Patrick Murtha
Reader
Time for this thread, I think, as we’ve had threads for Irene Papas and Louise Fletcher in recent weeks, and let's face it, there is only going to be more of this as the mid-20th Century generation passes.
Today, Dame Angela Lansbury (1925-2022), a legend in theater, television, and film, drama, comedy, and musical, one of those boundless performers who really could do it all. And famous for playing a writer! - the inimitable Jessica Fletcher, who many are joking will now be revealed as the world’s foremost serial killer.
Two other Lansbury performances deserve to be singled out as especially iconic: Mrs. Lovett in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, on Broadway in 1979, and her terrifying turn as Laurence Harvey’s mother in the first film version of The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Lansbury, who has always been able to play different or indeterminate ages, was only three years Harvey’s senior and was not dramatically aged for the role, yet somehow you believed it.
Today, Dame Angela Lansbury (1925-2022), a legend in theater, television, and film, drama, comedy, and musical, one of those boundless performers who really could do it all. And famous for playing a writer! - the inimitable Jessica Fletcher, who many are joking will now be revealed as the world’s foremost serial killer.
Two other Lansbury performances deserve to be singled out as especially iconic: Mrs. Lovett in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, on Broadway in 1979, and her terrifying turn as Laurence Harvey’s mother in the first film version of The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Lansbury, who has always been able to play different or indeterminate ages, was only three years Harvey’s senior and was not dramatically aged for the role, yet somehow you believed it.
