Angela Lansbury, who died on 11 October 2022 at the age of 96 in Los Angeles (and five days before crossing the 97-year-old milestone), was the actress who lent her face and voice to Jessica Fletcher. , iconic protagonist of the TV series "The Lady in Yellow". Here is who was alive and how it came to success.
Everyone knows Jessica fletcher, Aka "Murder, she wrote", which from 1984 to 2003 practically kept billions of viewers from all over the world glued to the television, with adventures of this retired English teacher writer who finds herself solving a series of aberrant crimes.
But few know that, behind her, there was Angela Landsbury, a famous English actress died on 11 October 2022 at the age of 96 in Los Angeles and that, for almost twenty years, she played the role of the amateur detective.
Who was she and how, during her life, she managed to get the role of Jessica Fletcher, the US version of Miss Marple who has fascinated all the fans of the yellow genre?
Angela Lansbury: When was she born and who her parents were
Angela Landsbury she was born on October 16, 1925 (she would have turned 97 in five days), under the sign of Libra, a Regent's Park, in UK.
Nicknamed by friends "Angie", she was 173 centimeters tall and his real name was Angela Brigid Lansbury.
Daughter of Edgar Isaac Lansbury (1887-1935), a socialist politician who is a member of the Communist Party and the Labor Party, and of Moyna Macgill (1895-1975), an Irish film actress of Belfast, belonged to the upper middle class.
During its first five years of life, Angela Landsbury lived in an apartment in Poplar, then in 1930 he moved with his parents to Mill Hill, North London. THE weekend spent them in a farm in Berrick Salome, South Oxfordshire.
In 1935, when he was just ten, he lost his father to a stomach cancer. As reaction to the loss, he retired to "his world" to "play characters".
His mother later became engaged to Leckie Forbes, Scottish colonel, and later moved to his house in Hampstead.
Angela Lansbury: studies and first steps in the entertainment world
In Hampstead, Angela Lansbury attended South Hampstead High School. It began in spending a lot of time in the local cinema and imagining himself in various roles.
He also began to learn a playing the piano and to receive a musical education at the Ritman School of Dancing.
In 1940 she began her training as an actress at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art in Kensington, but she had already made her first theatrical debut in 1933, when she had played the part of one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting in the play, produced by her school, Mary of Scotland, which told the life of Mary Queen of Scots.
Also in 1940, she also lost her paternal grandfather to stomach cancer, which had already taken her father away in 1935.
The flight to the United States
When, in full Second World War, began the Blitz in 1940, or the intense bombing of the United Kingdom by the Nazis and which would last until 11 May 1941, Moyna Macgill, fearing for the safety of his family, he decided to run away and take his three youngest children with him, among whom there was also Angela Landsbury, In United States.
isola, Angela's older sister, was left in England, as she was already an adult and married.
La mother of Angela Lansbury managed to secure sponsorship of the American businessman Charles T. Smith, which allowed them to move into his home in Mahopac, New York.
Interested in continuing her studies, the future Jessica fletcher he got a scholarship from the American Theater Wing. Two years later she moved with her family to an apartment on Morton Street in Greenwich Village.
He then began to follow his mother on her theatrical tour and, in Canada, got his first paid job, when she was hired as a singer by the Samovar Club for $ 60 a week.
A curiosity: to get it, Angela Lansbury lied about her age, saying he was 19, but he was 16!
Lansbury then returned to New York in August 1942, just in time for yet another move: in fact, his mother, in order to try to relaunch her film career, decided to move her entire family to Los Angeles!
The first roles in the movies and the frustration
In Los Angeles, where she worked as a saleswoman to help her unemployed mother support her family Bullocks Wilshire Department Store, made the acquaintance of the screenwriter John Van Druten, who at 17 hired her to play --Nancy Oliver in Gaslight (released in Italian with the title of Anguish).
After Gaslight, Lansbury continued to appear in MGM films, with which, thanks to Van Druten, she had managed to obtain a seven-year contract.
In 1952, however, she terminated her contract with MGM because she did not feel satisfied with her film career. In 1959 he moved to Malibu with the new husband, with the two children and with the stepson.
She continues her career as a freelance actress, but is frustrated, they continue to hire her for middle-aged lady roles.
In the early XNUMXs she landed the role of a bully mother in Blue Hawaii (1961). The role of the son was played by Elvis Presley, who was just ten years her senior. The film earned Lansbury new fame at a difficult time in her career.
Angela Lansbury, Jessica Fletcher in "The Lady in Yellow"
In 1984, after spending almost twenty years of his career acting purely in more or less important musicals, Angela Lansbury was cast to play Jessica Fletcher, or "Murder, she wrote".
La The actual television series ended in 1996, but four films were made between 1997 and 2003 TV shows dedicated to the retired English teacher, writer and amateur detective.
Originally the format, which was to be an American transposition of Miss Marple (an idea to which, however, the family members of the same objected Agatha Christie), was designed for a middle-aged audience, but soon became a success even among the young and the very young.
Lansbury rejected, on numerous occasions, the notion that Jessica Fletcher was having an affair, clearly telling the network executives that the her character were to remain a strong and single woman.
Angela Lansbury, the last major works and the death of her husband
Il more important role that Angela Lansbury played in old age was that of Miss Pot, which he dubbed in the English version of The beauty and the Beast (the 1992 Disney animated film).
After the end of "Murder, she wrote", returned to the theatrical career. She gradually retired from the stage in 2001 to take care of the husband Peter Shaw.
Shaw died in 2003 of heart failure. Their marriage lasted 54 years (1949-2003).
After her husband's death, the Lansbury fell into depression and said he could no longer accept major roles, other than small cameos.
In 2018, however, it appeared in Il ritorno di Mary Poppins, Disney film and sequel to the very successful Mary Poppins, in the role of the lady of the balloons, a nice old woman who sold balloons in the park.
In 2020, at 95, it was defined one of the oldest surviving actresses. She has never retired from the stage and is still a popular icon today.
Was Angela Lansbury married? Her two loves
The first love of Angela Landsbury was the actor Richard Cromwell, who was fifteen years her senior and whom she married in 1945. The two lived a troubled marriage, which ended in 1946 childless.
The two ex, however, remained friends until Cromwell's death, which took place in the 1960.
In 1946 Lansbury began a relationship with Peter Shaw, who was then an aspiring actor. He was seven years her senior and would become her greatest love.
When Shaw met the English actress, he had recently ended his relationship with the actress Joan Crawford, with whom he had a son.
The two wanted to marry in the UK, but the Church of England refused to marry two divorced.
They were then married in 1949 in a Church of Scotland ceremony in the Church of St Columba, a Knightsbridge.
After returning to the United States, they moved into Lansbury's home, a Malibu. The two had two children and, in 1951, both received US naturalization, although they retained British citizenship.
Who are Angela Lansbury's children and descendants?
I children of Angela Lansbury they are called Anthony Pullen Shaw (born January 7, 1952, 70 years old, also an actor) e Deirdre Angela Shaw (born April 26, 1953, 69 years old. She married an Italian and runs a restaurant with him in Los Angeles).
He had two brothers, Edgar and Bruce Lansbury (the first is still alive and is a producer, the second died in 2017), and a half-sister, Isolde Denham, born in 1920 and died in 1987.
He also had two grandchildren, Ian and Felicia Lansbury. Felicia followed in her grandmother's footsteps and became an actress too, while we only know about Ian that he is an actor and that he starred, alongside his grandmother, in some episodes of "Murder, she wrote".
Angela Lansbury: curiosity
- Angela Lansbury's escape from the United Kingdom was nothing short of daring: the day after leaving Liverpool, the latter was bombed and, shortly after, the Duchess of Atholl, the ship that rescued her, her mother and the other brothers. in the United States, it was sunk by a German submarine;
- During the filming of Gaslight, they had to wait for Lansbury to turn 18 to get her to shoot scenes in which she smoked;
- He starred alongside Ingrid Berman, one of the greatest actresses in black and white cinema;
- His daughter, Deirdre Angela Lansbury, in the XNUMXs he came into tangential contact with the cult of Charles Manson;
- In the XNUMXs, after her Malibu home burned down, for the sake of her children and to keep them away from an unhealthy environment, Lansbury decided to move her entire family to Ireland;
- The first choice for Jessica fletcher it wasn't Lansbury, but Jean stapleton. The actress, however, refused it;
- She has been nominated several times for Oscars, Emmys and Tony's, but she has never won one;
Where to see "The Lady in Yellow" for free
Do you want to relive the adventures of Jessica fletcher and also remember Angela Landsbury and his skill?
You can see all the episodes of "The Lady in Yellow" for free clicking on this link.
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Image credits: Instagram profile Angela Lansbury (@angela_lansbury)
