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On This Day - Oct 16: Angela Lansbury

By KATHARINE RAMSDEN

Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury

Born October 16, 1925, Player Angela Lansbury was a British and American actress whose 80 year career spanned film, stage, and television. Although based for much of her life in the United States, her work attracted international attention.


The daughter of the Irish actress Moana Macgill and the English politician Edgar Lansbury, she moved to the United States in 1940 to escape the Blitz. In 1942, she signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), appearing in Gaslight (1944), National Velvet (1944), and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). She acted in 11 further MGM films, mostly in minor roles, until her role in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) received widespread acclaim. Moving into musical theatre, Lansbury gained stardom in Mame (1966).


She continued in leading roles in the stage musicals Gypsy, Sweeney Todd and The King and I.  Lansbury moved into television in 1984 as the sleuth Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote, the longest-running and most popular detective drama series in television history. She also became a voice actress in animated films like Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Anastasia (1997) and later appeared in family films such as Nanny McPhee (2005) and Mary Poppins Returns (2018).


She won six Tony Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Award), six Golden Globe Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, and the Academy Honorary Award. In 2014 she was also named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for her services to drama, charitable work, and philanthropy.


Dame Angela Lansbury, DBE, passed away on October 11, 2022.

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