Friday 16 October 2020

ANGELA LANSBURY, 'MURDER SHE WROTE' IN HONOLULU

Today, The Grandma wants to pay homage to one of her greatest friends, Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury), who celebrates her 95th birthday.

Jessica has visited The Stones in Honolulu and she has explained to them how she resolve a crime with Magnum P.I. some decades ago, when both of them stayed in Honolulu working together.

Jessica Beatrice Fletcher, born Jessica Beatrice MacGill, known as J.B. Fletcher when writing, is a character and the protagonist portrayed by award-winning actress Angela Lansbury on the American television series Murder, She Wrote

Fletcher is a best-selling author of mystery novels, an English teacher, amateur detective, criminology professor, and congresswoman.

More information: Eighties Kids

Angela Brigid Lansbury (October 16, 1925) is a British-Irish-American actress who has played many theater, television, and film roles.

Her career has spanned almost eight decades, much of it in the United States. Her work has received international attention. She is recognised as the earliest surviving Academy Award nominee and one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Lansbury was born to Irish actress Moyna Macgill and British politician Edgar Lansbury, an upper-middle-class family in Regent's Park, central London. To escape the Blitz, in 1940 she moved to the United States with her mother and two brothers, and she studied acting in New York City. Proceeding to Hollywood in 1942, she signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and obtained her first film roles, in Gaslight (1944) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), earning her two Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe Award.

She appeared in eleven further films for MGM, mostly in supporting roles such as National Velvet (1944), and The Harvey Girls. After her contract ended in 1952 she began supplementing her cinematic work with theatrical appearances. Although largely seen as a B-list star during this period, her appearance in the film The Manchurian Candidate (1962) received widespread acclaim, was cited as being one of her finest performances and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Moving into musical theater, Lansbury finally gained stardom for playing the leading role in the Broadway musical Mame (1966), which earned her a range of awards.

Amid difficulties in her personal life, Lansbury moved from California to County Cork, Ireland in 1970, and continued with her theatrical and cinematic appearances throughout the decade including starring in Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) and the stage musicals Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, and The King and I.

Moving into television, she achieved worldwide fame as fictional writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the American whodunit series Murder, She Wrote, which ran for twelve seasons from 1984 until 1996, becoming one of the longest-running detective drama series in television history.

Through Corymore Productions, a company that she co-owned with her husband Peter Shaw, Lansbury assumed ownership of the series and was its executive producer for the final four seasons. Since then, she has toured in a variety of international theatrical productions and continued to make occasional appearances in films including Beauty and the Beast (1991), Nanny McPhee (2005) and Mary Poppins Returns (2018).

Lansbury has received an Honorary Oscar and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and has won five Tony Awards, six Golden Globes, and an Olivier Award. She has also been nominated for numerous other industry awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on three occasions, and various Primetime Emmy Awards on eighteen occasions, and a Grammy Award.

In 2014, Lansbury was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. She has been the subject of three biographies.

In the 1960s, The New York Times referred to Lansbury as the First Lady of Musical Theatre. Lansbury described herself as an actress who could also sing, with Sondheim stating that she had a strong voice, albeit with a limited range.

Lansbury's authorised biographer Martin Gottfried described her as an American icon, with a practically saintly public image.

More information: Twitter @_AngelaLansbury


 Mystery is something that appeals to most everybody.

Angela Lansbury

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