Angela Lansbury 1925-2022

From Cukor to criminology, Broadway to broomsticks, Mame to Mrs. Potts, Angela Lansbury brought a stamp of effortlessly adaptable quality to her work across film, theatre and TV.

- By Kevin Harley

The critic Pauline Kael called her “a picture redeemer”, David Thomson “a constant delight” who “stole film after film from their advertised stars”. When Lansbury died aged 96 on 11 October, tributes came from stars including Viola Davis, who praised her legacy of “excellence”.

Lansbury forged that legacy early. Born to a politician father and an actress mother (Moyna MacGill) in London in 1925, she studied performing and found it therapeutic after her father died when she was nine. Later, she attended the Feagin School Of Dramatic Art in New York when the Blitz forced a move to the US. “We had to grow up instantly,” she said.

She did just that as a nightclub singer, and again in her late teens when a trip to a Hollywood party with her mother banked her the crafty maid role in George Cukor’s Gaslight (1944). An Oscar nomination and MGM contract followed, then came another Oscar nom for her tragic singer in The Picture Of Dorian Gray.