Lansbury

I was halfway through my own quick hit on Angela Lansbury’s passing when Paul posted his. For the first half of my life, Angela Lansbury was ever and only Jessica Fletcher. I watched Murder, She Wrote religiously in its early seasons, alongside my grandmother who watched it for the entire run. I remember the Magnum PI crossover, alongside the vast host of unlikely murderers and hapless murder victims that populated the series. I remember that the first season was altogether darker the the later seasons, and was willing to explore parts of her personal and romantic life that the later seasons tended to shy away from (see especially Lovers and Other Killers, where the murder suspect is a younger man who actively pursues Fletcher… and she’s clearly into it even though she turns him down in the end).

But at some point, and I genuinely don’t remember when, I watched the original Manchurian Candidate. Eleanor Shaw Iselin is quite simply one of the finest villains ever committed to celluloid, played as a fifty-something woman by a 37 year old Lansbury. There are some dark, incestuous undertones to this performance as well, and it’s a shame that Lansbury only rarely had the opportunity to explore the kind of truly villainous characters that she so clearly could excel at.

Of course, the bulk of Lansbury’s contribution came on the stage, and I cannot comment on it beyond acknowledging how exceedingly well-regarded she was among the dramatic community. I recall that the last time I saw her on screen was the 2016 Tonys, which I was watching for reasons that elude me now. She delivered an award alongside James Earl Jones, and at that point seemed to retain all of her energy and vitality. Ninety-seven years with profound artistic accomplishments is a life well-lived, so it would be wrong to think of her passing as a tragedy. Still, I wish that Hollywood had been more capable of capturing Lansbury’s enormous and obvious gifts.