Lansbury’s Legacy

A tale as old as time, Abode2 pays tribute to Dame Angela Lansbury

Personalities of the stage, television and film scenes celebrated the life of acting legend Angela Lansbury, who passed away on Tuesday. The beloved “Murder, She Wrote” and five-time Tony Award winner died “peacefully in her sleep” at her home in Los Angeles. She was 96.

Lansbury, who was most widely known for her work as literary sleuth Jessica Fletcher in “Murder, She Wrote,” had a career that spanned decades and mediums — from the films “Gaslight” and “The Picture of Dorian Gray” in the 1940s to the 2009 Broadway revival of “Blithe Spirit.”

“If she JUST had a movie career, or JUST had a TV career, or JUST had a stage career, she’d be an icon,” the Music Box Theatre tweeted. “How fortunate we are that she did it all.”

Lansbury was feted on Tuesday by actors including George Takei and Jason Alexander, who in their respective tweets said she will “sing lullabies to us now from the stars” and that “her huge contribution to the arts and the world remains.”

Angela Lansbury, who graced the stage for decades winning five Tony awards and brought the sleuthing Jessica Fletcher into our living rooms for a dozen years, has passed. A tale old as time, our beloved Mrs. Potts will sing lullabies to us now from the stars. Rest, great soul. George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) October 11, 2022

‘She, my darlings, was EVERYTHING!” said stage actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein on Twitter.

After her Malibu home was destroyed in a brush fire in 1970, and finding that her teenage children had begun taking drugs, Lansbury decided to up sticks and move to her ancestral home of Ireland – where her mother was from.

“My life, in a sense, has always been kind of divided into two parts: family and career. The sad part in my mind was that I didn’t succeed particularly well. The family suffered; the career soared,” she said. “I found this house. It had 20 acres and a walled garden. I said, ‘well, we can all live here,’ so I bought it. Finally, everybody, we all came over and we started our life anew.” she told the New York Times.

Knockmourne Glebe, the Co Cork farmhouse was built in 1820 and served as a haven to help her teenage children overcome their heroin addiction.

The actress never returned to California, dividing her time between Ireland and New York – maintaining her Irish citizenship up until her death.

The interview, which was filmed in 2010 by The New York Times, covers Lansbury’s seven decades of acting both on the screen and stage – released on the condition that it was done so after her death.

“I was a character actress, first and foremost,” she said, despite admitting that her iconic portrayal of Jessica Fletcher, of Murder, She Wrote fame, was the exception to the rule.

“Jessica Fletcher was probably about as close, not to me, but to the sort of woman I might have been had I not been an actress.”

She said: "I'm eternally grateful for the Irish side of me. That's where I got my sense of comedy and whimsy. As for the English half–that's my reserved side, but put me onstage, and the Irish comes out. The combination makes a good mix for acting."

Ms Lansbury's elevation to become a dame of the British Empire also had to be approved by the Irish Cabinet during an "incorporeal meeting of the Government".

When she was aged 88, she was named a dame by Queen Elizabeth II for her services to drama and to charitable work.

In addition to her three children, Anthony, Deirdre and David, she 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. A private family ceremony will be held at a date to be determined.