Favorite Angela Lansbury Performance?

Robert Osbourne's tribute at the Honorary Oscars

Remembering Angela

Accepting her honorary Oscar

Her Rose.

CBS Sunday Morning

Saw her in Gypsy and that's my favorite performance of hers. In the movies she was always good but I find her a bit overrated.

The Manchurian Candidate is the greatest political thriller ever made.

I guess it's not one of the choices but I think she's very good and funny in The Court Jester, with Danny Kaye.

The Manchurian Candidate

R8 That's a good one, there were a lot to pick from!

She WAS Angela Lansbury!

[quote] The Manchurian Candidate is the greatest political thriller ever made.

Pauline Kael said something similar. "Although it's a thriller, it may be the most sophisticated political satire ever made in Hollywood."

Angela Lansbury's performance was phenomenal. There are many Eleanor Iselins among us today, many of whom are currently in Congress.

Eleanor Iselin was a Communist.

Love her cunty performance in The World of Henry Orient. So cool and sophisticated. I think she did Mame soon after that.

Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. One of the great nights of my life.

Truly from the old school. Her dad died young and she was raised by her mother and grandfather, who was born in 1859.

Mrs. Iselin was a revelation for me.

A class act

[quote]Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. One of the great nights of my life.

Mine as well. Weeks after opening, so the performances were still fresh. Fifth row.

Angela Lansbury appeared in Agatha Christie adaptations Death on The Nile and as Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack'd. Of course, Murder, She Wrote's Jessica Fletcher is said to be a version of Miss Marple. Eric Porter also starred in a Christie adaptation 1980's "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?"

"Phyllis is *done* with *doing*."

R20 I always liked The Mirror Crack'd; great cast- Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Kim Novak, Tony Curtis, Edward Fox, Geraldine Chaplin, Charles Gray, and, our topic, Angela Lansbury as Miss Marple.

My favorite part is the opening Murder at Midnight scene.

My favorite: Angela Lansbury as Myra Leeds: “Please Murder Me,” with Raymond Burr. 1956 excellent noir.

Forgot the link.

Hands down, Mame. It revived her career and showed everyone all of her talents. She was the toast of Broadway. Her career was never the same again.

I haven't seen it since it came out, r22, but my memory is that she underplayed to the extent that it didn't make her a very memorable Marple.

R23, yes! I came to this thread to cast my vote for Please Murder Me! Thanks for beating me to it. 🙏

I loved her as Hedy Lemarr’s tormented God fearing older sister in ‘Samson & Delilah’, and as the pushy saloon owning bitch who wants Judy Garland out of town in ‘The Harvey Girls’.

My boyhood pal developed a huge crush on Angela Lansbury’s Miss Price from “Bedknobs & Broomsticks”. He began wearing fake glasses in her style, mimicking her and playing the soundtrack endlessly. I was a couple of years younger than him and it’s how I derived a difference between the an understanding of gay vs queer, before I even had a grasp of the vocabulary.

This 16-year-old was staying in to watch Mrs. Arris goes to Paris. Mrs Santa Claus is still a perennial favorite of mine too.

Though I know full well her best performance was in MC, I had to vote Fletcher. Jessica Fletcher is straight up Miss Marple. She goes to visit someone, someone gets iced, she noses around. Marple.

She should have won the Oscar for 'The Manchurian Candidate' -- it was a brilliant portrayal of cold, calculating, pathological evil. Even Meryl Streep couldn't come close to equalling it in the remake in 2004.

On the positive side, although she lost the Oscar, she went on to have a much longer and bigger career than Patty Duke.

I will say Murder She Wrote because of the excellence of her performance. She managed to play an almost flawless woman with dignity, wit, elegance and humour, without seeming patronising, holier-than-thou or portraying Jessica Fletcher as a simpering “nice girl”.

R33 Patty Duke deserved the Oscar.

R35, are you blind?

Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris.

R36 No, but Helen Keller was (and deaf). And Patty Duke was a young teenager. Angela Lansbury was very good but other actresses could have played that successfully.

I love Murder She Wrote and Jessica Fletcher. But that character bears absolutely NO resemblance to Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. The poor woman has been so poorly treated in film and television that most people have no concept of the character at all! Miss Marple is very old, frail, and presents the image of being gossipy and foolish. In reality she has a deep understanding of human nature and a sharp, analytical mind. She is brave, but she doesn't take an active role in sleuthing.

R36 Watch the infamous dining room fight scene and then get back to us.

It would have been interesting to see Laurence Harvey's mother in Manchurian Candidate played by someone old enough to be his mother, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Sylvia Sidney, Myrna Loy etc.

R39, Joan Hickson portrayed Miss Marple very much that way in the 1980's-1990's TV version, for which she was nominated for 2 BAFTAs.

R41 yes, but Angela still gave a better performance than all of them

R43 I'm pretty sure you're right.

Joan Hickson was the best Miss Marple.

I like Angela, but not in "The Mirror Crack'd" where she is too young for the character and miscast. Fun seeing Edward Fox as her nephew, the policeman. Also fun seeing the scene with Fox and Rock Hudson, walking side by side, across the lawn, showing the enormous height difference between Fox and Hudson.

But, The Mirror Crack'd is worth seeing for the scene where Elizabeth Taylor clasps Pierce Brosnan to her bosom. See link below.

Of course The Mirror Crack'd is worth seeing! Wonderful, bitchy/camp dialogue from a cast of mostly past-their-prime actors. Manna from Heaven for Dataloungers.

I didn't like The Mirror Crack'd. Saw it once and wouldn't bother again.

Liz Taylor is an utter moose in that movie.

So if you like wildlife - -

The Murder at Midnight is the best part of the movie! They should have made it instead of The Mirror Crack'd.

Jessica Feltcher's 60 Load Weekend

[quote]I like Angela, but not in "The Mirror Crack'd" where she is too young for the character and miscast.

Agreed, r45. It's the one time she didn't successfully play older.

Manchurian Candidate, unforgettable.

I told them to build me an assassin. I wanted a killer from a world filled with killers and they chose you because they thought it would bind me closer to them. But now, we have come almost to the end. One last step. And then when I take power, they will be pulled down and ground into dirt for what they did to you. And what they did in so contemptuously under-estimating me.

Mrs. Iselin, Communist.

I had to stop them…

I met her about 5 years ago. We sat for 10 minutes. She was doing interviews and the last interviewer left early; leaving Ms Lansbury on her own. She wandered out into the hallway of the hotel, where I was sitting, as my friend, a jouro, was going to interview her beut he'd gone to the barhroom. She was frail and just confused as to why she was left alone...So she linked my arm as I accompanied her back into her suite...and I explained that my friend was next up to interview her. She was delighted when I asked her all about MGM and not Murder She Wrote; which I suspect was the norm. I asked about Judy and she said, ahhhh poor Judy. When the PR girl came back, with my friend in tow, she was all a flutter and wanted me to buzz off....but Ms Lansbury told her to calm down and she sat talking to me all about old Hollywood. I love the pic I have with her. A classy, interesting, lovely lady.

A friend of mine had a similar experience with her back when Sweeney Todd was running. A talk at the stage door ended up as dinner with Angela Lansbury and Stephen Sondheim, talking about old movies. She was a class act, and very down to earth.

Not the sort of performance you had in mind, but here's Dana Wynter, Joan Collins, and Angela Lansbury at the 31st annual Academy Awards in 1959

Multi-talented to say the least.

Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?

In The World of Henry Orient, Phyllis Thaxter, as Marian's mom, reminded me of my mom. Lansbury, as Val's mom, reminded me of a friend's mother, who I was glad was not my mom.

I just want to reiterate that Lansbury's performance is remembered. Not Frank Sinatra. Not Laurence Harvey. Not Janet Leigh. But Angela Lansbury,.

I'll make martial law seem like anarchy.

Her husband, Peter Shaw, was hot back in the day

No matter how hard they tried she always looked like someone's grandma.

[italic]R63 Her husband, Peter Shaw, was hot back in the day

Was he the gay one?

R65 no, this was her first/gay husband

Mama Jean Bello in HARLOW.

Carroll Baker wrote in her autobiography how Peter Shaw called and pressured her to recommend his wife Lansbury for the role.

It never stops!

"Sweeney Todd."

Period.

R64 even when she was a girl, she looked 60

I always liked her tango with David Niven in Death on the Nile

Please - in the original book The Manchurian Candidate and the 1962 movie, the character was only known as Mrs. Iselin......her first name is never mentioned.

The first name was only mentioned in the AWFUL remake with Meryl Streep giving a ponderous imitation of Hillary Clinton......three syllables.....Eleanor/Hillary.....

Angela Lansbury played MRS. ISELIN!

Raymond, is that a gun?

Saucy Nancy in Gaslight was a great debut for any young actor. May have been her first performance at age 17 but she was terrific and memorable. That little dance she did looked spontaneous and said a lot about the character.

What a career she could have had if the studio had more vision and trust!

Would have loved to see her in The Heiress, All About Eve, A Star Is Born, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? and as Buck's mother in Ordinary People.

Appearing like a nice person when....

Well.

Manchurian Candidate wins but Pirates of Penzance is petty good too

She was clearly having so much fun in Pirates of Penzance! She took her work seriously, but never herself. Always up for a laugh.

Didn’t she do one of the HAPPY HOOKER sequels at one point, when she was hard up for cash?

I remember she was good in that.

[quote]Please - in the original book The Manchurian Candidate and the 1962 movie, the character was only known as Mrs. Iselin......her first name is never mentioned.

She is referred to as Eleanor a few times in the novel.

R79, I think you might be thinking of Lynn Redgrave...

Oh, Raymond, what is the matter with you? You look as if your head were going to come to a point in the next thirteen seconds.

Dear World

Does anyone remember The Love She Sought with Denholm Elliott

R80 thanks for telling me that......I certainly don't remember it.....now I have to accept what you say or try to find my copy of the book......I think I'll take your word for it......

[quote]I just want to reiterate that Lansbury's performance is remembered. Not Frank Sinatra. Not Laurence Harvey. Not Janet Leigh. But Angela Lansbury,.

True, R61. And Lansbury was the only cast member from the film who got an Oscar nomination.

But I love Laurence Harvey. I've seen so much of what he's done and liked it all. Very much. Landsbury's face always looked like a tied up pot roast. Except for Manchurain Candidate she's virtually the same in every roll.

Don’t forget her performance as Meemaw Beamer in Let’s Roll!

[quote]Except for Manchurain Candidate she's virtually the same in every roll

Compare Dear Heart and Dark at the Top of the Stairs...and oh fucking dear.

Manchurian is her best, but I voted for Eglantine Price because she was delightfully eccentric in that.

A Little Priest from Sweeney Todd. Damn, she's good

Not to steal from jessica's thread but I wonder why Harvey has never gotten a good thread on DL. Gay, talented, and wildly successful. Was he just to low key and reclusive? I absolutely love the guy and almost all of his work.

She holds back no punches with Lesley Stahl.

She had a great movie career and should have won the Oscar for the Manchurian Candidate, but she didn't

She should have played Mame in a movie, but was shut out to make way for Lucille Ball

She never won an Emmy for Murder, She Wrote and the show got moved around and canceled.

Angela having a fun discussion with Dick Cavett

Does else remember Pat Summerall on CBS Sports saying

60 Minutes, followed by

MURDER............................. She, Wrote starring Angela Lansbury

There's an old thread on Harvey with some interesting posts. I liked him in "Manchurian Candidate" and a thriller he made the following year, "The Running Man."

Millie

Frank Sinatra had a soft spot for her. Frank never said anything bad about her. He always said she was a great friend and "one helluva actress"

She was such a stone cold bitch r53. And then to do a role like Jessica Fletcher.

Range, I tells ya. Range.

[quote] Frank Sinatra had a soft spot for her.

Yet she was not his first choice for Manchurian Candidate. He wanted Lucy, who had she accepted would have knocked the role out of the park.

How awesome would the final scene of The Manchurian Candidate been if after being shot, Mrs. Iselin does the spider reaction Lucy was famous for!

The answer has to be Sweeney. It’s not just Angela’s best performance, but one of the greatest performances ever by ANYONE on stage. This word is so overused today that it has lost all meaning, but Angela’s Lovett was truly iconic.

I can only judge Anyone Can Whistle and Prettybelle by their cast recordings, but what incredibly strange and weird roles Angela opted to take on. Prettybelle especially was quite the risk. Her performance on the OBCR of Anyone Can Whistle is given with such gusto and aplomb- as if she were recording the hit of her career rather than some floppo bomb.

'Manchurian Candidate' getting 40% of the vote so far in this poll, compared to 20% for 'Murder, She Wrote'.

No love for Dorian Gray ?

She was amazing to go from playing a scheming little tramp like Nancy in Gaslight to an innocent sweetheart in Dorian Gray.

Did Angie ever talk about other movies she would have loved to have done during the 40s - 60s?

She sounds so bitter in the r93 interview.

R87 Did she have a roll with her pot roast?

Role, role, ROLE.

Role.

R106 Rightly so.

R100 No. Sinatra just suggested Lucy. Frankenheimer said Angela would have been better.

Lucy would have been shit.

I actually think Lucy probably would have been great. But we'll never know, and Angela was great. And I'm glad she got to do the film, because without it her overall reputation as a "great film actress" would be severely lessened. I'm still pretty surprised she was given an honorary Oscar. The sole reason for that seems to have been that she wasn't given an Oscar for The Manchurian Candidate.

What unnerves me about Mrs Potts is that she looks about sixty but has a son who appears to be around seven years old. I'm guessing there was a Jack Nicholson-style "arrangement" involving a knocked-up teenage daughter. Maybe that's where the feather duster comes into play.

The awards people never liked her, and I don't know why. She is brilliant.

She lost to Patty Duke, who was not a good actress and a nobody. No one remembers her. Name an actual good performance. Anne Bancroft righty won for The Miracle Worker, but why give it to Patty.

She was the best thing on Broadway from 1963 to 1984. Yet when Mame was turned into a movie, they gave to Lucille Ball. To add insult to injury, they kept Bea Arthur on for the film. Of course Lucy ruined Mame and the film was shit.

She lost ALL of her Emmy nominations for Murder, She Wrote, despite being the number one show for TEN years. Then CBS moved her from Sunday nights to Thursdays, where she competed against Friends. They killed her.

BUT she handled all these setbacks with dignity and grace. She dined at the White House and Buckingham Palace many many times. She had a happy private life and loved her family. They were never in the tabloids. She also had a reputation as being polite, kind, and above the fray.

In short, she beat Hollywood at their own game. Awards or not.

She wasn't very gracious to Friends, she made a few remarks implying her type of show was better. I thought it was tacky of her.

[quote] She lost to Patty Duke, who was not a good actress and a nobody. No one remembers her. Name an actual good performance.

The Miracle Worker.

I'd like to see Angela try to play identical teen cousins.

She wasn't ever going to get the movie of Mame, and she never seems to have understood that she dodged a bullet, since the movie was terrible and would only have been marginally better if she had been in it. She hardly had any leads in movies and Hollywood wasn't going to give her a big movie musical. Her name at the box office in 1974 meant nothing whatsoever. Bea Arthur of course was cast - her husband directed it.

Two words, r114...cousin Emma.

Haha, okay. I never watched Murder she wrote but I've heard of the character.

Though I'll never understand the DL obsession with that cheesy show.

Emma

R118 It makes me think of my childhood. Sundays on CBS were football, 60 Minutes, Murder, She Wrote, then a classic movie, like The Sound of Music.

It didn't come on TV until I was 25 so I guess the nostalgia factor isn't there for me.

The only Emmy-bait MSW episode Angie was nominated for was "Thursday Child". Vera Miles plays a nurse alleging Jessica's beloved Frank knocked her up during an affair they had during the Korean war. Jessica is heartbroken but bravely fights to prove Frank's lovechild innocent of murder. It's one of the few times we see Jessica cry and even has weepy music.

The first episode "The Murder of Sherlock Holmes" was great. She should have won an Emmy for the pool scene alone when she confronts Preston Giles (Arthur Hill).

On Amazon Video. Starts at the 36 minute mark (couldn't find on Youtube)

R123 it's a pity there's no record of which episodes she was nominated for in season 1-6

Why was she only nominated for certain episodes instead of as Best Actress in a Drama Series?

[quote]R106 She sounds so bitter in the [R93] interview.

[quote]R108 Rightly so.

Why does she think she’s entitled to a show that runs forever, with its time slot never changing?

She starred in a hit show for over a decade and raked in the loot! Any other actor would be thanking their lucky stars for that gift… but La Lansbury simply can’t conceive that management might have different ideas than hers.

^^^ How about because the show was still getting the viewers and ratings -and making money for everyone? If the show was losing its slot, I'm sure Ms. Lansbury would have cancelled the show herself. But the network wanted to change its "image" by putting on a younger, hipper show (that promptly failed). She never claimed a right to that time slot -but she can hardly be blamed for thinking the network wouldn't mess with that success unnecessarily.

Throughout the run of MSW, Angela Lansbury demonstrated loyalty to the show, the network, her cast mates, and her guest stars. Sadly, she got no loyalty in return from the network -which later came back, hat in hand, to ask her to do some "specials" because fans were clamoring for more episodes.

Lansbury already auditioned for the movie of Mame with "Something For Everyone". Directed by Hal Prince, screenplay Hugh Wheeler, costumes Florence Klotz. She was not a compelling leading lady. Onscreen, she was a supporting player.

Angie's 50 Load Weekend

[quote] But the network wanted to change its "image" by putting on a younger, hipper show (that promptly failed).

Tell us about it.

R104, yes, Lansbury was very poignant in 'Dorian Gray'. It was a small supporting role, but it was memorable the way she sang "Little Yellow Bird", and she was nominated for her 2nd Oscar.

R110, 'The Manchurian Candidate' was 1 one of 3 Oscar nominations -- the other 2 are "Gaslight" and 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'.

[quote]R128 Lansbury already auditioned for the movie of “Mame” with "Something For Everyone". Directed by Hal Prince

A movie that earned an X rating!

That is probably what cost her Movie Mame - the producers were planning a [italic]family film.

R125 you misunderstand—for consideration as a nominee, you select and submit a single episode as your “best work”..it’s not like Emmy voters are required to sit through an entire season of episodes in order to select nominees.

R133, that's part of the problem with the Emmy process for television shows. One episode is not necessarily representative of a whole season's body of work.

By definition it is representative—as it is the choice made by the submitting creative. It makes no sense to expect that an entire season or series would be reviewed for consideration.

R136 Thank you! I am looking forward to reading tonight

Angela never wasted much time on false modesty.

The Emmy process also changed a lot the last few years. Used to performers would submit an episode of their best work and hotel rooms would be rented where a panel of voters would watch each episode and then vote on a winner.

Performers still submit episodes, but now voters just vote online and so tapes matter much less than they used to.

Tapes?

I kind of like this one.

Why did her revival of Mame fail?

The best, and my favorite angel, was Shelley Hack.

Interesting. Do you come here often?

Could Shelley play Angela in a thrilling bio pic? Or is she too pretty.