Monday, December 30, 2013

In praise of Dame Angela Lansbury



We seem to have run out of Liberal Democrat MPs to knight, so let me take a moment to congratulate Angela Lansbury on her honour.

She is the granddaughter of the Labour leader George Lansbury and also a kinswoman of the great Oliver Postgate and the Australian politician Malcolm Turnbull.

I am not a great fan of Murder She Wrote. I mean, how many nephews can one woman have? And how come they are always being unjustly accused of murder? There's no smoke without fire. That's what I say.

No, if you want to see Angela Lansbury at her best, try to catch her as Em, leader of a dance-hall troupe, in The Harvey Girls.

Or see you can see her on the London stage next year. At the age of 88 she will be playing Madame Arcati in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit.

2 comments:

Frank Little said...

Then there's "Gaslight" (the Walbrook/Bergman version) where she plays a maid, or more chillingly the mother of the candidate in Frankenheimer's "The Manchurian Candidate".

There's one thing to be said for "Murder, She Wrote": it has given some pocket-money (much needed in some cases I suspect) to survivors of classic Hollywood.

Louise Ankers said...

Gaslight is brilliant!