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October 16, 1925– Angela Lansbury:
“Actors are not made, they are born.”
In Seattle, 1984, the producer/writer and the director of a brand new televison show had contacted me through the theatre where I was performing in the biggest, hottest show in town. The show had been selling out nightly for more than six months. These Hollywood professionals had left a message stating how much they enjoyed and admired my work in the play. They wrote that they felt that I had a real future doing comedy in television and film. It was such a lovely and unexpected thing to hear. They wanted to offer me a role on their new series. This was really unheard of; show biz producer types just plucking someone like me from a regional theatre and giving them a job with no audition. I was told that the show was titled Murder, She Wrote. The gig would get me my SAG (Screen Actors Guild) card. If all this good fortune was not dreamy enough, they told me I would be working with the star of the series, Angela Lansbury!
I spent my very first day of working on a film set on the roof of a Seattle tower sitting under a big umbrella between takes with my new best friend. I reminded Lansbury that we had actually met once before, in the parking garage at the Schubert Theatre in LA, after a matinee of Gypsy on an autumn afternoon in 1974. At that chance meeting, I had been shocked to discover that Lansbury was driving her own car and not taking a limo, and that she was going home between the matinee and evening performances. I stopped to tell her how much I had loved the show and that she was the best Mama Rose ever. Lansbury graciously thanked me and then actually asked about my life. We had a lovely two minute conversation.
Under that big umbrella on the Seattle rooftop, Lansbury said that she did not recall that first meeting. I chided her for not remembering. She loved that and laughed. We talked about gardening, her childhood in England and about the theatre scene in Seattle. It was a rather perfect day, one of my favorite days of my lifetime.
Lansbury moved from London to Hollywood when she was a teenager. She worked in a department store before getting her first film role, but she never had to take work as anything but an actor again. What a beginning of a career, her first role was as the maid in Gaslight (1944), for gay director George Cukor and playing opposite Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Her screen debut brought Lansbury an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
“I was put under contract. A major studio. I got nominated for an Academy Award. Isn’t that ridiculous? I mean, at the age of 18!”
She was Oscar nominated again the next year, winning a Golden Globe Award for The Picture Of Dorian Gray based on the story by the ultimate gay guy, Oscar Wilde, who also has a birthday today. She played Elizabeth Taylor’s older sister in National Velvet (1944) and then a bad girl opposite Judy Garland and Cyd Charisse in the MGM musical The Harvey Girls (1946).
In films, Lansbury was mostly cast in supporting roles, usually playing characters considerably older than her real age. She was Elvis Presley’s mother in Blue Hawaii (1961), although there was just 10 years difference in their ages. In her most famous film role, in the classic political thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1962) she played gay actor Laurence Harvey’s mother, but she was actually only three years older than the actor. This film brought Lansbury her third Academy Award nomination.
One of her few starring roles is in my favorite of her film performances, the demented and forceful European countess in the sinister comedy Something For Everyone (1970) opposite yummy young Michael York and directed by Hal Prince, who also gave Lansbury her best stage roles.
Even with her iconic role in Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury’s true legacy is her work on stage, beginning with the gay themed A Taste Of Honey (1961) and then in Stephen Sondheim’s delicious, but troubled musical Anyone Can Whistle (1964).
A terrific singer with a powerful voice, Lansbury was especially well-suited for the lead role in Jerry Herman’s musical Mame (1966), for me the greatest Auntie Mame of all time. She followed that iconic role with another Herman show, Dear World (1969), and then as a most formidable and ferocious Mama Rose in Gypsy. Lansbury was spectacular making those special pies as Mrs. Lovett in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (1979). Lansbury won Tony Awards for all four of these productions.
Lansbury continues to work after eight decades in show biz. In 2009, she appeared in Sondheim’s A Little Night Music on Broadway and was again Tony nominated. She won her fifth Tony Award as Madame Arcati in the 2010 Broadway revival of Noel Coward’s comedy Blithe Spirit. Critic Ben Brantley of the NY Times:
“For pure originality and expressiveness, it’s hard to imagine any Broadway chorus line topping the solo dances performed here by an 85 year old woman with a superfluity of bad jewelry, the gait of a gazelle and a repertory of poses that bring to mind Egyptian hieroglyphs.”
In 2012, Lansbury received rave reviews and a Drama Desk Award for the Broadway revival of Gore Vidal‘s political drama about Presidential primaries The Best Man opposite James Earl Jones. In 2015, Lansbury repeated her role in Blithe Spirit on the West End in her native London. Last month, for one night only, Lansbury served audiences a live performance as Mrs. Potts, her much loved character from the Disney animated musical Beauty And The Beast during a 25th anniversary screening of the film at Lincoln Center. Lansbury sang the musical’s title track accompanied by its composer Alan Menken on the piano.
She has stated that she doubts she will return to the stage, although it had been announced earlier that she would be on Broadway in 2017 in a revival of Enid Bagnold‘s play The Chalk Garden (1955). I am sure she stays busy these days polishing her five Tony Awards, six Golden Globes, her Honorary Academy Award, Kennedy Center Honor, and 11 Emmy Awards.
When she was 19 years old, Lansbury married fellow actor Richard Cromwell. The marriage only lasted a few months when they both discovered that he was gay. She later married British actor Peter Shaw who served as Lansbury’s manager and head of her production company until his passing in 2003. They were together 55 years.
Lansbury’s career is often associated with the works of many noted gay artists: Sondheim, Arthur Laurents, Coward, Herman, Vidal, Cukor, and Stephen Rutledge. Because of her giant talent, glamour and awesomeness, she is easily named a top Gay Icon.
Lansbury:
“I’m very proud of the fact that I am a Gay Icon. It’s because of the role I played in Mame. She was just every gay person’s idea of glamour. Everything about Mame coincided with every young gay man’s idea of beauty and glory, and it is lovely.”
The post #BornThisDay: Angela Lansbury appeared first on The WOW Report.
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