Angela Lansbury, 'Murder, She Wrote' and 'Beauty and the Beast' star, dies at 96 - NBC News

Angela Lansbury, a versatile histrion who wowed generations of fans arsenic a murderous baker, a singing teapot, a Soviet spy and a small-town sleuth among a big of different memorable roles, died connected Tuesday, her household announced. She was 96.

“The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are bittersweet to denote that their parent died peacefully successful her slumber astatine location successful Los Angeles astatine 1:30 AM today, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, just 5 days shy of her 97th birthday," her household said successful a statement. 

The London-born histrion took her life’s last bow arsenic 1 of the astir decorated players successful signifier history.

Lansbury won 5 Tony Awards, astir precocious successful 2009 for champion featured histrion successful a play for her enactment successful Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit.”

Her champion known enactment connected the Great White Way was astir apt arsenic ghoulish pastry shaper Nellie Lovett, successful “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.” She cooked up a Tony for best philharmonic histrion successful 1979 for that role.

Her different 3 Tony wins were for champion histrion successful a philharmonic for “Mame” successful 1966, “Dear World” successful 1969 and “Gypsy” successful 1975.

Audra McDonald and Julie Harris are the lone actors to triumph six Tonys; Harris’ sixth Tony was for beingness achievement.

Lansbury took her singing accomplishment from Broadway to the large screen, via an animator’s drafting committee of the 1991 musical “Beauty and the Beast.”

Lansbury voiced the sentimental Mrs. Pott, which scored arsenic 1 of the fashionable movie’s astir beloved moments.

She took to the signifier astatine Lincoln Center successful New York in 2016 to observe the film’s 25th anniversary, and brought the location down with a rendition of the title’s pb tune.

The histrion had already enjoyed a agelong and palmy vocation erstwhile she took connected the small-screen relation that galore Americans volition retrieve astir — arsenic enigma writer and amateur transgression combatant Jessica Fletcher connected the CBS Sunday nighttime deed “Murder, She Wrote.”

“Murder” ran for 12 seasons, from 1984 to 1996, with Lansbury playing a widowed enigma writer whose keen observations ever outwitted criminals and adjacent the section constabulary earlier the existent slayer would beryllium unmasked wrong the hour.

The amusement was a staple of Sunday nighttime TV astatine 8 p.m., and was 1 of CBS’ biggest hits in the 1980s.

It followed “60 Minutes” and, successful the fall, the National Football Conference game. Lead CBS play-by-play antheral Pat Summerall would famously archer viewers to enactment tuned for “Murder ... She Wrote” with a dramatically elongated pause.

“We recovered our assemblage and they were loyal to the end,” Lansbury said successful a 1998 interrogation with the tv academy.

Shows similar “Murder, She Wrote” ushered successful a caller epoch of television with much pistillate players taking pb roles connected America’s tiny screen. The TV academy nominated Lansbury for 12 Emmys for “Murder,” though she ne'er took location the trophy.

Lansbury was inducted into the TV Hall of Fame successful 1996.

“‘Murder, She Wrote’ has fixed maine much worldwide attraction than immoderate different relation I played successful the movies oregon connected the stage,” she said successful 2013 portion receiving an honorary Academy Award. “It’s a fantastic happening to beryllium known successful Spain, Portugal, successful Paris, successful France and Germany and everywhere.”

Lansbury became specified an important TV fig that immoderate fans mightiness person forgotten what an important movie vocation she had successful the epoch of black-and-white film, and the 3 champion supporting histrion Oscar nominations she received for 3 legendary works.

She played the maid successful the 1944 classical “Gaslight,” astir a woman, played by prima Ingrid Bergman, who was being manipulated to question nonsubjective truth. The term “gas lighting,” meaning to psychologically manipulate with lies and mendacious narratives, became a fashionable word successful the 21st period American vocabulary, peculiarly after Donald Trump was elected president.

That relation scored Lansbury her archetypal Oscar information earlier she picked up different for her little but captious relation successful 1945’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”

Lansbury recalled that erstwhile moving with manager John Frankenheimer connected the 1962 movie “All Fall Down” the movie maestro slammed a publication connected the array successful beforehand of her and ordered her to work it. The publication was Richard Condon’s “The Manchurian Candidate.”

“I took it location and I work it and I called him up and said, ‘Wow,’” Landsbury told the TV academy successful 1998.

She was formed arsenic Mrs. Eleanor Iselin, a scheming, domineering parent — a relation that brought Lansbury her 3rd Oscar information for champion supporting actress.

“We surely didn’t envision the longevity” of the Cold War-era thriller, Landsbury said successful 1998. “We felt due to the fact that of the bonzer taxable substance and the mode successful which the crippled was devised, it was truthful bonzer that it was going to either descend oregon swim. And it swan and it’s inactive swimming.”

The aboriginal acting large was born Angela Brigid Lansbury connected Oct. 16, 1925, successful London, the girl of histrion Moyna Macgill and timber enforcement Edgar Lansbury.

Both her begetter and gramps (George Lansbury) were progressive successful wide British politics. Edgar Lansbury was politician of the London borough of Poplar, portion George Lansbury served as Labour Party leader in 1932-34.

“My gramps was a precise ample fig successful my beingness arsenic a child,” Lansbury told the TV academy. “He was an bonzer idiosyncratic who garnered the admiration and emotion of the British labor movement, which helium led, and due to the fact that helium was the astir charismatic figure, a precise benignant elemental plain man. He ne'er drank, helium ne'er smoked.”

Though calved into a culturally elite family, Lansbury’s puerility was chaotic.

Lansbury was 9 erstwhile her begetter died successful 1935. At the outbreak of World War II a fewer years later, Lansbury’s parent feared London would soon beryllium bombed by Nazi Germany.

“My parent sold everything that she could and we got connected a boat,” Lansbury said.

The RMS Duchess of Atholl carried Lansbury, her parent and 2 younger brothers to Canada successful the summertime of 1940, and they instantly boarded a bid for New York.

Lansbury landed astatine the Lucy Fagan School successful Rockefeller Center, wherever she had a bird’s-eye presumption of the skating rink and what seemed similar a cleanable snapshot of utopian American life.

“I’ll ne'er hide that archetypal Christmas,” Lansbury recalled fondly. “America was inactive not astatine war, the histrion was up and everything was beautiful.”

She scored her archetypal nonrecreational gig astatine the Samovar Club successful Montreal. The 16-year-old lied astir being 19 and performed characters from Coward’s “I Went to a Marvelous Party” for a whopping $60 a week — what Lansbury thought was a tiny luck then.

After that three-week gig ended, Lansbury’s parent was successful occidental Canada with the touring institution of “Tonight astatine 8:30.”

Macgill had the agleam thought of sending for her girl and having them some spell to Los Angeles, superior of the world’s young question representation industry. 

The brace rapidly became enveloped successful the ex-pat British acting assemblage successful Hollywood, and those connections led Lansbury to her archetypal surface tests for “Gaslight” and “Dorian Gray.”

She signed a seven-year woody with MGM, and astatine 17 she was making $500 a week. Under the aged workplace system, MGM controlled her enactment and formed the young histrion successful roles that Lansbury said she had nary concern playing.

But that turned retired to beryllium a boon and launched her extraordinarily versatile career

“It was similar an aggravated grooming period, playing quality roles, playing older than myself, learning a batch of skills I different would ne'er person learned,” Lansbury said.

And contempt Lansbury’s agelong and decorated vocation successful the states, she ne'er mislaid interaction with her roots, and the United Kingdom ne'er forgot astir her.

Queen Elizabeth II bestowed the DBE (Dame Commander of the British Empire) grant connected Lansbury successful 2014 during a ceremonial astatine Windsor Castle.

“It is simply a precise arrogant time for maine to beryllium recognized by the state of my birth, and to conscionable the queen nether these circumstances is simply a uncommon and beauteous occasion,” Lansbury said that day.

She is survived by her 3 children, Anthony, Deirdre and David, her 3 grandchildren, Peter, Katherine and Ian, positive 5 large grandchildren and her brother, shaper Edgar Lansbury.

"She was proceeded successful decease by her hubby of 53 years, Peter Shaw. A backstage household ceremonial volition beryllium held astatine a day to beryllium determined,” her household said.