Angela Lansbury

Dame Angela Lansbury DBE
Lansbury in 1950
Born	Angela Brigid Lansbury (1925-10-16) October 16, 1925 Regent's Park, London, England[1]
Nationality	Irish – British-American
Occupation	Actress, singer, songwriter, producer, writer
Years active	1944–present
Spouse(s)	Richard Cromwell (m. 1945; div. 1946) Peter Shaw (m. 1949; his death 2003)
Children	Anthony Peter Shaw (born 1952) Deirdre Angela Shaw (born 1953)

Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury, DBE (born October 16, 1925) is an English-American actress and singer who has appeared in theatre, television, and films. Her career has spanned seven decades, much of it based in the United States, and her work has attracted international attention.

Lansbury was born in central London to actress Moyna Macgill and politician Edgar Lansbury. In 1940, she moved to New York City in the United States, where she studied acting. Proceeding to Hollywood, Los Angeles in 1942, she signed to MGM and got her first film roles, in Gaslight (1944) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), earning two Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe Award. She appeared in eleven further MGM films, mostly in minor roles, and after her contract ended in 1952 she began supplementing her cinematic work with theatrical appearances. Although her appearance in the film adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate (1962) was widely acclaimed, she finally gained stardom for her theatrical starring role in the Broadway musical Mame (1966). Relocating from California to County Cork, Ireland in 1970, she continued with a variety of theatrical and cinematic appearances throughout that decade.

Moving to television in 1984, Lansbury achieved widespread fame as the fictional writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the American murder mystery series Murder, She Wrote, which ran for twelve seasons until 1996, becoming one of the longest-running detective drama series in television history. She assumed ownership of the series and was executive producer for the final four seasons. She also moved into voice work, thereby contributing to animated films like Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991). Since then, she has toured prolifically in a variety of international productions, and continued to make occasional film appearances.

Lansbury has won an Honorary Oscar, five Tony Awards, six Golden Globes and an Olivier Award. She has also been nominated for numerous other industry awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on three occasions, and various Primetime Emmy Awards on eighteen occasions. Further, she has been cited as both a gay icon and an American icon, with a cult fan following.

Early life

Childhood: 1925–42

Lansbury was born in Hamilton Terrace, Regent's Park, London, United Kingdom on October 16, 1925.^[2] Although her birthplace has often been cited as Poplar, East London,^[3] she has rejected this, asserting that while she had ancestral connections to Poplar, she was born in the Regent's Park area of Central London.^[4][1] Her mother was Belfast-born Irish actress Moyna Macgill (born Charlotte Lillian McIldowie), who regularly appeared on stage in the West End and who had also starred in several films.^[5] Her father was the wealthy English timber merchant and politician Edgar Lansbury, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and former mayor of the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar.^[6] Her paternal grandfather was the Labour Party leader and anti-war activist George Lansbury, a man she felt "awed" by, considering him "a giant in my youth".^[7] Angela had an older half sister, Isolde, who was the offspring of Moyna's previous marriage to Reginald Denham.^[8] In January 1930, when Angela was four, her mother gave birth to twin boys, Bruce and Edgar, leading the Lansburys to move from their Poplar flat to a house at 7 Weymouth Avenue, Mill Hill, North London; on weekends they would retreat to a farm in Berrick Salome, Oxfordshire.^[9]

When Lansbury was nine, her father died from stomach cancer; she retreated into playing characters as a coping mechanism.^[11] In 2014, Lansbury described this event as "the defining moment of my life. Nothing before or since has affected me so deeply."^[4] Facing financial difficulty, her mother became engaged to a Scottish colonel, Leckie Forbes, and moved into his house in Hampstead, with Angela receiving an education at South Hampstead High School from 1934 until 1939.^[12] She nevertheless considered herself largely self-educated, learning from books, theater and cinema.^[13] She became a self-professed "complete movie maniac", visiting the cinema regularly and imagining herself as certain characters.^[14] Keen on playing the piano, she briefly studied music at the Ritman School of Dancing, and then in 1940 began studying acting at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art in Kensington, West London, first appearing onstage as a lady-in-waiting in the school's production of Maxwell Anderson's Mary of Scotland.^[15]

That year, Angela's grandfather died, and with the onset of The Blitz, Macgill decided to take Angela, Bruce and Edgar to the United States; Isolde remained in Britain with her new husband, the actor Peter Ustinov. Macgill secured a job supervising sixty British children who were being evacuated to North America aboard the Duchess of Athol, arriving in Montreal, Canada, in mid-August.^[16] From there, she proceeded by train to New York City, where she was financially sponsored by the Wall Street businessman Charles T. Smith, moving in with his family at their home by Lake Mahopac.^[17] Angela gained a scholarship from the American Theatre Wing allowing her to study at the Feagin School of Drama and Radio, where she appeared in performances of William Congreve's The Way of the World and Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan. She graduated in March 1942, by which time the family had moved to a flat at 55 Morton Street, Greenwich Village.^[18]

Gaslight and The Picture of Dorian Gray: 1942–45

McGill secured work in a Canadian touring production of Tonight at 8:30, and was joined in Canada by Angela, who gained her first theatrical job as a nightclub act at the Samovar Club, Montreal. Having gained the job by claiming to be 19 when she was 16, her act consisted of her singing songs by Noël Coward, and earned her $60 a week.^[19] She returned to New York City in August 1942, but her mother had moved to Hollywood, Los Angeles, in order to resurrect her cinematic career; Lansbury and her brothers followed.^[20] Moving into a bungalow in Laurel Canyon, both Angela and her mother obtained Christmas jobs at the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles; Moyna was fired for incompetence, leaving the family to subsist on Angela's paycheck of $28 a week.^[21] Befriending a group of gay men, Angela became privy to the city's underground gay scene,^[22] and with her mother attended lectures by the spiritual guru Krishnamurti, at one of these meeting Aldous Huxley.^[22]

At a party hosted by her mother, Angela met John van Druten, who had recently co-authored a script for Gaslight (1944), a mystery-thriller based on Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play, Gas Light. Set in Victorian London, the film was being directed by George Cukor and starred Ingrid Bergman in the lead role of Paula Alquist, a woman being psychologically tormented by her husband. Druten suggested that Lansbury would be perfect for the role of Nancy Oliver, a conniving cockney maid; she was accepted for the part, although because she was 17, a social worker had to accompany her on the set. Obtaining an agent, Earl Kramer, she was signed to a seven-year contract with MGM, earning $500 a week and adopting "Angela Lansbury" as her stage name.^[23] Upon release, Gaslight received mixed critical reviews, although Lansbury's role was widely praised; the film earned six Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Supporting Actress for Lansbury.^[24]

Her next film appearance was as Edwina Brown, a minor character in National Velvet (1944); the film proved to be a major commercial hit, with Lansbury developing a lifelong friendship with co-star Elizabeth Taylor.^[25] Lansbury next starred in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), a cinematic adaptation of Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel of the same name, which was again set in Victorian London. Directed by Albert Lewin, Lansbury was cast as Sybil Vane, a working-class music hall singer who falls in love with the protagonist, Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield). Although the film was not a financial success, Lansbury's performance once more drew praise, earning her a Golden Globe Award, and she was again nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards, losing to Anne Revere, her co-star in National Velvet.^[26]

Later MGM films: 1945–51

On September 27, 1945, Lansbury married Richard Cromwell, an artist and decorator whose acting career had come to a standstill. Their marriage was troubled; Cromwell was gay, and had married Lansbury in the unsuccessful hope that it would turn him heterosexual. The marriage ended in less than a year when she filed for divorce on September 11, 1946, but they remained friends until his death.^[27] In December 1946, she was introduced to Peter Pullen Shaw at a party held by former co-star Hurd Hatfield in Ojai Valley. Shaw was an aspiring actor, also signed to MGM, and had recently left a relationship with Joan Crawford. He and Lansbury became a couple, living together before she proposed marriage.^[28] They were intent on getting married back in Britain, but the Church of England refused to marry two divorcees. Instead, they wed at St. Columba's Church, a place of worship under the jurisdiction of the Church of Scotland, in Knightsbridge, London in August 1949, followed by a honeymoon in France.^[29] Returning to the U.S., where they settled into Lansbury's home in Rustic Canyon, Malibu,^[30] in 1951 the couple each became naturalized U.S. citizens, albeit retained their British citizenship through a process of dual nationality.^[31]

Following on from the success of Gaslight and The Picture of Dorian Gray, MGM cast Lansbury in eleven further films until her contract with the company ended in 1952. Keeping her among their B-list stars, it used her less than their similar-aged actresses; biographers Edelman and Kupferberg believed that the majority of these films were "mediocre", doing little to further her career.^[32] This view was echoed by Cukor, who believed Lansbury had been "consistently miscast" by MGM.^[33] She was repeatedly made to portray older characters, typically villainesses, and as a result became increasingly dissatisfied with working for MGM, commenting that "I kept wanting to play the Jean Arthur roles, and Mr Mayer kept casting me as a series of venal bitches."^[34] The company themselves were suffering from the post-1948 slump in cinema sales, as a result slashing film budgets and cutting their number of staff as a result.^[34]

1946 saw Lansbury play her first American character as Em, a honky-tonk saloon singer in the Oscar-winning Wild West musical The Harvey Girls.^[35] She appeared in The Hoodlum Saint (1946), Till the Clouds Roll By (1947), If Winter Comes (1947) – a film which she particularly despised – Tenth Avenue Angel (1948), The Three Musketeers (1948), State of the Union (1948), often considered her strongest role of the period, and The Red Danube (1949). She was loaned by MGM first to United Artists for their film, The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947), and then to Paramount for Samson and Delilah (1949).^[36] She appeared as a maidservant in Kind Lady (1951), as a French adventuress in Mutiny (1952) and as a villainess in Remains to Be Seen (1953).^[37] Turning to radio, in 1948 Lansbury appeared in an audio adaptation of Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage for NBC University Theatre, and the following year she starred in their adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.^[38] Moving into television, she appeared in a 1950 episode of Robert Montgomery Presents adapted from A.J. Cronin's The Citadel.^[39]

Mid career

The Manchurian Candidate and minor roles: 1952–65

Unhappy with the roles she was being given by MGM, Lansbury instructed her manager, Harry Friedman of MCA Inc., to terminate her contract in 1952.^[40] She was pregnant with Shaw's child, and that year her son Anthony was born.^[41] Soon after the birth she joined the East Coast touring productions of two former-Broadway plays: Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's Remains to be Seen and Louis Verneuil's Affairs of State.^[42] Biographer Margaret Bonanno later stated that at this point, Lansbury's career had "hit an all-time low".^[43] In April 1953, her daughter Deirdre Angela Shaw was born.^[44] Shaw himself had a son by a previous marriage, David, and gaining legal custody of the boy in 1953 he brought him to California to live with the family; now with three children to care for, Lansbury moved to a larger house in San Vincente Boulevard in Santa Monica.^[45] However, Lansbury did not feel entirely comfortable in the Hollywood social scene, later asserting that as a result of her British roots, "in Hollywood, I always felt like a stranger in a strange land."^[46] In 1959 the family relocated to Malibu, settling into a house on the Pacific Coast Highway that had been designed by Aaron Green; there, she and Peter escaped the Hollywood scene, and were able to send their children to state school.^[47]

Returning to cinema as a freelance actress, Lansbury found herself typecast as an older, maternal figure, appearing in this capacity in most of the films in which she appeared during this period.^[48] As she later stated, "Hollywood made me old before my time", noting that in her twenties she was receiving fan mail from people who believed her to be in her forties.^[49] She obtained minor roles in such films as A Life at Stake (1954), A Lawless Street (1955), and The Purple Mask (1955), later describing the latter as "the worst movie I ever made."^[50] She played Princess Gwendolyn in the comedy film The Court Jester (1956), before taking on the role of a wife who kills her husband in Please Murder Me (1956). From there she appeared as Minnie Littlejohn in The Long Hot Summer (1958), and as Mabel Claremont in The Reluctant Debutante (1958), for which she filmed in Paris, France.^[51] Biographer Martin Gottfried has claimed that it was these latter two cinematic appearances which restored Lansbury's status as an "A-picture actress."^[52] Throughout this period, she continued making appearances on television, starring in episodes of Revlon Mirror Theatre, Ford Theatre, and The George Gobel Show, and became a regular on game show Pantomime Quiz.^[53]

In April 1957 she debuted on Broadway at the Henry Miller Theatre in Hotel Paradiso, a French burlesque set in Paris, directed by Peter Glenville. The play only ran for 15 weeks, although she earned good reviews for her role as "Marcel Cat;" she later stated had she not appeared in the play, her "whole career would have fizzled out."^[54] She followed this with an appearance in 1960s Broadway performance of A Taste of Honey at the Lyceum Theatre, directed by Tony Richardson and George Devine. Lansbury played Helen, the boorish, verbally abusive, otherwise absentee mother of Josephine (played by Joan Plowright, only four years Lansbury's junior), remarking that she gained "a great deal of satisfaction" from the role.^[55] During the show's run, Lansbury developed a friendship with her co-star Joan Plowright, as well as with Plowright's lover Laurence Olivier; it was from Lansbury's rented apartment on East 97th Street that Plowright and Olivier eloped to be married.^[56]

After a well-reviewed appearance in Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1959) – for which she had filmed in the Australian Outback – and a minor role in A Breath of Scandal (1960), she appeared in 1961's Blue Hawaii as the mother of a character played by Elvis Presley.^[57] Acknowledging that the film was of poor quality, she commented that she agreed to appear in it because "I was desperate".^[58] Her role as Mavis in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960) drew critical acclaim, as did her appearance in All Fall Down (1962) as a manipulative, destructive mother.^[59]

In 1962 she appeared in the Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate as Eleanor Iselin, cast for the role by John Frankenheimer. Although Lansbury played actor Laurence Harvey's mother in the film, she was in fact only three years older than him.[60] She had agreed to appear in the film after reading the original novel, describing it as "one of the most exciting political books I ever read".[61] Biographers Edelman and Kupferberg considered this role "her enduring cinematic triumph,"[62] while Gottfried stated that it was "the strongest, the most memorable, and the best picture she ever made... she gives her finest film performance in it."[63] Lansbury received her third Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination for the film, and was bothered by the fact that she lost.[64]

She followed this with a performance as Sybil Logan in In the Cool of the Day (1963) – a film she renounced as awful – before appearing as wealthy Isabel Boyd in The World of Henry Orient (1964) and the widow Phyllis in Dear Heart (1964).^[65] Her first appearance in a theatrical musical was the short-lived Anyone Can Whistle (1964), written by Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim. An experimental work, it opened at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway, but was critically panned and closed after nine performances. Lansbury had played the role of crooked mayoress Cora Hoover Hooper, but had personal differences with Laurents and was glad when the show closed.^[66] She appeared in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), a cinematic biopic of Jesus, but was cut almost entirely from the final edit. She followed this with an appearance as Mama Jean Bello in Harlow (1965), as Lady Blystone in The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965), and as Gloria in Mister Buddwing (1966).^[67] Despite her well-received performances in a number of films, "celluloid superstardom" evaded her, and she became increasingly dissatisfied with these minor roles, feeling that none allowed her to explore her potential as an actress.^[68]

Mame and theatrical stardom: 1966–69

In 1966, she took on the title role of Mame Dennis in the musical Mame, Jerry Herman's musical adaptation of the novel Auntie Mame. The director's first choice for the role had been Rosalind Russell, who had declined. Lansbury actively sought the role in the hope that it would mark a change in her career. When she was chosen for the role, it came as a surprise to theatre critics, who believed it would go to a better-known actress; Lansbury was forty years old, and this was her first major role.^[69] Mame Dennis was a glamorous character, with over twenty costume changes throughout the play, and Lansbury's role involved a number of songs and dance routines.^[70] First appearing in Philadelphia and then Boston, Mame opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in May 1966.^[71] Reviews of Lansbury's performance were outstandingly positive.^[72] In The New York Times Stanley Kauffmann wrote: "Miss Lansbury is a singing-dancing actress, not a singer or dancer who also acts... In this marathon role she has wit, poise, warmth and a very taking coolth."^[73] Mame gained Lansbury a cult following in the gay community, something that she later attributed to the fact that Mame Dennis was "every gay person's idea of glamour... Everything about Mame coincided with every young man's idea of beauty and glory and it was lovely."^[74]

Lansbury received her first Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical,^[75][76][77] commenting on her success by stating that "Everyone loves you, everyone loves the success, and enjoys it as much as you do. And it lasts as long as you are on that stage and as long as you keep coming out of that stage door."^[78] The stardom achieved through Mame allowed Lansbury to make further appearances on television, such as on Perry Como's Thanksgiving Special in November 1966, and an episode of CBS-TV show What's My Line? where she made a plea for the Muscular Dystrophy Association fund-raising drive.^[79] She was invited to star in a musical performance for the 1968 Academy Awards ceremony, and co-hosted that year's Tony Awards with former brother-in-law Peter Ustinov.^[80] That year, Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Club elected her "Woman of the Year".^[81] When the film of Mame was put into production, Lansbury hoped to be offered the part, but it instead went to Lucille Ball, an established box-office success; Lansbury considered it "one of my bitterest disappointments".^[82] Her personal life was further complicated when she learned that both of her children had become involved with the counterculture of the 1960s and had been using recreational drugs; as a result, Anthony had become addicted to cocaine and heroin.^[83]

Lansbury followed the success of Mame with a performance as Countess Aurelia, the 75-year-old Parisian eccentric in Dear World, a musical adaptation of Jean Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot. The show opened at Broadway's Mark Hellinger Theatre in February 1969, but Lansbury found it a "pretty depressing" experience. Reviews of her performance were positive, and she was awarded her second Tony Award on the basis of it. Reviews of the show more generally were critical, however, and it ended after 132 performances.^[84][85] She followed this with an appearance in the title role in the musical Prettybelle, based upon Jean Arnold's The Rape of Prettybelle. Set in the Deep South, it dealt with issues of racism, with Lansbury as a wealthy alcoholic who seeks sexual encounters with black men. A controversial topic, it opened in Boston but received poor reviews, being cancelled before it reached Broadway.^[84][86][87] In 1982, a recording of the show was released by Varèse Sarabande.^[88]

Ireland and Gypsy: 1970–78

She turned down several cinematic roles, declining the lead in The Killing of Sister George and the role of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.^[89] Instead, she accepted the role of the Countess von Ornstein, an aging German aristocrat who falls in love with a younger man, in Something for Everyone (1970), and in the same year also appeared as the middle-aged English witch Miss Price in the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks. The latter was her first lead in a screen musical, and led to her publicizing the film on television programs like The David Frost Show.^[90] 1970 was a traumatic year for the Lansbury family, as Peter underwent a hip replacement, and in September, their Malibu home was destroyed in a brush fire.^[91] They purchased a house in rural County Cork, Republic of Ireland, and took Anthony there to recover from his drug addiction after he quit using cocaine and heroin in 1971.^[92] He subsequently enrolled in the Webber-Douglas School, his mother's alma mater, and became a professional actor, before moving into television directing.^[93] Angela and her husband did not return to California, instead dividing their time between Cork and New York City, where they lived in an apartment opposite Lincoln Center.^[93]

In 1972, Lansbury returned to London's West End to perform in the Royal Shakespeare Company's theatrical production of Edward Albee's All Over at the Aldwych Theatre. She portrayed the mistress of a dying New England millionaire, and although the play's reviews were mixed, Lansbury's acting was widely praised.^[94] This was followed by a revival of Mame, which was then touring the United States,^[95] after which she returned to the West End to play the character of Rose in the musical Gypsy. She had initially turned down the role, not wishing to be in the shadow of Ethel Merman, who had portrayed the character in the original Broadway production, but eventually accepted it; when the show started in May 1973, she earned a standing ovation and rave reviews. Settling into a Belgravia flat, she was soon in demand among London society, having dinners held in her honour.^[96] Following the culmination of the London run, in 1974 Gypsy went on a tour of the U.S., and in Chicago Lansbury was awarded the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance. The show eventually reached Broadway, where it ran until January 1975; a critical success, it earned Lansbury her third Tony Award.^[97] After several months' break, Gypsy then toured throughout the country again in the summer of 1975.^[98]

Desiring to move from musicals, Lansbury decided that she wanted to appear in a production of one of William Shakespeare's plays. She obtained the role of Gertrude in the National Theatre Company's production of Hamlet, staged at the Old Vic theatre. Directed by Peter Hall, the production ran from December 1975 to May 1976, to mixed reviews; Lansbury later commented that she "hated" the role, believing it too restrained.^[99] Her mood was worsened by the November 1975 death of her mother Moyna in California; Angela had her body cremated and the ashes scattered near their Irish home.^[100] Her next theatrical appearance was in two one-act plays by Edward Albee, Counting the Ways and Listening, performed side by side at the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut. Reviews of the production were mixed, although Lansbury was again singled out for praise.^[101] This was followed by another revival tour of Gypsy.^[102] In April 1978, Lansbury then appeared in 24 performances of The King and I revival as Mrs Anna, replacing Constance Towers, who was on a short break; it was staged in Broadway's Uris Theatre.^[103] Her first cinematic role in 7 years was as novelist and murder victim Salome Otterbourne in Death on the Nile (1978), an adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel of the same name (1937). She starred alongside former brother-in-law Peter Ustinov and Bette Davis, who became a close friend. The role earned Lansbury the National Board of Review award for Best Supporting Actress of 1978.^[104]

Sweeney Todd and continued cinematic work: 1979–84

In March 1979, Lansbury first appeared as Nellie Lovett in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a Stephen Sondheim musical directed by Harold Prince. Opening at Broadway's Uris Theatre, she starred alongside Len Cariou as Sweeney Todd, the murderous barber in 19th century London. After being offered the role, she jumped on the opportunity due to the involvement of Sondheim in the project; she commented that she loved "the extraordinary wit and intelligence of his lyrics."^[105] She remained in the role for 14 months before being replaced by Dorothy Loudon; it received mixed critical reviews, although earned Lansbury her fourth Tony Award and After Dark magazine's Ruby Award for Broadway Performer of the Year.^[106] She returned to the role in October 1980 for a ten-month tour of six U.S. cities; the production was also filmed, and broadcast on the Entertainment Channel.^[107] In 1982, she took on the role of an upper middle-class housewife who champions workers' rights in A Little Family Business, a farce set in Baltimore. It debuted at Los Angeles' Ahmanson Theatre before heading on to Broadway's Martin Beck Theatre. It was critically panned and induced protests of racism from the Japanese-American community.^[108] That year, she was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame,^[109] and the following year appeared in a Mame revival at Broadway's Gershwin Theatre. Although Lansbury was praised, the show was a commercial flop, with Lansbury noting that "I realized that it's not a show of today. It's a period piece."^[110]

Lansbury worked prolifically in cinema, and 1979 also saw Lansbury appear as Miss Froy in The Lady Vanishes, a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's famous 1938 film.^[112] The following year she appeared in The Mirror Crack'd, another film based on an Agatha Christie novel, this time as Miss Marple, a sleuth in 1950s Kent. Lansbury hoped to get away from the depiction of the role made famous by Margaret Rutherford, instead returning to Christie's description of the character; in this she created a precursor to her later role of Jessica Fletcher. She was signed to appear in two sequels as Miss Marple, but these were never made.^[113] Lansbury's next film was the animated The Last Unicorn (1982), for which she provided the voice of the witch Mommy Fortuna.^[112] Returning to musicals, she starred as Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance (1983), a film based on Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera of the same name, and while filming it in London sang on a recording of The Beggar's Opera.^[114] This was followed by an appearance as the grandmother in Gothic fantasy film The Company of Wolves (1984).^[115] Lansbury had also begun work for television, appearing in a 1982 television film with Bette Davis titled Little Gloria... Happy at Last.^[116] She followed this with an appearance in CBS's The Gift of Love: A Christmas Story (1983), later describing it as "the most unsophisticated thing you can imagine."^[116] A BBC television film followed, A Talent for Murder (1984), in which she played a wheelchair-bound mystery writer; although describing it as "a rush job", she agreed to do it to work with co-star Laurence Olivier.^[117] Two further miniseries featuring Lansbury appeared in 1984: Lace and The First Olympics: Athens 1896.^[118]

Global fame

Murder, She Wrote: 1984–1996

In 1983, Lansbury was offered two main television roles, one in a sitcom and the other in a detective series; although her agents advocated the former, Lansbury instead went with the latter.^[119] The series, Murder, She Wrote, centred on the character of Jessica Fletcher, a retired school teacher from Cabot Cove, Maine, who becomes a successful detective novelist after her husband's death, also solving murders that she comes across in her travels; Lansbury described the character as "an American Miss Marple."^[119] The series had been created by Peter S. Fischer, Richard Levinson, and William Link, who had earlier had success with Columbo, and the role of Jessica Fletcher had been first offered to Jean Stapleton, who had declined it.^[120] The pilot episode, "The Murder of Sherlock Holmes", premiered on CBS on September 30, 1984, with the rest of the first season airing on Sundays from 8 to 9 pm. Although critical reviews were mixed, it proved highly popular, with the pilot having a Nielsen rating of 18.9, and the first season being top in its time slot.^[121] Designed as inoffensive family viewing, despite its topic the show eschewed depicting violence or gore, following the "whodunit" format rather than those of most contemporary U.S. crime shows; Lansbury herself commented that "best of all, there's no violence. I hate violence."^[122]

Lansbury was defensive over Jessica Fletcher, having an input on the costumes that she would wear and rejecting pressure from network executives to put her in a relationship, believing that she should remain a strong single female.^[123] When she believed that a scriptwriter had made Jessica do or say things that did not fit her personality, Lansbury ensured that the script was changed.^[123] She saw Jessica as a role model for older female viewers, praising her "enormous, universal appeal – that was an accomplishment I never expected in my entire life."^[124] Lansbury biographers Rob Edelman and Audrey E. Kupferberg described the series as "a television landmark" in the U.S. for having an older female character as the protagonist, thereby paving the way for later series like The Golden Girls.^[125] Lansbury herself noted that "I think it's the first time a show has really been aimed at the middle-aged audience",^[126] and although it was most popular among senior citizens, it gradually gained a younger audience; by 1991, a third of viewers were under fifty.^[127] It gained continually high ratings throughout most of its run, outdoing rivals in its time slot such as Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories on NBC.^[128] In February 1987, a spin-off was produced, The Law & Harry McGraw, although it was short-lived.^[129]

As the show went on, Lansbury assumed a larger role behind the scenes.^[131] In 1989, her own company, Corymore Productions, began co-producing the show with Universal.^[132] Nevertheless, she began to tire of the series, and in particular the long working hours, stating that the 1990–91 season would be the show's last.^[133] She changed her mind after being appointed executive producer for the 1992–93 season, something she felt "made it far more interesting to me."^[134] For the seventh season, the show's setting relocated to New York City, where Jessica had taken a job teaching criminology at Manhattan University; the move was an attempt to attract younger viewers.^[135] Having become a "Sunday-night institution" in the U.S., the show's ratings improved during the early 1990s, becoming a Top Five program.^[136] However, CBS executives, hoping to gain a larger audience, moved it to Thursdays at 8:00 pm, opposite NBC's new sitcom, Friends. Lansbury was reportedly angry at the move, believing it ignored the show's core audience.^[134] The series ended in 1996.^[137] Tom Shales wrote in The Washington Post, "The title of the show's last episode, "Death by Demographics," is in itself something of a protest. 'Murder, She Wrote' is partly a victim of commercial television's mad youth mania."^[138] At the time it tied the original Hawaii Five-O as the longest-running detective drama series in television history,^[136][139] and the role would prove to be the most successful and prominent of Lansbury's career.^[140] Both Five-O and Murder, She Wrote were on for 12 seasons (Five-O from 1968–1980, and Murder, She Wrote from 1984–1996). In 2003, the original Law & Order would surpass both as the longest running detective/cop/crime drama in TV history as it entered into its 13th season. It eventually tied Gunsmoke as the longest lasting drama series in TV history as both were on for 20 seasons (Gunsmoke from 1955–1975, and Law & Order from 1990–2010).

Throughout the run of Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury had continued making appearances in other television films, miniseries, and cinema.^[141] In 1986 she appeared as the protagonist's mother in Rage of Angels: The Story Continues,^[141] and in 1988 portrayed Nan Moore – the mother of a victim of the real-life Korean Air Lines Flight 007 plane crash – in Shootdown; being a mother herself, she had been "enormously touched by the incident".^[142] 1989 saw her featured in The Shell Seekers as an Englishwoman recuperating from a heart attack,^[143] and in 1990 she starred in The Love She Sought as an American school teacher who falls in love with a Catholic priest while visiting Ireland; Lansbury thought it "a marvelous woman's story."^[144] In Mrs 'Arris Goes to Paris, a film directed by her son and executive produced by her stepson, she portrayed a Cockney woman holidaying in 1950s Paris.^[145] Her highest profile cinematic role since The Manchurian Candidate was as the voice of the singing teapot Mrs. Potts in the 1991 Disney animation Beauty and the Beast, an appearance she considered a gift to her 3 grandchildren. Lansbury performed the title song to the film, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.^[146][147] Her Murder, She Wrote fame resulted in her being employed to appear in advertisements and infomercials for Bufferin, MasterCard, and the Beatrix Potter Company.^[148] In 1988, she released a video titled Angela Lansbury's Positive Moves: My Personal Plan for Fitness and Well-Being, in which she outlined her personal exercise routine, and in 1990 published a book with the same title co-written with Mimi Avins, which she dedicated to her mother.^[149][150]

On July 5, 1986, she co-hosted (with Kirk Douglas) the New York Philharmonic's tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, which was televised live on ABC Television.^[151]

Return to theatre: 1997–present

Following the end of Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury returned to the theatre. Although cast in the lead role in the 2001 Kander and Ebb musical The Visit, she withdrew from the show before it opened because of her husband's declining health.^[152] Lansbury returned to Broadway after a 23-year absence in Deuce, a play by Terrence McNally. The play opened at the Music Box Theatre in May 2007 in a limited run of eighteen weeks.^[153] Lansbury received a nomination for Best Leading Actress in a Play for her role.^[85] She followed this with a portrayal of the role of Madame Arcati in the 2009 Broadway revival of Blithe Spirit, at the Shubert Theatre in March 2009. The New York Times praised her performance,^[154] for which she won several awards, including the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play (her fifth Tony, tying her with Julie Harris, although all of Harris's wins were as Best Actress).^[155] Lansbury then starred as Madame Armfeldt in the first Broadway revival of A Little Night Music, which opened in December 2009 at the Walter Kerr Theatre.^[156] She left the show on June 20, 2010. For this role, she received a 2010 Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, but lost to Katie Finneran.^[85]

Lansbury starred in the Broadway revival of Gore Vidal's The Best Man, alongside James Earl Jones, John Larroquette, Candice Bergen and Eric McCormack. The show opened at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on April 1, 2012, with Lansbury leaving on July 22, 2012.^[157] The play had positive reviews, with critics such as The New York Times^[158] and Variety^[159] giving positive reviews for Lansbury's performance as Mrs. Sue-Ellen Gamadge, chair of the party's Women's Division. For her role in this production Lansbury was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play. Lansbury reprised her role as The Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia in the reading of a new musical based on the 1997 Fox Animation Studios feature film Anastasia during the week of July 23, 2012.^[160]

Lansbury reprised the role of Mrs Potts in Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas (1997) and in the video game Kingdom Hearts II (2006). Lansbury made her first theatrical film appearance since 1984 as Aunt Adelaide in Nanny McPhee in 2005. Lansbury co-starred in Mr. Popper's Penguins, opposite Jim Carrey, released in June 2011.^[161] In November 2012, she hosted the PBS Thanksgiving special Downton Abbey Revisited, a documentary retrospective of the Downton Abbey television series.^[162]

Lansbury and James Earl Jones starred in an Australian tour of Driving Miss Daisy, beginning at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane on February 5, 2013. The tour also visited Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, finishing in June 2013.^[163]

On November 16, 2013, she received an Academy Honorary Award for her lifetime achievement at the Governors Awards.^[164][165]

In 2014, she reprised her 2009 Tony-winning Broadway performance as Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit in London's West End, her first London stage appearance in nearly 40 years. Previews ran from March 1, 2014 with the formal opening night on March 18. The show played a limited 15-week engagement at the Gielgud Theatre until June 7, 2014.^[166][167] Discussing the character, she asserted: "I love her. She's completely off-the-wall but utterly secure in her own convictions."^[4] In April 2014, she made an appearance at The Angela Lansbury Film Festival in Poplar, a screening of some of her most popular films organised by Poplar Film.^[168]

Lansbury starred as Madame Arcati in a North American tour of Blithe Spirit from December 2014 to March 2015. The tour included Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto and Washington D.C.^[169] In April 2015, in her 90th year, she received an Olivier Award as Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Madame Arcati.^[170]

Personal life

Lansbury describes herself as "an amalgam of British, Irish and American" although throughout her life she has spoken with a British accent.^[4] Lansbury has been married twice; first to the actor Richard Cromwell, when she was 19 and Cromwell was 35. Cromwell and Lansbury eloped and were married in a small civil ceremony on September 27, 1945. The marriage ended in divorce in 1946 and they remained friends until his death in 1960.^[171] In 1949 she married actor Peter Shaw, and they remained together for 54 years until his death in 2003; she asserted that "We had the perfect relationship. Not many people can say that."^[172][173] They had two children, Anthony Peter Shaw (born January 7, 1952) and Deirdre Angela Shaw (born April 26, 1953). Lansbury repeatedly stated her desire to put her children before her career, but ended up leaving them in California when she was working in other parts of the country for long periods.^[174]

In the latter part of the 1960s, both Anthony and Deirdre became involved in the growing counterculture movement and started using recreational drugs. Deirdre developed an acquaintance with the Manson family, while Anthony became addicted to cocaine and heroin, giving it up in 1971.^[175] Anthony became a television director, and directed 68 episodes of Murder, She Wrote, also marrying and having three children.^[172] Deirdre married a chef and together opened a restaurant in West Los Angeles.^[176][172] Lansbury's cousins include the animator, writer and social activist Oliver Postgate,^[177] as well as the academic and novelist Coral Lansbury, whose son Malcolm Turnbull became a noted Australian politician.^[178]

As a young actress, Lansbury was a self-professed homebody,^[179] commenting that "I love the world of housekeeping."^[180] She preferred spending quiet evenings inside with friends to the Hollywood night life.^[181] Her hobbies at the time included reading, horse riding, playing tennis, cooking, and playing the piano, also having a keen interest in gardening.^[182] In 2014, it was reported that she continued to enjoy gardening, and also enjoyed doing crosswords.^[130] She has cited F. Scott Fitzgerald as her favorite author.^[183] In early life she had been a chain smoker.^[183] She disliked flattery,^[184] and had what biographer Martin Gottfried described as "a profound sense of privacy."^[185] She is a supporter of the United States Democratic Party and the United Kindom Labour Party.^[168]

In 1976 and 1987 she had cosmetic surgery on her neck to prevent it from broadening with age,^[186] although has stated that she has not had surgery to make her face look younger.^[130] During the 1990s, she began to suffer from arthritis,^[187] in May 1994 had hip replacement surgery,^[187] and in 2005 had knee replacement surgery.^[188] Throughout her career, Lansbury supported a variety of charities, particularly those such as Abused Wives in Crisis that combatted domestic abuse.^[189] In the 1980s, she also began to support a number of charities engaged in the fight against HIV/AIDS.^[190]

In September 1970, a fire destroyed her home in Malibu, California, prompting a move to a rural area of County Cork in Ireland.^[191] In 1991, she decided to return to County Cork, purchasing land near Ballycotton on which to build a farmhouse.^[192] In 2006 she purchased a condominium in New York City at a reported cost of $2 million.^[176] In 2014, she had houses in Ireland and Los Angeles, as well as an apartment in Manhattan.^[130] Lansbury's papers are housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.^[193]

Recognition and legacy

Lansbury's authorized biographer Martin Gottfried described her as "an American icon",^[185] with a "practically saintly" public image.^[194] She is a gay icon,^[195] and has asserted that she is "very proud of the fact", attributing her popularity among the LGB community to her performance in Mame.^[74] She has been described as one of Britain's most successful actresses.^[196] She has been recognised for her achievements in her native Britain on multiple occasions; in 2002, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) gave Lansbury a Lifetime Achievement Award.^[197] Lansbury was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1994,^[197] and promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to drama and to charitable work and philanthropy.^[198][199]

She has been nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, but has never won; nor did she win any of the 18 Emmy Awards for which she was nominated over a 33-year period. She holds the record for the most Primetime Emmy losses by a performer.^[200] Reflecting on this in 2007, she stated that she was at first "terribly disappointed, but subsequently very glad that [she] did not win", because she believes that she would have otherwise had a less successful career.^[201] However, she has received Golden Globe^[202] and People's Choice Awards for her television and film work.^[203]

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1944	Gaslight	Nancy Oliver	Nominated—Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
1944	National Velvet	Edwina Brown
1945	Picture of Dorian Gray, TheThe Picture of Dorian Gray	Sibyl Vane	Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture Nominated—Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
1946	Harvey Girls, TheThe Harvey Girls	Em
1946	Hoodlum Saint, TheThe Hoodlum Saint	Dusty Millard
1946	Till the Clouds Roll By	London Specialty
1947	Private Affairs of Bel Ami, TheThe Private Affairs of Bel Ami	Clotilde de Marelle
1947	If Winter Comes	Mabel Sabre
1948	State of the Union	Kay Thorndyke
1948	Three Musketeers, TheThe Three Musketeers	Queen Anne of Austria
1948	Tenth Avenue Angel	Susan Bratten
1949	Red Danube, TheThe Red Danube	Audrey Quail
1949	Samson and Delilah	Semadar
1951	Kind Lady	Mrs. Edwards
1952	Mutiny	Leslie
1953	Remains to Be Seen	Valeska Chauvel
1954	Life at Stake, AA Life at Stake	Doris Hillman
1955	Purple Mask, TheThe Purple Mask	Madame Valentine
1955	Lawless Street, AA Lawless Street	Tally Dickinsen
1956	Court Jester, TheThe Court Jester	Princess Gwendolyn
1956	Please Murder Me	Myra Leeds
1958	Long, Hot Summer, TheThe Long, Hot Summer	Minnie Littlejohn
1958	The Reluctant Debutante	Mabel Claremont
1959	Summer of the Seventeenth Doll	Pearl
1960	Dark at the Top of the Stairs, TheThe Dark at the Top of the Stairs	Mavis Pruitt
1960	Breath of Scandal, AA Breath of Scandal	Countess Lina
1961	Blue Hawaii	Sarah Lee Gates
1962	Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse	Marguerite Laurier	Voice (uncredited)
1962	All Fall Down	Annabell Willart	National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress (also for The Manchurian Candidate)
1962	Manchurian Candidate, TheThe Manchurian Candidate	Mrs. Iselin	Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress (also for All Fall Down) Nominated—Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated—Golden Laurel – Top Female Supporting Performance
1963	In the Cool of the Day	Sybil Logan
1964	World of Henry Orient, TheThe World of Henry Orient	Isabel Boyd
1964	Dear Heart	Phyllis
1965	Greatest Story Ever Told, TheThe Greatest Story Ever Told	Claudia Procula
1965	The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders	Lady Blystone
1965	Harlow	Mama Jean Bello
1966	Mister Buddwing	Gloria
1970	Something for Everyone	Countess Herthe von Ornstein	Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1971	Bedknobs and Broomsticks	Miss Eglantine Price	Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1975	The First Christmas	Narrator	Television movie
1978	Death on the Nile	Salome Otterbourne	National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated—BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
1979	Lady Vanishes, TheThe Lady Vanishes	Miss Froy
1980	Mirror Crack'd, TheThe Mirror Crack'd	Miss Jane Marple	Nominated—Saturn Award for Best Actress
1982	Last Unicorn, TheThe Last Unicorn	Mommy Fortuna	Voice
1982	Little Gloria... Happy at Last	Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney	Television movie Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie
1983	Pirates of Penzance, TheThe Pirates of Penzance	Ruth
1983	Gift of Love: A Christmas Story, TheThe Gift of Love: A Christmas Story	Amanda Fenwick	Television movie Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film
1984	Ingrid	Herself
1984	Talent for Murder, AA Talent for Murder	Ann Royce McClain	Television movie
1984	Lace	Aunt Hortense Boutin	Television movie
1984	Company of Wolves, TheThe Company of Wolves	Granny
1986	Rage of Angels: The Story Continues	Marchesa Allabrandi	Television movie
1988	Shootdown	Nan Moore	Television movie
1989	Shell Seekers, TheThe Shell Seekers	Penelope Keeling	Television movie
1990	Love She Sought, TheThe Love She Sought		Television movie
1990	A Green Journey	Agatha McGee
1991	Beauty and the Beast	Mrs. Potts	Voice
1992	Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris	Mrs. Ada Harris	Television movie
1996	Mrs. Santa Claus	Mrs. Santa Claus	Television movie
1997	Murder, She Wrote: South by Southwest	Jessica Fletcher	Television movie
1997	The Enchanted Christmas	Mrs. Potts	Voice
1997	Anastasia	Dowager Empress Marie	Voice Nominated—Annie Award for Outstanding Voice Acting by a Female in an Animated Film
1999	Fantasia 2000	Herself – Hostess
1999	Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, TheThe Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax	Mrs. Emily Pollifax	Television movie
2000	Murder, She Wrote: A Story to Die For	Jessica Fletcher	Television movie
2001	Murder, She Wrote: The Last Free Man	Jessica Fletcher	Television movie
2002	Beauty and the Beast	Mrs. Potts	Voice Nominated—Special Edition film
2003	Broadway: The Golden Age	Herself
2003	Murder, She Wrote: The Celtic Riddle	Jessica Fletcher	Television movie
2003	The Joy of Christmas	Narrator	Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert Special
2004	The Blackwater Lightship	Dora	Television movie Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie Nominated—Satellite Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film
2005	Nanny McPhee	Great Aunt Adelaide
2008	Heidi 4 Paws	Grandmamma	Voice
2011	Mr. Popper's Penguins	Mrs. Van Gundy

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1950	Robert Montgomery Presents	Christine Manson	Episode: "The Citadel"
1950	Lux Video Theatre	Leslie	Episode: "That Wonderful Night"
1952	Lux Video Theatre	Lucy Landor	Episode: "Operation Weekend"
1952	Lux Video Theatre	Tina Rafferty	Episode: "Stone's Throw"
1953	Robert Montgomery Presents	Rosie	Episode: "Cakes and Ale"
1953	The Revlon Mirror Theater	Joan Dexter	Episode: "Dreams Never Lie"
1953	Ford Television Theatre	Lola Walker	Episode: "The Ming Lama"
1953	Schlitz Playhouse of Stars	Florie	Episode: "Storm Swept"
1954	Your Show of Shows	Unknown	Episode: "5.15"
1954	Lux Video Theatre	Elsa	Episode: "A Chair for a Lady"
1954	General Electric True Theater	Daphne Rutledge	Episode: "The Crime of Daphne Rutledge"
1954	Four Star Playhouse	Joan Robinson	Episode: "A String of Beads"
1955	Fireside Theater	Brenda Jarvis	Episode: "The Indiscreet Mrs. Jarvis"
1955	Four Star Playhouse	Mrs. Hallerton	Episode: "Madeira! Madeira!"
1955	Stage 7	Vanessa Peters	Episode: "Billy and the Bride"
1955	The Star and the Story	Mrs. Jane Pritchard	Episode: "The Treasure"
1955–1956	Celebrity Playhouse	Unknown	2 episodes
1956	Chevron Hall of Stars	Unknown	Episode: "Crisis in Kansas"
1956	The Star and the Story	Unknown	Episode: "The Force of Circumstance"
1956	Front Row Center	Joyce	Episode: "Instant of Truth"
1956	Screen Directors Playhouse	Vera Wayne	Episode: "Claire"
1956	Studio 57	Katy	Episode: "The Rarest Stamp"
1956	Studio 57	Flossie Norris	Episode: "The Brown Leather Case"
1956	Climax!	Justina	Episode: "Bury Me Later"
1957	Undercurrent	Deborah	Episode: "Deborah"
1957	Climax!	Judith Beresford	Episode: "The Devil's Brood"
1958	Playhouse 90	Victoria Atkins	Episode: "Verdict of Three"
1959	Playhouse 90	Hazel Wills	Episode: "The Grey Nurse Said Nothing"
1963	Eleventh Hour, TheThe Eleventh Hour	Alvera Dunlear	Episode: "Something Crazy's Going on in the Back Room"
1965	The Man from U.N.C.L.E.	Elfie von Donck	Episode: "The Deadly Toys Affair"
1965	The Trials of O'Brien	Celeste Thurlow	Episode: "Leave It to Me"
1984	The First Olympics: Athens 1896	Alice Garrett	Episode: "Part 1"
1984–96	Murder, She Wrote	Jessica Fletcher	264 episodes Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama (1985, 1987, 1990, 1992) People's Choice Award for Favorite Female Performer in a New Television Series (shared with Phylicia Rashad) Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama (1986, 1988–89, 1991, 1993, 1995) Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (1985–96) Nominated—People's Choice Award for Favorite Female Television Performer (1986–94) Nominated—Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series
1986	Magnum, P.I.	Jessica Fletcher	Episode: "Novel Connection"
2002	Touched by an Angel	Lady Berrington	Episode: "For All the Tea in China"
2005	Law & Order: Special Victims Unit	Eleanor Duvall	Episode: "Night" Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series
2005	Law & Order: Trial by Jury	Eleanor Duvall	Episode: "Day" Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series

Stage

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1957	Hotel Paradiso	Marcelle (Madame Cot)
1960–1961	Taste of Honey, AA Taste of Honey	Helen
1964	Anyone Can Whistle	Cora Hoover Hooper
1966–1968	Mame	Mame Dennis[204]	Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical
1969	Dear World	Countess Aurelia	Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical
1971	Prettybelle	Prettybelle Sweet
1972	All Over	The Mistress
1973–1975	Gypsy	Rose	Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical
1975–1976	Hamlet	Gertrude[205][206]
1978	King and I, TheThe King and I	Anna Leonowens	Nominated—Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical
1979–1980	Sweeney Todd	Mrs. Nellie Lovett[207]	Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical
1982	Little Family Business, AA Little Family Business	Lillian[208]
1983	Mame	Mame Dennis
2007	Deuce	Leona Mullen	Nominated—Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play
2009	Blithe Spirit	Madame Arcati	Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play
2009–2010	Little Night Music, AA Little Night Music	Madame Armfeldt	Nominated—Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical Nominated—Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical
2012	The Best Man	Mrs. Sue-Ellen Gamadge	Nominated—Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play
2013	Driving Miss Daisy	Daisy Werthan
2014–2015	Blithe Spirit	Madame Arcati	Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Video games

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2005	Kingdom Hearts II	Mrs. Potts	Voice-over

Bibliography

Lansbury, Angela; Avins, Mimi (1990). Angela Lansbury's Positive Moves – My Personal Plan for Fitness and Well-Being. New York City: Delacorte Press. ISBN 978-0-385-30223-4.

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Nominated work	Result
1944	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress	Gaslight	Nominated
1945	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress	The Picture of Dorian Gray	Nominated
1945	Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture	The Picture of Dorian Gray	Won
1962	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress	The Manchurian Candidate	Nominated
1962	Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture	The Manchurian Candidate	Won
1962	Golden Laurel Award for Top Supporting Actress	The Manchurian Candidate	Nominated
1962	National Board of Review for Best Supporting Actress	The Manchurian Candidate	Won
1966	Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical	Mame	Won
1969	Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical	Dear World	Won
1970	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy	Something for Everyone	Nominated
1971	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy	Bedknobs and Broomsticks	Nominated
1975	Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical	Gypsy: A Musical Fable	Won
1978	BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role	Death on the Nile	Nominated
1978	National Board of Review for Best Supporting Actress	Death on the Nile	Won
1979	Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical	Sweeney Todd	Won
1981	Saturn Award for Best Actress	The Mirror Crack'd	Nominated
1983	Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie	Little Gloria... Happy at Last	Nominated
1985	Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Music Program	Sweeney Todd	Nominated
1983	CableACE Award for Actress in a Theatrical or Musical Production	Sweeney Todd	Won
1983	Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film	The Gift of Love: A Christmas Story	Nominated
1984	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy	Murder, She Wrote	Won
1985	Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1985	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1986	Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1986	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy	Murder, She Wrote	Won
1987	Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1987	Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Music Program	The 41st Annual Tony Awards	Nominated
1987	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1988	Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1988	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1989	Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1989	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy	Murder, She Wrote	Won
1990	Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1990	Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Music Program	The 43rd Tony Awards	Nominated
1990	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1991	Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1991	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy	Murder, She Wrote	Won
1992	Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1992	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1992	American Television Award for Best Actress in a Dramatic Series	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1993	Grammy Award for Best Recording for Children	Beauty and the Beast	Won
1993	Grammy Award for Album of the Year	Beauty and the Beast	Nominated
1993	Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1994	Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1994	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1994	Screen Actor's Guild Award for Outstanding Female Actor in a Drama Series	Murder, She Wrote	Nominated
1996	Online Television Award for Best Actress in a Mini-Series or Movie	Mrs. Santa Claus	Nominated
1997	Annie Award Nominee for Outstanding Female Voice-Over Performance	Anastasia	Nominated
1997	Online Film Award for Best Voice-Over Performance	Anastasia	Nominated
1997	Online Television Award for Best Actress in a Mini-Series or Movie	Murder, She Wrote: South by Southwest	Nominated
2001	Online Television Award for Best Guest Actress in a Drama Series	Law & Order: Special Victims Unit	Nominated
2001	Online Television Award for Best Guest Actress in a Drama Series	Touched by an Angel	Nominated
2003	Online Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Mini-Series or Movie	The Blackwater Lightship	Nominated
2004	Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie	The Blackwater Lightship	Nominated
2004	Golden Satellite Award for Best Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie	The Blackwater Lightship	Nominated
2004	TV Land Award for Favorite Private Eye	Murder, She Wrote	Won
2005	Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series	Law & Order: Trial by Jury	Nominated
2006	TV Land Award for Favorite Lady Gumshoe	Murder, She Wrote	Won
2007	Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play	Deuce	Nominated
2009	Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play	Blithe Spirit	Won
2010	Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical	A Little Night Music	Nominated
2013	Honorary Academy Award	N/A	Won
2015	Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role	Blithe Spirit	Won

Tony Awards

Lansbury has won five Tony Awards, tying Julie Harris and surpassed only by Audra McDonald with six wins for the most any performer has received (although Harris won six Tony Awards, one was a Special Tony Award):^[209]

In addition, she was nominated in 2007 for her leading role in the play Deuce for the Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play^[210] and in 2010 for her featured role in the revival of the musical A Little Night Music for the Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical.^[211][212]

Emmy Awards

Lansbury has been nominated for eighteen Emmy awards without a win, including twelve consecutive nominations for every season of Murder, She Wrote.

• 1983 – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Special for Little Gloria... Happy at Last
• 1985 – Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety Or Music Program for Sweeney Todd
• 1985 – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Murder, She Wrote
• 1986 – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Murder, She Wrote
• 1987 – Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety Or Music Program for 1987 Tony Awards
• 1987 – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Murder, She Wrote
• 1988 – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Murder, She Wrote
• 1989 – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Murder, She Wrote
• 1990 – Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety Or Music Program for the 43rd Annual Tony Awards
• 1990 – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Murder, She Wrote
• 1991 – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Murder, She Wrote
• 1992 – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Murder, She Wrote
• 1993 – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Murder, She Wrote
• 1994 – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Murder, She Wrote
• 1995 – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Murder, She Wrote
• 1996 – Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Murder, She Wrote
• 2004 – Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for The Blackwater Lightship
• 2005 – Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for Law & Order SVU: Trial By Jury^[213]

Academy Awards

Lansbury has been nominated for three Academy Awards.

• 1944 – Best Supporting Actress as "Nancy Oliver" in Gaslight
• 1945 – Best Supporting Actress as "Sibyl Vane" in The Picture of Dorian Gray
• 1962 – Best Supporting Actress as "Eleanor Iselin" in The Manchurian Candidate
• 2013 – Academy Honorary Award^[214]

Golden Globe Awards

Lansbury has been nominated for fifteen Golden Globes, winning six times.

• 1945 – Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture for The Picture of Dorian Gray –Won
• 1962 – Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture for The Manchurian Candidate –Won
• 1970 – Best Actress in a Leading Role – Musical Or Comedy for Something for Everyone
• 1971 – Best Actress in a Leading Role – Musical Or Comedy for Bedknobs and Broomsticks
• 1984 – Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television for The Gift of Love: A Christmas Story
• 1985 – Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama for Murder, She Wrote –Won
• 1986 – Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama for Murder, She Wrote
• 1987 – Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama for Murder, She Wrote –Won
• 1988 – Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama for Murder, She Wrote
• 1989 – Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama for Murder, She Wrote
• 1990 – Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama for Murder, She Wrote –Won
• 1991 – Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama for Murder, She Wrote
• 1992 – Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama for Murder, She Wrote –Won
• 1993 – Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama for Murder, She Wrote
• 1995 – Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama for Murder, She Wrote^[215]

Awards and recognition

Lansbury has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame – one for film (north side of the 6600 block of Hollywood Boulevard) and one for television (west side of the 1500 block of Vine Street)^[235]

In 1982, Lansbury was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.^[236] She has also been inducted into the Television Hall of Fame of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, an honor she earned in 1996.^[237]

See also

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Angela Lansbury.

• Angela Lansbury at the Internet Broadway Database
• Angela Lansbury at the Internet Movie Database
• Angela Lansbury at the TCM Movie Database
• Angela Lansbury Archive of American Television Interview recorded 15 September 1998
• Angela Lansbury on American Theatre Wing's Downstage Center
• Angela Lansbury Collection at Boston University
• 2009 Michael Portantiere interview with Angela Lansbury by The Sondheim Review
• Literature on Angela Lansbury
• Angela Lansbury on TCM's Private Screenings with Robert Osborne
• Interview with Christine Amanpour "40 years later, Angela Lansbury returns to the London stage – at 88"

Awards for Angela Lansbury BAFTA Los Angeles Britannia Awards Excellence in Film Albert R. Broccoli (1989) Michael Caine (1990) Peter Ustinov (1992) Martin Scorsese (1993) Anthony Hopkins (1995) Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein (1996) Dustin Hoffman (1997) John Travolta (1998) Stanley Kubrick (1999) Steven Spielberg (2000) George Lucas (2002) Hugh Grant (2003) Tom Hanks (2004) Tom Cruise (2005) Clint Eastwood (2006) Denzel Washington (2007) Sean Penn (2008) Robert De Niro (2009) Jeff Bridges (2010) Warren Beatty (2011) Daniel Day-Lewis (2012) George Clooney (2013) Robert Downey, Jr. (2014) Excellence in Directing Peter Weir (2003) Jim Sheridan (2004) Mike Newell (2005) Anthony Minghella (2006) Martin Campbell (2007) Stephen Frears (2008) Danny Boyle (2009) Christopher Nolan (2010) David Yates (2011) Quentin Tarantino (2012) Kathryn Bigelow (2013) Mike Leigh (2014) Worldwide Contribution to Entertainment Howard Stringer (2003) Kirk Douglas (2009) Ridley Scott & Tony Scott (2010) John Lasseter (2011) Will Wright (2012) Sir Ben Kingsley (2013) Judi Dench (2014) British Artist of the Year Rachel Weisz (2006) Kate Winslet (2007) Tilda Swinton (2008) Emily Blunt (2009) Michael Sheen (2010) Helena Bonham Carter (2011) Daniel Craig (2012) Benedict Cumberbatch (2013) Emma Watson (2014) Excellence in Comedy Betty White (2010) Ben Stiller (2011) Trey Parker and Matt Stone (2012) Sacha Baron Cohen (2013) Julia Louis-Dreyfus (2014) Humanitarian Award Richard Curtis (2007) Don Cheadle (2008) Colin Firth (2009) Idris Elba (2013) Mark Ruffalo (2014) Retired Awards BBC (1999) Aaron Spelling (1999) Tarsem Singh (1999) HBO Original Programming (2002) Angela Lansbury (2003) Helen Mirren (2004) Elizabeth Taylor (2005) Ronald Neame (2005) Sidney Poitier (2006) Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne (2007) Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical Imelda de Martin (1964) no award (1965-1968) Dorothy Loudon / Bernadette Peters (1969) Lauren Bacall / Sandy Duncan / Ethel Merman (1970) Helen Gallagher / Alexis Smith (1971) Jonelle Allen (1972) Glynis Johns / Michele Lee (1973) Ruby Lynn Reyner (1974) Angela Lansbury (1975) Donna McKechnie (1976) Clamma Dale (1977) Nell Carter (1978) Angela Lansbury (1979) Patti LuPone (1980) Lena Horne (1981) Jennifer Holliday (1982) Natalia Makarova (1983) Chita Rivera (1984) No award (1985) Bernadette Peters (1986) Teresa Stratas (1987) Patti LuPone (1988) Toni DiBuono (1989) Tyne Daly (1990) Lea Salonga (1991) Faith Prince (1992) Chita Rivera (1993) Donna Murphy (1994) Glenn Close (1995) Julie Andrews (1996) Bebe Neuwirth (1997) Natasha Richardson (1998) Carolee Carmello / Bernadette Peters (1999) Heather Headley (2000) Marla Schaffel (2001) Sutton Foster (2002) Marissa Jaret Winokur (2003) Donna Murphy (2004) Victoria Clark (2005) Christine Ebersole (2006) Audra McDonald / Donna Murphy (2007) Patti LuPone (2008) Allison Janney (2009) Catherine Zeta-Jones / Montego Glover (2010) Sutton Foster (2011) Audra McDonald (2012) Laura Osnes (2013) Jessie Mueller (2014) Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play Frances Sternhagen (1975) Rachel Roberts (1976) Rosemary De Angelis (1977) Eileen Atkins (1978) Pamela Reed (1979) Lois de Banzie (1980) Swoosie Kurtz (1981) Amanda Plummer (1982) Judith Ivey (1983) Christine Baranski (1984) Judith Ivey (1985) Joanna Gleason (1986) Mary Alice (1987) Christine Estabrook (1988) Tovah Feldshuh (1989) Frances Conroy (1990) Irene Worth (1991) Christine Baranski (1992) Madeline Kahn (1993) Jane Adams (1994) Tara Fitzgerald (1995) Elaine Stritch (1996) Dana Ivey (1997) Allison Janney (1998) Anna Friel (1999) Marylouise Burke (2000) Viola Davis (2001) Katie Finneran (2002) Lynn Redgrave (2003) Audra McDonald (2004) Adriane Lenox (2005) Frances de la Tour (2006) Martha Plimpton (2007) Linda Lavin (2008) Angela Lansbury (2009) Viola Davis (2010) Edie Falco (2011) Judith Light (2012) Judith Light (2013) Celia Keenan-Bolger (2014) Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture (1943–1960) Katina Paxinou (1943) Agnes Moorehead (1944) Angela Lansbury (1945) Anne Baxter (1946) Celeste Holm (1947) Ellen Corby (1948) Mercedes McCambridge (1949) Josephine Hull (1950) Kim Hunter (1951) Katy Jurado (1952) Grace Kelly (1953) Jan Sterling (1954) Marisa Pavan (1955) Eileen Heckart (1956) Elsa Lanchester (1957) Hermione Gingold (1958) Susan Kohner (1959) Janet Leigh (1960) Complete list (1943–1960) (1961–1980) (1981–2000) (2001–present) Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture (1961–1980) Rita Moreno (1961) Angela Lansbury (1962) Margaret Rutherford (1963) Agnes Moorehead (1964) Ruth Gordon (1965) Jocelyne LaGarde (1966) Carol Channing (1967) Ruth Gordon (1968) Goldie Hawn (1969) Karen Black/Maureen Stapleton (1970) Ann-Margret (1971) Shelley Winters (1972) Linda Blair (1973) Karen Black (1974) Brenda Vaccaro (1975) Katharine Ross (1976) Vanessa Redgrave (1977) Dyan Cannon (1978) Meryl Streep (1979) Mary Steenburgen (1980) Complete list (1943–1960) (1961–1980) (1981–2000) (2001–present) Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama Linda Cristal (1969) Peggy Lipton (1970) Patricia Neal (1971) Gail Fisher (1972) Lee Remick (1973) Angie Dickinson (1974) Lee Remick (1975) Susan Blakely (1976) Lesley Ann Warren (1977) Rosemary Harris (1978) Natalie Wood (1979) Yoko Shimada (1980) Linda Evans/Barbara Bel Geddes (1981) Joan Collins (1982) Jane Wyman (1983) Angela Lansbury (1984) Sharon Gless (1985) Angela Lansbury (1986) Susan Dey (1987) Jill Eikenberry (1988) Angela Lansbury (1989) Sharon Gless/Patricia Wettig (1990) Angela Lansbury (1991) Regina Taylor (1992) Kathy Baker (1993) Claire Danes (1994) Jane Seymour (1995) Gillian Anderson (1996) Christine Lahti (1997) Keri Russell (1998) Edie Falco (1999) Sela Ward (2000) Jennifer Garner (2001) Edie Falco (2002) Frances Conroy (2003) Mariska Hargitay (2004) Geena Davis (2005) Kyra Sedgwick (2006) Glenn Close (2007) Anna Paquin (2008) Julianna Margulies (2009) Katey Sagal (2010) Claire Danes (2011) Claire Danes (2012) Robin Wright (2013) Ruth Wilson (2014) Kennedy Center Honorees (2000s) 2000 Mikhail Baryshnikov Chuck Berry Plácido Domingo Clint Eastwood Angela Lansbury 2001 Julie Andrews Van Cliburn Quincy Jones Jack Nicholson Luciano Pavarotti 2002 James Earl Jones James Levine Chita Rivera Paul Simon Elizabeth Taylor 2003 James Brown Carol Burnett Loretta Lynn Mike Nichols Itzhak Perlman 2004 Warren Beatty Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee Elton John Joan Sutherland John Williams 2005 Tony Bennett Suzanne Farrell Julie Harris Robert Redford Tina Turner 2006 Zubin Mehta Dolly Parton Smokey Robinson Steven Spielberg Andrew Lloyd Webber 2007 Leon Fleisher Steve Martin Diana Ross Martin Scorsese Brian Wilson 2008 Morgan Freeman George Jones Barbra Streisand Twyla Tharp Pete Townshend & Roger Daltrey 2009 Mel Brooks Dave Brubeck Grace Bumbry Robert De Niro Bruce Springsteen Complete list 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress Nina Foch (1954) Marjorie Rambeau (1955) Debbie Reynolds (1956) Sybil Thorndike (1957) Kay Walsh (1958) Edith Evans (1959) Shirley Jones (1960) Ruby Dee (1961) Angela Lansbury (1962) Margaret Rutherford (1963) Edith Evans (1964) Joan Blondell (1965) Vivien Merchant (1966) Marjorie Rhodes (1967) Virginia Maskell (1968) Pamela Franklin (1969) Karen Black (1970) Cloris Leachman (1971) Marisa Berenson (1972) Sylvia Sidney (1973) Valerie Perrine (1974) Ronee Blakley (1975) Talia Shire (1976) Diane Keaton (1977) Angela Lansbury (1978) Meryl Streep (1979) Eva Le Gallienne (1980) Mona Washbourne (1981) Glenn Close (1982) Linda Hunt (1983) Sabine Azéma (1984) Anjelica Huston (1985) Dianne Wiest (1986) Olympia Dukakis (1987) Frances McDormand (1988) Mary Stuart Masterson (1989) Winona Ryder (1990) Kate Nelligan (1991) Judy Davis (1992) Winona Ryder (1993) Rosemary Harris (1994) Mira Sorvino (1995) Juliette Binoche / Kristin Scott Thomas (1996) Anne Heche (1997) Christina Ricci (1998) Julianne Moore (1999) Lupe Ontiveros (2000) Cate Blanchett (2001) Kathy Bates (2002) Patricia Clarkson (2003) Laura Linney (2004) Gong Li (2005) Catherine O'Hara (2006) Amy Ryan (2007) Penélope Cruz (2008) Anna Kendrick (2009) Jacki Weaver (2010) Shailene Woodley (2011) Ann Dowd (2012) Octavia Spencer (2013) Jessica Chastain (2014) Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award 1962: Eddie Cantor 1963: Stan Laurel 1965: Bob Hope 1966: Barbara Stanwyck 1967: William Gargan 1968: James Stewart 1969: Edward G. Robinson 1970: Gregory Peck 1971: Charlton Heston 1972: Frank Sinatra 1973: Martha Raye 1974: Walter Pidgeon 1975: Rosalind Russell 1976: Pearl Bailey 1977: James Cagney 1978: Edgar Bergen 1979: Katharine Hepburn 1980: Leon Ames 1982: Danny Kaye 1983: Ralph Bellamy 1984: Iggie Wolfington 1985: Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward 1986: Nanette Fabray 1987: Red Skelton 1988: Gene Kelly 1989: Jack Lemmon 1990: Brock Peters 1991: Burt Lancaster 1992: Audrey Hepburn 1993: Ricardo Montalbán 1994: George Burns 1995: Robert Redford 1996: Angela Lansbury 1997: Elizabeth Taylor 1998: Kirk Douglas 1999: Sidney Poitier 2000: Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee 2001: Ed Asner 2002: Clint Eastwood 2003: Karl Malden 2004: James Garner 2005: Shirley Temple 2006: Julie Andrews 2007: Charles Durning 2008: James Earl Jones 2009: Betty White 2010: Ernest Borgnine 2011: Mary Tyler Moore 2012: Dick Van Dyke 2013: Rita Moreno 2014: Debbie Reynolds TCA Career Achievement Award Grant Tinker (1985) Walter Cronkite (1986) Hill Street Blues (1987) David Brinkley (1988) Lucille Ball (1989) Jim Henson (1990) Brandon Tartikoff (1991) Johnny Carson (1992) Bob Hope (1993) Charles Kuralt (1994) Ted Turner (1995) Angela Lansbury (1996) Fred Rogers (1997) Roone Arledge (1998) Norman Lear (1999) Dick Van Dyke (2000) Sid Caesar (2001) Bill Cosby (2002) Carl Reiner (2003) Don Hewitt (2004) Bob Newhart (2005) Carol Burnett (2006) Mary Tyler Moore (2007) Lorne Michaels (2008) Betty White (2009) James Garner (2010) Oprah Winfrey (2011) David Letterman (2012) Barbara Walters (2013) James Burrows (2014) Television Hall of Fame Class of 1996 Edward Asner Steven Bochco Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner Charles Kuralt Angela Lansbury Aaron Spelling Lew Wasserman Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical Grace Hartman (1948) Nanette Fabray (1949) Mary Martin (1950) Ethel Merman (1951) Gertrude Lawrence (1952) Rosalind Russell (1953) Dolores Gray (1954) Mary Martin (1955) Gwen Verdon (1956) Judy Holliday (1957) Thelma Ritter / Gwen Verdon (1958) Gwen Verdon (1959) Mary Martin (1960) Elizabeth Seal (1961) Anna Maria Alberghetti / Diahann Carroll (1962) Vivien Leigh (1963) Carol Channing (1964) Liza Minnelli (1965) Angela Lansbury (1966) Barbara Harris (1967) Patricia Routledge / Leslie Uggams (1968) Angela Lansbury (1969) Lauren Bacall (1970) Helen Gallagher (1971) Alexis Smith (1972) Glynis Johns (1973) Virginia Capers (1974) Angela Lansbury (1975) Donna McKechnie (1976) Dorothy Loudon (1977) Liza Minnelli (1978) Angela Lansbury (1979) Patti LuPone (1980) Lauren Bacall (1981) Jennifer Holliday (1982) Natalia Makarova (1983) Chita Rivera (1984) No award (1985) Bernadette Peters (1986) Maryann Plunkett (1987) Joanna Gleason (1988) Ruth Brown (1989) Tyne Daly (1990) Lea Salonga (1991) Faith Prince (1992) Chita Rivera (1993) Donna Murphy (1994) Glenn Close (1995) Donna Murphy (1996) Bebe Neuwirth (1997) Natasha Richardson (1998) Bernadette Peters (1999) Heather Headley (2000) Christine Ebersole (2001) Sutton Foster (2002) Marissa Jaret Winokur (2003) Idina Menzel (2004) Victoria Clark (2005) LaChanze (2006) Christine Ebersole (2007) Patti LuPone (2008) Alice Ripley (2009) Catherine Zeta-Jones (2010) Sutton Foster (2011) Audra McDonald (2012) Patina Miller (2013) Jessie Mueller (2014) Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play (2001–2025) Viola Davis (2001) Katie Finneran (2002) Michele Pawk (2003) Audra McDonald (2004) Adriane Lenox (2005) Frances de la Tour (2006) Jennifer Ehle (2007) Rondi Reed (2008) Angela Lansbury (2009) Scarlett Johansson (2010) Ellen Barkin (2011) Judith Light (2012) Judith Light (2013) Sophie Okonedo (2014) Complete list (1947–1975) (1976–2000) (2001–2025) Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (2001–2025) Essie Davis (2001) Marcia Warren (2002) Ruth Wilson (2010) Michelle Terry (2011) Nicola Walker (2013) Sharon D. Clarke (2014) Angela Lansbury (2015) Complete list (1976–2000, Actress) (2001–2025, Actress) (1976–2000, merged) (2001–2025, merged) In various years the actor and actress category have been merged.

Agatha Christie's Miss Marple Creator Agatha Christie Characters and places Miss Marple Raymond West Sir Henry Clithering St. Mary Mead Books Novels The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) The Body in the Library (1942) The Moving Finger (1942) A Murder Is Announced (1950) They Do It with Mirrors (1952) A Pocket Full of Rye (1953) 4.50 from Paddington (1957) The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (1962) A Caribbean Mystery (1964) At Bertram's Hotel (1965) Nemesis (1971) Sleeping Murder (1976) Short story collections The Thirteen Problems (1932) The Regatta Mystery (1939) Three Blind Mice and Other Stories (1950) The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960) Double Sin and Other Stories (1961) Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories (1979) Film adaptations Margaret Rutherford Murder, She Said (1961) Murder at the Gallop (1963) Murder Most Foul (1964) Murder Ahoy! (1964) The Alphabet Murders (1965) (cameo) Angela Lansbury The Mirror Crack'd (1980) Other Shubho Mahurat (2003) Television adaptations Gracie Fields A Murder Is Announced (1956) Helen Hayes A Caribbean Mystery (1983) Murder with Mirrors (1985) Joan Hickson Miss Marple (1984–92) (12 TV films) The Body in the Library Geraldine McEwan Agatha Christie's Marple (2004–09) Julia McKenzie Agatha Christie's Marple (2009–present) Other Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple (2004–05) Agathe kann’s nicht lassen (2005–07) See also Radio adaptations Stage adaptations Tropes in Agatha Christie's novels Hercule Poirot Agatha Christie's fictional universe Murder at the Vicarage Category

Hosts of the Primetime Emmy Awards ceremonies 1949–1975 Walter O'Keefe (1949) Bill Welsh (1950) Earl Warren (1951) Lucille Ball / Desi Arnaz (1952) Art Linkletter (1953) Ed Sullivan (1954) Steve Allen / Dave Garroway (1955) Art Linkletter / Danny Thomas (1956) Desi Arnaz (1957) Phil Silvers / Danny Thomas (1958) Raymond Burr (1959) Joey Bishop / Arthur Godfrey / Chet Huntley (1960) Joey Bishop / Dick Powell (1961) David Brinkley / Johnny Carson / Bob Newhart (1962) Joey Bishop / Arthur Godfrey / Chet Huntley (1963) Joey Bishop / E. G. Marshall (1964) Sammy Davis Jr. / Danny Thomas (1965) Bill Cosby / Danny Kaye (1966) Joey Bishop / Hugh Downs (1967) Frank Sinatra / Dick Van Dyke (1968) Bill Cosby / Merv Griffin (1969) Bill Cosby / Dick Cavett (1970) Johnny Carson (1971) Johnny Carson (1972) Johnny Carson (1973) Johnny Carson (1974) None (1975) 1976–2000 John Denver / Mary Tyler Moore (1976) Robert Blake / Angie Dickinson (1977) Alan Alda (1978) Cheryl Ladd / Henry Winkler (1979) Steve Allen / Dick Clark (1980) Ed Asner / Shirley MacLaine (1981) John Forsythe / Marlo Thomas (1982) Eddie Murphy / Joan Rivers (1983) Tom Selleck (1984) John Forsythe (1985) David Letterman / Shelley Long (1986) Bruce Willis (1987) John Forsythe (1988) John Larroquette (1989) Candice Bergen / Jay Leno / Jane Pauley (1990) Dennis Miller (1991) Tim Allen / Kirstie Alley / Dennis Miller (1992) Angela Lansbury (1993) Ellen DeGeneres / Patricia Richardson (1994) Jason Alexander / Cybill Shepherd (1995) Michael J. Fox / Paul Reiser / Oprah Winfrey (1996) Bryant Gumbel (1997) None (1998) Jenna Elfman / David Hyde Pierce (1999) Garry Shandling (2000) 2000–present Ellen DeGeneres (2001) Conan O'Brien (2002) Ellen DeGeneres / Brad Garrett / Darrell Hammond / George Lopez / Conan O'Brien / Bernie Mac / Dennis Miller / Garry Shandling / Martin Short / Jon Stewart / Wanda Sykes (2003) Garry Shandling (2004) Ellen DeGeneres (2005) Conan O'Brien (2006) Ryan Seacrest (2007) Tom Bergeron / Heidi Klum / Howie Mandel / Jeff Probst / Ryan Seacrest (2008) Neil Patrick Harris (2009) Jimmy Fallon (2010) Jane Lynch (2011) Jimmy Kimmel (2012) Neil Patrick Harris (2013) Seth Meyers (2014) Andy Samberg (2015)

Hosts of the Tony Awards ceremonies 1947–1960 Brock Pemberton (1947) Bert Lytell / Hiram Sherman / Harry Hirshfield (1948) Brock Pemberton / James Sauter (1949) James Sauter (1950) James Sauter (1951) Helen Hayes (1952) Faye Emerson (1953) James Sauter (1954) Helen Hayes (1955) Jack Carter (1956) Bud Collyer (1957) Bud Collyer (1958) Bud Collyer (1959) Eddie Albert (1960) 1961–1980 Phil Silvers (1961) Ray Bolger (1962) Abe Burrows / Robert Morse (1963) Sidney Blackmer (1964) Tom Bosley / José Ferrer / Van Johnson (1965) George Abbott / Ginger Rogers (1966) Mary Martin (1967) Angela Lansbury (1968) Diahann Carroll (1969) Julie Andrews (1970) Lauren Bacall (1971) Deborah Kerr (1972) Celeste Holm (1973) Florence Henderson (1974) Larry Blyden / George S. Irving / Larry Kert / Carol Lawrence / Michele Lee / Bernadette Peters / Bobby Van (1975) Jane Fonda (1976) Bea Arthur (1977) Edward Asner (1978) Jane Alexander / Henry Fonda / Liv Ullmann (1979) Mary Tyler Moore / Jason Robards (1980) 1981–2000 Ellen Burstyn / Richard Chamberlain (1981) Tony Randall (1982) Richard Burton / Lena Horne / Jack Lemmon (1983) Julie Andrews / Robert Preston (1984) None (1985) None (1986) Angela Lansbury (1987) Angela Lansbury (1988) Angela Lansbury (1989) Kathleen Turner (1990) Julie Andrews / Jeremy Irons (1991) Glenn Close (1992) Liza Minnelli (1993) Anthony Hopkins / Amy Irving (1994) Nathan Lane / Glenn Close / Gregory Hines (1995) Nathan Lane (1996) Rosie O'Donnell (1997) Rosie O'Donnell (1998) None (1999) Rosie O'Donnell / Nathan Lane (2000) 2001–2020 Nathan Lane / Matthew Broderick (2001) Bernadette Peters / Gregory Hines (2002) Hugh Jackman (2003) Hugh Jackman (2004) Hugh Jackman (2005) None (2006) None (2007) Whoopi Goldberg (2008) Neil Patrick Harris (2009) Sean Hayes (2010) Neil Patrick Harris (2011) Neil Patrick Harris (2012) Neil Patrick Harris (2013) Hugh Jackman (2014) Kristin Chenoweth / Alan Cumming (2015)

Authority control WorldCat VIAF: 79167035 LCCN: n85281286 ISNI: 0000 0000 7829 0387 GND: 11945176X SUDOC: 110491777 BNF: cb13896334d (data) MusicBrainz: 12b0c33b-37de-4c56-9041-d27f9466381b NKC: xx0072714