In Memory of Actress Angela Lansbury: 2 Years After Her Tragic Death

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It's been two years since the demise of legendary actress Dame Angela Lansbury, best known as the beloved mystery writer/sleuth Jessica Fletcher on TV's long-running hit series Murder, She Wrote (CBS, 1983-1995). She was 96 years old, and this is her story.

A Closer Look

Angela Lansbury was born on October 15, 1925, in Regent's Park, London to actress Moyna MacGill, and politician Edward Lansbury. Her father died when she was just 9 years old, and shortly after World War II began, the family relocated to New York.

Lansbury studied acting and then, with encouragement from her mother, moved to Los Angeles, where she worked in a department store.

At just 19 years old, the actress then received her big-screen break in 1944 with an Oscar-nominated performance as the young maid in Gaslight (starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer).

Her second Oscar nomination arrived the following year for The Portrait of Dorian Gray; her third in 1962 for The Manchurian Candidate (in which she played a mother who betrays her son and her country). She received Golden Globes for both movies.

Additional motion pictures included National Velvet (in which she played Elizabeth Taylor's older sister), The Harvey Girls, The Three Musketeers, The Court Jester, Blue Hawaii (in which she played Elvis Presley's mother - even though she was just a few years older than him in real life).

Later generations revered Lansbury for her Walt Disney movie musicals such as 1971's Bedknobs and Broomsticks, the 1991 animated and Oscar-nominated Beauty and the Beast, and for a small but significant part in 2018's Mary Poppins Returns.

As a side-note, the original 1964 Mary Poppins movie starred Julie Andrews, who had been approached to make a cameo in the new Returns film. But she rejected the request and was replaced by Lansbury, who had replaced Andrews who was the original choice for the lead in Bednobs and Broomsticks.

On Stage

Angela Lansbury, however, always felt most at home on stage. In 1957, she made her Broadway debut in Hotel Paradiso, which was followed by benchmark Tony-winning performances in Mame, Gypsy, and Sweeney Todd.

In 2009, she received her fifth Tony for a revival of the Noel Coward play Blithe Spirit.

On TV

Angela Lansbury achieved her greatest fame for her leading performance as Jessica Fletcher on TV's Murder, She Wrote. Of all her roles, Lansbury said that character was the most similar to her.

"I had a lot of say in it, and I didn’t want the character to be quirky,” she told The New York Times in 2009. "I wanted her to be real. I didn’t want to have to put on any kind of veneer for 24 hours a day, which is what a television schedule sometimes feels like."

Despite Murder's popularity, the show attracted more senior viewers; a development which had originally worked for CBS. Subsequently, however, the network upset the actress when it switched the series from its coveted Sunday night slot at 8 PM to the same time on Thursday nights opposite NBC's Friends, which had a monopoly on a somewhat younger crowd.

CBS may have believed Murder, She Wrote was strong enough to counter-programming-battle the then-new youth-scoured super-sitcom, but that's not how things turned out. The network failed to realize that viewers embrace tradition, and for years, Murder, She Wrote was a Sunday night tradition.

The home audience was confused, and Lansbury, as she told the Los Angeles Times, was "shattered." She added, "I really feel angry for all the people who watched us” [on Sunday, following 60 Minutes, another tradition].

And That's All She Wrote

Following Murder, She Wrote's demise as a weekly show, Angela Lansbury reprised Jessica Fletcher for a series of Murder, She Wrote TV-movies.

But it wasn't the same; the character had always traveled the world, but in the new films, she was never seen in her home base in the fictional small town of Cabot Cove, Maine. Another tradition had ended, this time, for good; the Murder, She Wrote movies stopped.

Lansbury, meanwhile, kept going and acting well into her very senior years with productions like a 2015 Great Performances stage production of Driving Miss Daisy (opposite James Earl Jones), and the 2017 TV miniseries adaptation of Little Women.

Personally Speaking

Throughout her remarkable career, Angela Lansbury enjoyed a consistently stable life behind the scenes. Following a brief marriage to actor Richard Cromwell, she wed British thespian Peter Shaw in 1949. They remained together until his demise in 2003 and had two children, Deirdre, and Anthony, who helmed several segments of Murder, She Wrote.

It was Shaw, however, who would become her manager and the main creative guiding force behind Murder, She Wrote, and ultimately, Lansbury's successful career. It was Shaw's keen business savvy that played the initial, intricate, and significant role in the original agreement with CBS deal that made both he and Lansbury the show's producers.

The Big Picture

In 2013, Angela Lansbury received an honorary Academy Award. The following year, she was deemed a Dame by Queen Elizabeth at an investiture ceremony in Windsor Castle.

"It is a very proud day for me to be recognized by the country of my birth, and to meet the Queen under these circumstances is a rare and lovely occasion," the star told Sky News at the time.

The esteemed recognition was an elegant feather in her proverbial cap of a remarkable career that added a final shimmer to her legacy of six Tony Awards, a 1996 Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, a 1997 American National Medal of the Arts, and a 2000 Kennedy Center Honor.