Angela Lansbury, the star of stage, screen, and television is to receive a special lifetime achievement award at this year’s Tony awards.
Many will remember Angela Lansbury from her success on Murder She Wrote, but long before this series, Angela was a star and a contract player from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Lansbury received her first Oscar nomination for the film Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.
Angela went on to receive her second Oscar nomination for the 1945 film The Picture of Dorian Gray. But stardom was of no interest to Lansbury, she worked with many of the greats including Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman, Orson Welles, Bette Davis, and Maggie Smith, but was always interested in projects that challenged her and under the studio system she had little to no input into her next acting role.
Dissatisfied with the studio system, Lansbury didn’t renew her contract with famed studio MGM and went on the try her chances on Broadway.
Lansbury first appeared on Broadway in 1957 in a lighthearted comedy called Hotel Paradiso.
Angela continued to act on the silver screen, gaining notoriety and another Oscar nomination for The Manchurian Candidate.
In 1964 she starred again on Broadway, in Anyone Can Whistle, a flop, but the musical introduced her to Stephen Sondheim, with who she worked on many of his future productions.
Lansbury cemented herself as a Broadway star with a breakout role, Mame Dennis, in the celebrated Broadway musical Mame. The show opened on Broadway in 1966 and Angela Lansbury won her first Tony award for that role.
Dear World, a musical adaptation of Jean Giraudoux’s, The Madwoman of Chaillot, earned Angela her second Tony award.
In 1974 Angela Lansbury went on to star as Mama Rose in the famed revival of Gypsy. This performance won Angela her third Tony award.
The role of Nellie Lovett in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was a role Angela Lansbury was born to play. Jumping at the chance to work with Stephen Sondheim again, this role earned Lansbury her fourth Tony award in 1979.
In 1982 Angela Lansbury was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
In March 2009 she returned to Broadway in the revival of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit playing Madame Arcati. This role won her a fifth Tony award.
In 2013 Angela Lansbury and James Earl Jones toured Australia with the play, Driving Miss Daisy, before she toured in 2014 to London, performing on the West End reprising her role as Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit.
In 2019 Angela returned to Broadway for a one-night benefit staging of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.
Angela Lansbury continues to actively work and as of 2022, you can hear Angela as the narrator on the Beauty and the Beast UK tour.
Angela Lansbury is a national treasure who deserves recognition for her ongoing excellence in acting. The Lifetime Achievement Award presented to her is long overdue and can be watched as the ceremony is broadcast on June 12th on CBS.