My view of Angela Lansbury on film

[stuart.uk]

Happy Birthday Angela.

I know Angela has been discussed on the forum before, so my apoligies for bringing her up again, but I wanted to make my own personal tribute.

Angela is the grandaughter of George Landbury, who was at his pk leader of The Labour Party, but was never Prime Minister. I'm pretty certain that like Liz Taylor she is a dual citizen of both the U.S and U.K, which would explain her OBE.

It's almost a pity Angela didn't get a to many musical films to make, though I know she made The Harvey Girls with Judy Garland. for example she would have made a great movie Mama Rose, just as she was on the Broadway and West-End stage. In MHO I think along with Julie Andrews, Angela is one of Britain's two top female all round entertainers.

As a young woman Angela made an impact in Gaslight and National Velvet. I liked her in the Randolph Scott western Lawless Street , where, inbetween the action, Angela got a rare chance to do an old music hall number of the sort she was so good at.

I was a little saddened to see her at 35 play Elvis' mother, who disapproved of his rock an roll number Rock A Hula Baby in Blue Hawaii, when I felt she could have easily have played his leading lady and taken part in that great song and dance number.

To be fair though only two yrs older than Laurence Harvey, Angela played his mother in what she considers her best film The Manchurian Candidate. I thought Angela was at her most attractive in Dear Heart as Glen Ford's girl-friend, but in the end he prefered Geraldine Paige. I also loved her in Bedknobs And Bromsticks with David Tomlinson.

Angela was also a good Miss. Marple in The Mirror Cracked, even though she was in reality still a young woman when she played the role.

In the 80s Angela became hugely popular, in Murder She Wrote, as the beautiful widow Jessica Fletcher, who like Miss. Marple solves murders.

[srowley75]

Having grown up seeing Lansbury during her spinster/dowager years, I grew to relish seeing those earlier performances in which she played women that had a bit of a mean streak, as in Gaslight, The World of Henry Orient, and of course The Manchurian Candidate.

-Stephen

[MikeBSG]

She was very good as the doomed Sybil Vane in "Picture of Dorian Gray." I think that may have been her second or third movie.

As everyone says, she was wonderful in "The Manchurian Candidate."

I wasn't that shot with her in "The Mirror Crack'd." She seemed a bit cold and a know-it-all compared to Joan Hickson.

Two good, if small, performances were in "The Company of Wolves" as the heroine's grandmother. It wasn't a big part, but very enjoyable. Also, she had a nice role in "Nanny McPhee."

[Vienna]

No doubt that Angela should have been a bigger movie star. Such a good actress.
I will never forget seeing her in GYPSY on stage in London. Just terrific.