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

THE STONES ARE GOING TO MEET MAGNUM P.I. IN OAHU

Today, The Stones have received the wonderful visit of Thomas Sullivan Magnum III, a private investigator and old friend of The Grandma. They have been talking about common friends and he has offered himself to The Stones to be the guide during their staying in Hawaii. Before meeting Magnum, The Stones and The Grandma have studied some English grammar. They have worked Future Continuous and Plural of Nouns.

Magnum, P.I. is an American crime drama television series starring Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum, a private investigator (P.I.) living on Oahu, Hawaii.

The series ran from 1980 to 1988 during its first-run broadcast on the American television network CBS.

According to the Nielsen ratings, Magnum, P.I. consistently ranked in the top twenty U.S. television programs during the first five years of its original run in the United States.

A reboot series of the same name was ordered to series on May 11, 2018, and premiered on September 24, 2018 on CBS.

Thomas Sullivan Magnum III is a private investigator played by Tom Selleck. He resides in the guest house of 81 ha beachfront estate called Robin's Nest, in Hawaii, at the invitation of its owner, Robin Masters, the celebrated, but never-seen, author of several dozen lurid novels.

Ostensibly this is quid pro quo for Magnum's services based upon his expertise in security; the pilot and several early episodes suggest Magnum had done Masters a favor of some kind, possibly when Masters hired him for a case. The voice of Robin Masters, heard only in five episodes, was provided by Orson Welles, one last appearance was provided by a different actor, Red Crandell.

More information: Future Continuous & Plural of Nouns

Magnum lives a luxurious life on the estate and operates as a P.I. on cases that suit him.

The only thorn in the side of his near-perfect lifestyle is Jonathan Quayle Higgins III, played by John Hillerman. An ex-British Army Sergeant Major, he is on the surface a stern, by-the-book caretaker of Robin's Nest, whose strict ways often conflict with Magnum's more easy-going methods. He patrols Robin's Nest with his two highly trained lads, Doberman Pinschers named Zeus and Apollo. 

Magnum has free use of the guest house and the car, a Ferrari 308 GTS Quattrovalvole, but as a humorous aside in various episodes, often has to bargain with Higgins for use of estate amenities such as the tennis courts, wine cellar and expensive cameras.

The relationship between Magnum and Higgins is initially cool, but as the series progressed, an unspoken respect and fondness of sorts grew between the pair. 

Aside from Higgins, Magnum's two main companions on the islands are Theodore Calvin "T.C." (Roger E. Mosley), who runs a local helicopter charter service called Island Hoppers, and often finds himself persuaded by Magnum to fly him during various cases, and Orville Wilbur Richard "Rick" Wright (Larry Manetti), who refuses to use his given name Orville and who owns a local bar.

In the pilot episode, this was Rick's Cafe Americain in town, inspired by Casablanca, with Rick appearing in suitable 1930s attire. After completing the pilot, though, executives felt that audiences would be unable to fully connect with this element. Instead, Rick moved to running the plush, beachside King Kamehameha Club, which has exclusive membership and Higgins on the board of directors. Magnum often strolls around the club, using its facilities and running up an ever-unpaid tab, further fueling the Magnum-Higgins feud.

More information: Click Americana

T.C. and Rick are both former Marines from Marine Observation Squadron 2 (VMO-2) with whom Magnum, a former Navy SEAL and Naval Intelligence officer, served in the Vietnam War. The series was one of the first to deal with Vietnam veterans as human beings and not as shell-shocked killers, and was praised by many ex-servicemen groups for doing so.

Magnum often dupes or bribes T.C. and Rick into aiding him on his cases, much to their frustration, though the deep friendship within the group, including Higgins, proved to be one of the key elements of the program over its eight-season run.

Magnum comes and goes as he pleases, works only when he wants, and has the almost unlimited use of the Ferrari and many other luxuries of the estate. He keeps a mini-refrigerator with a seemingly endless supply of beer, Old Düsseldorf in a long neck, wears his father's treasured Rolex GMT Master wristwatch and is surrounded by countless beautiful women, who are often victims of crime, his clients, or are connected in various other ways to the cases he solves.

Other characteristics specific to Magnum are his thick moustache, baseball caps (usually a Detroit Tigers or VMO-2 cap), a rubber chicken, and a variety of colorful Aloha shirts. Nearly every episode is narrated, in voice-over, by Magnum at various points.

At the end of the seventh season, Magnum was to be killed off, to end the series. Following an outcry from fans who demanded a more satisfactory conclusion, an eighth season was produced to bring Magnum back to life and to round off the series.

More information: Mental Floss

Hawaii is one of those places that, keeps topping itself. 

Just when you think you'll never see another sunset as beautiful, 

there comes a sunrise that only Gauguin could imagine. 

It kind of makes unemployment easier to take.

Thomas Magnum