VISITING JESSICA FLETCHER AND HER IRISH ANCESTORS

Mariona & M.José Bond attending some business

Today, The Bonds are visiting Jessica Fletcher, an old Grandma's friend. The family is together again after two members of the family, M.José and Mariona Bond travelled quickly to Barcelona yesterday to attend personal business.

Although Jessica Fletcher is American, her ancestors are Irish and this is the reason because of she had travelled to the island to meet The Bonds and spend some good days together.

Jessica's ancestors hailed from Kilcleer, County Cork, Ireland. She has two brothers and two sisters. Her brothers are Marshall, a doctor, and Martin. Before she met and married Frank Fletcher, Jessica was studying at Harrison College in Green Falls, New Hampshire, to become a journalist. 

Fletcher lives at 698 Candlewood Lane in the town of Cabot Cove, Maine 03041. While teaching criminology at Manhattan University, she stays in Manhattan at the Penfield House Apartments, 941 West 61st St. Cabot Cove is a town of 3,560 inhabitants near the ocean. 

More information: Murder, She Wrote

Based on the number of murders that occur in a given season of the show, the town seems to have probably one of the highest murder ratios of any town or city. This has even been remarked in the show by the town sheriff, Mort Metzger. Given the population of the town to be about 3,000 this is a fairly high murder rate. Given the murder rate in this town, it has about the same murder rate of a town 20 times its size. This trend was noted and parodied many times.

Jessica Fletcher

Her travels as an author very frequently take her to places around much of the English-speaking world, which gives her writers a little more ability to stretch the character and her situations than rural New England alone would have provided. One of them takes her to Hawaii, where she shares a case with private detective Thomas Magnum.

Fletcher was widowed from her beloved husband, Frank. They had no children, Fletcher stating that she and Frank just weren't blessed that way, but had a seemingly endless collection of nephews, nieces, cousins, in-laws and other relatives or friends who always need her help. Especially prone to get into trouble is her nephew Grady Fletcher, who was raised for a period of time by Jessica and Frank. Grady always seemed to meet the wrong girl, until he finally married Donna several seasons into the show.

Fletcher began her career writing on an old Royal typewriter, but as her career progresses, she eventually purchases a computer running Windows 3.1. Among her friends she can count both multi-millionaires who own Beech Starships and down-on-their-luck homeless people, moving effortlessly between the social strata. The format of the show usually has Jessica solving the mysteries within five minutes of the end of each program, unless the producers felt they could prolong the suspense across two episodes. Perhaps her most notable experience was encountering a Mr. Potts who preferred to be called Mr. Bond, he did at least have an Aston Martin DB6, in which Jessica herself ended up racing to the rescue.

Fletcher's relationship with law-enforcement officials varies from place to place. Both the sheriffs of Cabot Cove were used to, or resigned themselves to, having her meddle in their cases. However, most detectives and police officers did not want her anywhere near their crime scenes, until her accurate deductions convince them to listen to what she had to say. Others were fans of her books and gave her free rein. With time, she makes friends in many police departments across the US, as well as a British police officer attached to Scotland Yard.

More information:  15 Facts about Murder, She Wrote

Back home, we have a saying. 

Flowers that bloom too quickly are fair game for a late frost.

Jessica Fletcher

MURDER, SHE WROTE. GOODBYE TO JESSICA FLETCHER

Today, The Grandma has received some sad news. Angela Lansbury, the English actress who played the role of Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote, has passed away.

 

The Grandma wants to remember Angela Lansbury and her role in this unforgettable work.

 

Murder, She Wrote is an American crime drama television series, created by Peter S. Fischer, Richard Levinson and William Link, starring Angela Lansbury, and produced and distributed by Universal Television for the CBS network.

The series focuses on the life of Jessica Fletcher, a mystery writer and amateur detective, who finds herself becoming involved in solving a series of murders that take place in the fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine, as well as across the United States and abroad.

The program ran for 12 seasons from September 30, 1984 to May 19, 1996, for a total of 264 episodes, and included amongst its recurring cast Tom Bosley, William Windom and Ron Masak, as well as a vast array of guest cast members including Michael Horton, Keith Michell and Julie Adams.

The series proved a ratings hit during its broadcast, becoming a staple of CBS Sunday night TV schedule for around a decade, while achieving distinction as one of the most successful and longest-running television shows in history, averaging 25 million viewers per week in its prime.

In syndication, the series is still highly successful and popular throughout the world. For her role on the program, Lansbury was nominated for ten Golden Globes, winning four, along with nominations for 12 Emmy Awards, earning her the record for the most Golden Globe nominations and wins for Best Actress in a television drama series and the most Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. The series itself also received three Emmy nominations for Outstanding Drama Series, as well as six Golden Globe nominations in the same category, with two major wins.

More information: The Guardian

After the series finished in 1996, four television films were released between 1997 and 2003, with two point-and-click video games released for PC: one in 2009, and a sequel in 2012. A spin-off book series continues publication at present.

Series producers Peter S. Fischer, Richard Levinson and William Link developed the lead role for actress Jean Stapleton, who was initially somewhat interested but eventually turned it down, threatening the project.

Scrambling to find another major star, the producers thought Angela Lansbury would be perfect for the part of Jessica Fletcher but did not think that she would be interested in a television series. 

Earlier, she had acted in two film adaptations of Agatha Christie's mystery novels: as Salome Otterbourne in Death on the Nile (1978) and as Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack'd (1980). When the latter film did poorly -despite an all-star cast including Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, and Tony Curtis- the offer for Lansbury to reprise Miss Marple in three more films never materialized.

When she made it known she would be available if the right project came along, the three creators sent her the script and almost immediately, Lansbury felt she could do something with the role of Jessica Fletcher. With Murder, She Wrote debuting on Sunday, September 30, 1984, the producers were able to parlay their mystery writer/amateur detective premise into a 12-year hit for CBS. It also made Lansbury, known previously for her motion picture and Broadway stage work, a household name for millions of television viewers. The title comes from Murder, She Said, which was the title of a 1961 film adaptation of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple novel 4:50 from Paddington.

The show revolves around the day-to-day life of Jessica Fletcher (née MacGill), a widowed and retired English teacher, who becomes a successful mystery writer. Despite fame and fortune, Jessica remains a resident of Cabot Cove, a small coastal community in Maine, and maintains her links with all of her old friends, never letting her success go to her head.

Murder, She Wrote was mostly filmed on sound stages at Universal Studios in Universal City, California (near Los Angeles). The series also filmed exterior shots and some episodes on location in the Northern California town of Mendocino, which stood in for the fictional Maine town of Cabot Cove.

More information: Angela Lansbury, Murder She Wrote in Honolulu

Mystery is something that appeals to most everybody.

Angela Lansbury

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

'ALOHA FROM HAWAII VIA SATELLITE' BY ELVIS PRESLEY

Yesterday, Jessica Fletcher and The Grandma were talking about a friend in common who was celebrating her 95th anniversary, Angela Lansbury.

 

Angela is considered one of the most respectable actresses currently and she has a long career with great roles in theatre, TV and cinema.

 

Jessica and The Grandma remember how Angela explained to them about one of her favourite films, Blue Hawaii, a movie filmed in Hawaii with Elvis Presley. They have been talking about this film and about one of the most popular Elvis's LP's and films, Aloha from Hawaii Via Satellite.

Blue Hawaii is a 1961 American musical romantic comedy film directed by Norman Taurog and starring Elvis Presley.

 

The screenplay by Hal Kanter was nominated by the Writers Guild of America in 1962 in the category of Best Written American Musical.

 

The film opened at number two in box office receipts for that week and, despite mixed reviews from critics, finished as the 10th top-grossing film of 1961 and 14th for 1962 on the Variety national box office survey, earning $5 million. The film won a fourth place prize Laurel Award in the category of Top Musical of 1961
 

Aloha from Hawaii Via Satellite is a live album by American singer and musician Elvis Presley, released by RCA Records in February 1973.

 

It peaked at #1 on the Billboard chart in the spring of the same year. Despite the satellite innovation, the US did not air the concert until April 4. 

Aloha from Hawaii, which was a worldwide ratings smash, went to #1 on the Billboard album chart. The album dominated the charts, reaching #1 in both the pop and country charts in the US.

The album was certified Gold on February 13, 1973, platinum and 2× Platinum on May 20, 1988, 3× Platinum on July 15, 1999, and 5× Platinum on August 1, 2002, by the RIAA. On April 15, 2016, the BPI certified the album Silver for sales of 60,000 units.

Aloha from Hawaii is a two-disc set -only the second such release of Presley's career, the first being 1969's double set From Memphis to Vegas/From Vegas to Memphis, which contained one album each of studio and concert recordings. It was initially released only in quadraphonic sound, becoming the first album in the format to top the Billboard album chart. After Quadrophonic sound failed to catch on, RCA issued a standard stereophonic version of the album.

The album contains all the live performances from the TV special, but omits the five songs Presley recorded after the show and which were featured on the original broadcast; these would be issued later on the album Mahalo from Elvis. The album also omits Presley's brief announcement concerning the concert being presented for the benefit of the Kui Lee Cancer Fund.

This is the penultimate live album that Presley released during his lifetime, the last being Elvis Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis the following year. Later soundtracks for the TV special Elvis in Concert and the documentary This Is Elvis were released posthumously.

More information: Elvis Australia

 (Angela Lansbury)

Chad think of who you are,
remember you come from a fine family.

 
(Elvis Presley)

I'm sure you'll do enough remembering for both of us.

 

Blue Hawaii