Remembering the socialist legacy of Angela Lansbury

  

As s child. I learnt two things from Bedknobs and Broomsticks: witches are good and fascists are bad. RIP to  the great Irish-British and American actress  Dame Angela Lansbury  who according to a family statement  has died aged 96  peacefully in her sleep at her home in Los Angeles at 1:30 a.m.Tuesday, October 11, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday.

Angela Lansbury was one of the world's best-loved actresses with a career spanning eight decades, who  played countless theatre, TV and film roles, and  was recognized as the earliest surviving Oscar nominee, and hailed as "one of the last of the Golden Age of Hollywood stars"and a "Broadway and West End icon".

She wss born in Regent's Park, London on October 16, 1925 to the politician Edgar Lansbury and the Irish actress Moyna MacGill “within the sound of Bow bells,” Lansbury was an East London girl. 

In 1921, Edgar Lansbury was one of 30 Poplar councillors jailed as a result of the Poplar Rates Rebellion. a protest against unequal taxation in one of the poorest areas of London. led by his father George Lansbury, who was leader of the Labour Party from 1932 to 1935 when they were still considered a socialist party,who was at the van guard of a new generation of Labour leaders in London, a pacifist, socialist, pro-suffrage Labour politician, described as “the most lovable figure in modern politics” for his fierce integrity. and he paved the way in positioning Labour as the radical representatives of the working class.  

Angela previously said of her peace campaigner  father that he was her greatest inspiration: "This was the man who tried to stop the Second World War."

Angela Lansbury’s aunt, Daisy Postgate, Edgar’s sister, helped radical socialist suffragette legend Sylvia Pankhurst escape the police by dressing up as her. Daisy married Raymond Postgate, a journalist and founding member of the British Communist Party, in 1918.

Angela had an older half-sister, Isolde, and younger twin brothers Bruce and Edgar.In 1939 when other children were evacuated from London in advance of the Nazi bombings, Angela stayed to be near her mother, leaving regular schooling  and taking dancing and acting classes. The following year, Angela, her two brothers, and her mother fled England for New York. They made it, but the ship they crossed in was later sunk by U-boats . the family seemed to escape the war by a hair’s breadth.

After living briefly in New York, Angela moved to Los Angeles in 1942 and signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer, proceeding to appear in eleven films with the studio.

After earning an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for her role in George Cukor’s Gaslight (1944) as a young maid named Nancy Oliver who worked in the home of the film’s protagonist Paula Alquist, played by Ingrid Bergman.

She went on to co-star in “National Velvet” (1944) alongside Elizabeth Taylor. The 1945 adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” earned her a second Academy Award nomination and the first of 10 Golden Globes.

The following year, she played her first American character in the Oscar-winning musical “The Harvey Girls” (1946), starring Judy Garland.

It was the Broadway musical “Mame” (1966) that moved her to the A-list, won her first Tony (of five) and brought a loyal gay following. Lansbury had actively sought the role knowing it would show her strengths. Her character, the giddy, unconventional, charismatic socialite, Mame Dennis, had 10 songs to sing and more than 20 costume changes. Lansbury was 41 years old, and it was her first starring role on Broadway.

She appeared in Bedknobs and Broomsticks in 1971 featuring Lansbury as a magic-practicing, singing, dancing, Nazi-fighting would-be witch and reluctant nanny. and on stage in productions including The King And I and Sweeney Todd before landing her most famous role as Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote in 1984.

The TV show lasted for an astonishing twelve seasons.. one of the longest TV detective shows in history, and made Angela a worldwide household name.

Angela also provided her voice for a number of projects, perhaps most famously as Mrs Potts in Disney's Beauty and the Beast.

Throughout her eight-decade career, the actress won five Tony Awards, six Golden Globes and an Olivier Award and in 2014 The Queen gave her the title of Dame Angela Lansbury.

Angela Lansbury was married twice and had three children. In 1945 she eloped and unwittingly married her first husband, gay actor Richard Cromwell, when she was 19 and he was 35.  They divorced a year later but remained good friends until his death in 1960.

She married her second husband, Peter Shaw, in 1949 and they were together 54 years before his death in 2003.

She had a step-child called David who was Peter's from a previous marriage and the couple had two children together: Anthony Peter and Deidre Ann.

Anthony, 68, is a television director who has directed 69 episodes of Murder, She Wrote and Deidre, 67, owns a restaurant in West Hollywood.

Given her family history, it comes as no surprise Angela Lansbury was also a proud lifelong socialist. "I’m an actress,” Angela Lansbury declared in east London in 2014. “But I’m also a socialist.”

The Hollywood star had just received a damehood at Windsor Castle for services to arts, charity work and philanthropy.

But days later she returned to her family’s roots in Poplar.Poplar was hosting the Angela Lansbury Film Festival at Chrisp Street Market and Spotlight Community Centre.

Dame Angela told the crowds she owed her career and her humanitarianism to her rabble-rousing grandad, a Labour MP who devoted his life to helping the poor and was twice jailed for his efforts.

“He was like a man of steel,” she said.

When her twin roles as star and executive producer of Murder, She Wrote made her the "richest woman in TV”, she used her position to help those in need including down-on-their-luck actors.

She hired ageing stars from Hollywood’s golden era who were now struggling to book jobs, to make sure they didn’t lose their health insurance and pensions.

She also led campaigns to tackle AIDS, supported victims of domestic violence and funded student scholarships and medical research.

An obituary for actress Madlyn Rhue, published by the Los Angeles Times in 2003, revealed Lansbury helped her during an illness. Lansbury heard Rhue was on the cusp of losing her Screen Actors Guild medical coverage because she was short of the annual earnings requirements.

As a result, Lansbury created a character for Madlyn Rhue in Murder, She Wrote. Rhue was cast as a librarian who appeared in the series every three or four episodes.

Dame Angela was made a CBE in the Queen’s 1994 birthday honours and was made a DBE in the 20141New Year Honours for services to drama, theatre and philanthropy which included her successful fundraising for HIV/AIDS research.

AIDS hit the creative community early on, including her own circle. Lansbury, with her lifelong friend Elizabeth Taylor, responded whilst President Ronald Reagan stayed silent. The two actors spoke out in support of gay men and together raised millions for AIDS research.

She appeared in a 1995 AIDS Facts for Life commercial demanding that Americans “get the facts”. In 1996, just when new life-saving drugs changed HIV to a manageable chronic condition, Lansbury was honoured for her remarkable acting career and AIDS fundraising at an event that itself raised more than a million dollars for the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR) and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

She was presented with the AmFAR Award of Distinction. The inscription reads: "To Angela Lansbury, for her courageous spirit andandd selfless commitment in the fight against AIDS."

Her emotional,10-minute acceptance speech sparked a standing ovation. "Never give up on the fight until the war is won,” Lansbury told the audience. “And we will win!"

Angela Lansbury was “inordinately proud of her family’s political stance” said The Times, and politics would have been her “second choice of career” if it weren’t for acting. 

Despite her glittering career, Dame Angela insisted in one of her last interviews she said that she did not want to be remembered for her career, but revealed her last wish is to be remembered “as an OK gal"  As tributes continues to pour in, and we honor her memory lets not forget this icons continual commitment and dedication to the socialist cause and her rich contribution to to our world..