Angela Lansbury, the London-born actress who for seven decades brought a commanding, ladylike presence to stage, screen and television — especially over the 12 years she played dauntless mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher on CBS’ Murder, She Wrote — has died. She was 96. (Read More Here).
“The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles at 1:30 a.m. today, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday,” her family says in a statement obtained by PEOPLE.
“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,” the statement adds. “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.”
Born Angela Brigid Lansbury, the future character actress (the voice of Mrs. Potts in Disney’s animated Beauty and the Beast) and leading lady (Broadway’s eccentric aunt in the musical Mame) was the daughter of Belfast-born actress Moyna MacGill and her second husband, lumber merchant Edgar Lansbury. “A true Irish beauty” is how Lansbury described her mother in a 1993 PEOPLE profile.
Eager to direct her daughter’s future, Moyna took the young Angela to plays at London’s Old Vic and enrolled her in a school for the arts and dance, until the family — Angela and her younger (by five years) twin brothers, Edgar and Bruce, who both later became successful producers, and a half-sister — found itself all but broke when the senior Edgar died in 1934. Angela was 9.
The war only compounded the family’s situation, so in 1940 the Lansburys moved to New York, where Moyna rebooted her acting career and went on tour while Angela babysat her siblings. Relocating her brood to Los Angeles and now working in a department store, Moyna helped land her daughter a screen test at MGM — which catapulted the 17-year-old into her Oscar-nominated movie debut as the cockney maid in the Ingrid Bergman-Charles Boyer classic 1944 thriller Gaslight.
“A star of stage, TV and movies, Lansbury was an Equity member for an astounding 65 years. She leaves behind a library of work to enjoy for many generations. We send our condolences to her friends and family.”
Actor Eric McCormack, best known for his work on the long-running NBC sitcom “Will & Grace,” fondly recalled his time with Lansbury on Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man” in 2012.
“So privileged I got to spend time with this incredible woman,” he said in statement. “No one like her.” Lansbury took her singing skill from Broadway to the big screen, via an animator’s drawing board in the 1991 musical “Beauty and the Beast.”
She voiced the sentimental Mrs. Pott, which scored as one of the popular movie’s most beloved moments.
She took to the stage at Lincoln Center in New York in 2016 to celebrate the film’s 25th anniversary, and brought the house down with a rendition of the title’s lead tune.
Referencing the lyrics to the “Beauty and the Beast” theme, NASA paid tribute to Lansbury by posting a photo of a “cosmic rose.”
The actor had already enjoyed a long and successful career when she took on the small-screen role that many Americans will remember most — as mystery writer and amateur crime fighter Jessica Fletcher on the CBS Sunday night hit “Murder, She Wrote.”
“Murder” ran for 12 seasons, from 1984 to 1996, with Lansbury playing a widowed mystery writer whose keen observations always outwitted criminals and even the local police before the real killer would be unmasked within the hour.
It followed “60 Minutes” and, in the fall, the National Football Conference game. Lead CBS play-by-play man Pat Summerall would famously tell viewers to stay tuned for “Murder … She Wrote” with a dramatically elongated pause.
“We found our audience and they were loyal to the end,” Lansbury said in a 1998 interview with the television academy.
COZI TV, NBC’s national multicast network that airs classic shows, announced it’ll honor Lansbury with a “Murder, She Wrote” marathon from Wednesday through Saturday, 6 a.m. ET through 8 p.m. ET each day.
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