Angela Lansbury

She should have got The Heiress and Eve in All About Eve.

[quote]Eve in All About Eve

Lansbury always came across as "mature" on the screen. Nobody would have believed her as Eve.

I was about to post something similar as R2.

A burger and fries? What a pig!

[quote]A burger and fries? What a pig!

I know, right? You'd expect that from an American like Judy Garland. But a Brit? We thought she had more class than that.

R5 , they're at the Paramount Studios commissary. What do you think they'd be serving her, steak and kidney pie?

Lansbury was still playing young characters in 1950, which is when this photo in the link was taken. She'd have made a better Eve than Baxter did. If Zanuck was going the UK route though, Jean Simmons or Deborah Kerr would have also been better choices for Eve.

Is that while filming The Court Jester? That's a fun one.

r7, Gosh I love that pic - Lansbury would have been a fun match for Davis, they're both characterful women

Angela Lansbury could’ve credibly played the Bette Davis role in All About Eve.

Love Lansbury, but I’m not sure... how good of an actress is she really? I haven’t seen her Oscar nominated roles, was she at the level of the Academy Award nominated performances of today? I think she’s a very charismatic and warm presence but I haven’t seen much else.

R11, yes, she’s brilliant. Watch The Manchurian Candidate.

Sean Penn looks good there...

[quote] Lansbury always came across as "mature" on the screen.

She was only 35 when she played 26 year old Elvis' mother in Blue Hawaii.

What a great picture! Of course, Angie is a Legend of Broadway, but never got the credit she deserves as one of the greatest actresses of the 20th century. How I would love her to have one great last role and win an Oscar.

She's no Julie Andrews.

R7, Come to think of it, Anne Baxter was cast as Eve due to her resemblance to the first Margo, Claudette Colbert. This would've added another layer to the story. Not only does this young upstart want to replace the star, she even looks like a younger version of her. With Bette in place, Angela, with those big eyes and round face, would've made a believable young doppelganger.

[quote] How I would love her to have one great last role and win an Oscar.

The Whales of August II: Electric Boogaloo

[quote] How I would love her to have one great last role and win an Oscar.

They should do a Downton Abbey spin off movie featuring Maggie Smith's Dowager Countess and Angela as another old aristocrat in a some sort of a murder mystery. It would be a hit, since Smith was the undisputed star of Downton and people love to see Angela solve a mystery.

Dame Angela was only 36 years old when she played Laurence Harvey's mother in The Manchurian Candidate, and only 3 years his senior. But she looked the part, to put in kindly.

[quote] Dame Angela was only 36 years old when she played Laurence Harvey's mother in The Manchurian Candidate, and only 3 years his senior. But she looked the part, to put in kindly.

Evidently the opposite of my career track.

Manchurian Candidate

[quote]Nobody would have believed her as Eve.

Except maybe as the Book of Genesis' Eve. With Cedric Hardwicke as Adam.

At 33, playing the mistress of Orson Welles in the Long Hot Summer.

[quote] Lansbury always came across as "mature" on the screen.

Exactly. If Lansbury had done “All About Eve,” she would have been cast as Margo, even though she was only 24 when it was filmed.

Angela is actually an incredible actress. Her Broadway career is stellar. She was actually beautiful in her youth, just not what was considered hot at the time. Thankfully, being a character actress led to a long career unlike her contemporaries.

Margo and Eve?

She certainly had no vanity about taking on characters that were much older (as with Davis). Yet she could also convincingly play her own age or younger, as here with Michael York in the campfest Something for Everyone.

She doesn't even have her pinkie up when gobbling down that burger.

I see no vegetables on either plate

[quote]I see no vegetables on either plate

She has french fries on her plate and potato is a vegetable.

Unless you meant the leafy green kind?

Potatoes are classified as a vegetable, but don't act like one in the body. It's a starchy food. Same with corn.

Hell, the lycopene in the ketchup makes it healthier than the potato.

Her best role was where she plays a tea kettle...

I don't know what she was doing here, but she was looking hot doing it.

Would she have been good in The Heiress?

Miss Thang

I love that broad!

Looks like she about to do a Sharon Stone move here.

For my nickel, one of the best actresses of the 20th century. Her Rose in Gypsy was unsurpassed and I’ve seen them all. Imelda Staunton comes closest.

...full disclosure, I did not see Merman.

She should have done Sunset Boulevard, musical.

OP, to address your post, I would never invite her to dinner because we all know whenever that bitch shows up anywhere, someone always ends up dead.

With Elvis . . .

R2 Shelly Winters always came across as 'mature' on the screen also.

She was excellent in The Manchurian Candidate, so was Laurence Harvey who was also very … handsome.

She was terrific in "State of The Union" at age 22. More than held her own against Hepburn

So light those candles and get the ice out.

[Quote] Yet she could also convincingly play her own age or younger, as here with Michael York in the campfest Something for Everyone.

Lansbury had a facelift around the time of MAME.

R48 If so, it was a great facelift. And touched up beautifully throughout her career. She always looked good.

love Miss Lansbury and the ops' pic

Sultry Angela sans facelift.

She was GREAT in The World of Henry Orient. One of my top five movies. I watched it again recently and thought how good Tom Bosley was, also. Wonder whatever happened to those girls...

Harlow.

Angie had her neck tightened and lost weight between 1st and 2nd seasons of MSW. Amos Tupper started having funny feeling down there. Mayor Sam didn't notice and Doc Hazlitt thought she was being too flighty!

[quote] I can see why nobody ever invited Angela Lansbury to dinner.

I did.

Did anyone ever notice her facelift around the time of Mame? Is it evident in her screen work, as in "before" and "after"?

I thought that was during the [italic]Murder She Wrote[/italic] years.

Did she make good money?

12 years and an executive producer credit by the end.

Her family were old style socialists. I liked her.

r19 Except the execrable turn she did as Miss Marple. Good god that was horrible.

Margaret Rutherford was by far the best Marple.

I hardly knew her but she did good work for me.

It's criminal she doesn't have an Emmy

It wasn't horrible, r61, it just wasn't very distinctive.

Just love that photo, OP. She's eating a hamburger on a regular, mushy, white bun with fries. Basil Rathbone is eating what looks like fried fish with steak fries. She was from an upper middle class family, and he was from a more well-to-do background. Still, it looks like a great class divide by their choices, and their table manners. Hers are perfectly fine, but...

And yet Basil ended his career in tripe like Hillbillys in a Haunted House, Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, and Queen of Blood.

R66 There is a great age divide: Basil was born in 1892 and was more than old enough to be starlet Angela's father.

Rathbone was a Victorian. Our Angela was a child of the Roaring Twenties.

To go back to the early posts, I suspect that she wouldn't have made an ideal Eve Harrington because some slight sinister quality would always come through—Eve needs to convince, at least initially, as an innocent, well-meaning young thing. Angela Lansbury's lush lashes and skeptical, pouty lips would telegraph connivance from the get-go.

stretch

Basil Rathbone was broke for the last decades of his life and had to do a lot of cheesy things to make money.

Around 1960, my parents saw him in a play at Mars Hill College, a tiny Baptist school in the remote mountains of North Carolina. I can't imagine what he thought of being reduced to performing in that backwoods. They enjoyed his performance, but said Rathbone focused his eyes on my young father, sitting in the front row, for the entire play.

Re: Basil Rathbone

We really didn't treasure our aging character actors back in the day.

I hope we're better at it now.

[Quote] The most recent operation was a 1986 neck tuck, she said in April's McCall's magazine. This, along with losing 20 pounds, enabled the 63-year-old actress to spruce up Jessica Fletcher, the mystery writer she portrays in the "Murder, She Wrote" television series. She said she had a facelift before opening in 1966 in "Mame," the role for which she won the first of her four Tony awards. The next surgery was in 1969 "to get rid of the little puffy bags that I'd always had under my eyes," she said. She said she had her neck and chin redone in 1976. She said she wanted to talk openly about the operations because "cosmetic surgery shouldn't be just the secret of actresses and socialites now that it's available to anyone who wants it and can afford it."

Angela didn't have the MC.

R74 did she mention her vaginal rejuvenation procedure from '91 anywhere in that interview?

How do we know about the Mame facelift? She doesn’t look any different in her films from ‘63 and ‘64. Or in that Harlow mess from’65.

[quote] She said she had her neck and chin redone

What was wrong with her chin?

[Quote] How do we know about the Mame facelift? She doesn’t look any different in her films from ‘63 and ‘64. Or in that Harlow mess from’65.

See r74

When did Dame Angela have her ass implants?

I always has junk in the trunk.

Man, was she born looking old. Even in those pictures when I'm sure she was very young, she looked old. The guy who played Fred Mertz was like that. He looked the same in the 1930s as he did on ILL. At least Betty Davis looked young when she was in her early 20s.