Angela Lansbury, Star Of Stage And Screen, Dies At 96

Screen legend and five-time Tony Award-winning actress Angela Lansbury has died. “The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles at 1:30 AM today, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday,” her family said in a statement.

Known, of course, as the motherly sleuth Jessica Fletcher on CBS’ long-running Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury won five Tony Awards, most recently in 2009 for best featured actress in a play for her work in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit. She was nominated for three Academy Awards, all in the category of Outstanding Actress in a Supporting Role, for Gaslight in 1945, The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1946, and The Manchurian Candidate in 1963. She was the recipient of an Honorary Oscar in 2014 (cited as an “entertainment icon who has created some of cinema’s most memorable characters, inspiring generations of actors”). And she was nominated for 15 Emmy Awards (including 12 for Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Murder, She Wrote).

Born October 16, 1925 in Central London, Lansbury landed her breakthrough role as the young maid at the age of just 20 in the aforementioned Gaslight, opposite Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Other films included National Velvet, The Harvey Girls, Till the Clouds Roll By, State of the Union, The Three Musketeers, Mutiny, The Long, Hot Summer, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and the Elvis Presley vehicle Blue Hawaii.

Also in the 1950s, Lansbury began guest-starring in TV series like dramatic anthologies Robert Montgomery Presents, The Ford Television Theatre, Lux Video Theatre, Celebrity Playhouse and Studio 57.

Lansbury made her Broadway debut in 1957, later starring her iconic Tony-winning roles in musicals Mame, Gypsy and Sweeney Todd. But it was playing Jessica Fletcher in 12 seasons of Murder, She Wrote from 1984 to 1996 (followed by four TV Movies) that cemented her status as a pop culture icon (and earning her the record for the most Golden Globe nominations and wins for Best Actress in a television drama series and the most Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series).

Lansbury is also fondly remembered as for roles like Miss Eglantine Price in Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Mrs. Potts in the animated musical Beauty and the Beast.

In addition to her three children, Anthony, Deirdre and David, Lansbury is survived by three grandchildren, Peter, Katherine and Ian, plus five great grandchildren and her brother, producer Edgar Lansbury. She was proceeded in death by her husband of 53 years, Peter Shaw.