her first major role in her life. The production has been played more than 1,500 times - for her participation in it Angela received her first theatrical Tony award. New awards were not long in coming: Angela participated in various performances, received, as a rule, recognition and standing ovation, and this opened her way to television, which in the future will lead the actress to her most memorable role.

Family status

For the first time, Lansbury married at the age of 19 - to her gay friend Richard Cromwell. After the divorce, which took place a year later, Angela and Richard continued to be friends, maintaining a warm relationship until Cromwell's death. And at twenty-one, Angela's chosen one was the Irish actor Peter Pullen Shaw, who by that time had recently parted ways with Joan Crawford. Three years later, the couple officially registered their relationship by playing a ceremony in the Scottish Church (the Anglicans turned out to marry the divorced). This marriage turned out to be one of the strongest in the Hollywood environment, the couple lived together for 54 years, maintaining, according to Angela, "an ideal relationship."

The couple raised Shaw's son David (from a previous marriage) and two of their own children, Deidre and Anthony. In 1983, Angela Lansbury, who did not stop performing in the theater and starring in films, was offered a role in a new detective series. From the point of view of the producers, Lansbury was perfect for this role, but the actress herself hesitated for a while. On September 30, 1984, the first pilot episode Murder She Wrote was released.

The Adventures of Jessica Fletcher

The detective series about a middle-aged lady who unravels murders immediately became popular in the United States, it was watched by about thirty million viewers weekly. It aired on CBS Sunday night for twelve seasons.

According to the plot of the series, Jessica Fletcher, a former English teacher, lives in the small port town of Cabot Cove. Some time ago, she became a widow and, in order to brighten up her loneliness, she began to write detective stories, which were successful and quickly brought Mrs. Fletcher fame and fame. Each episode of the series begins with Jessica, either visiting one of her many relatives or friends, or during her daily activities in Cabot Cove, becomes involved in a murder case.

The writer manages to make one or two subtle and correct remarks about the details of the crime scene that the investigators missed, and she becomes the confidant of the police investigating, or takes measures to find the real killer instead of Jessica's innocently accused friend or relative. In this sense, she reminds Miss Marple of Agatha Christie - by the way, Lansbury by that time starred in this role in the movie "The Mirror Cracked", and also participated in the film adaptation of another work of the detective queen - "Death on the Nile".

According to fans of the series, Cabot Cove has 1.5 times more murders per capita than in the most criminal place on the planet - in Honduras. In addition, Jessica Fletcher herself was jokingly nicknamed "the harbinger of murder" - leading an active and mobile lifestyle, she now and then visits her friends and relatives in different parts of the United States, and her appearance, according to the laws of the genre, precedes the next murder, which Mrs. Fletcher begins to investigate with unchanging vigor. In the town where the writer lives, her best friend Seth Hazlett and Sheriff Amos Tupper help her unravel the affairs.

The series owes its popularity, no doubt, to the heroine - her tact and charm, the ability to be in the very center of events, while remaining their observer, and her benevolence towards everyone, including those guilty of a crime, the ability to maintain a conversation, simultaneously finding out everything that interests, give the stories a special atmosphere and appeal, making the detective a way to have fun with the family. Murder, She Wrote, was directed by thirty-three different directors, including Angela's son, Anthony Shaw. And the series itself has become a launching pad for the manifestation of young talents - it starred, for example, young George Clooney, Julianne Margulis, Courtney Cox, and a way for movie stars of the past to remind of themselves.

Angela Lansbury herself became the holder of a record for the number of nominations for the Golden Globe (she won four awards) and an anti-record for the number of nominations for an Emmy without receiving an award - eighteen. In 1996, filming for the series ended, Lansbury felt very tired of the rhythm of recent years. In 2003, Lansbury, in turn, became a widow. After the death of her husband, she continued shooting in films, including starring in the film "My Terrible Nanny" as Adelaide's Aunt and taking part in the television series "Little Women". In addition to working in cinema and theater, Lansbury loves doing housework and especially gardening, cooking, playing the piano, and reading. Among the favorite writers of the actress - Francis Scott Fitzgerald, whose marriage is no longer perfect.