Lansbury was in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) as Mrs. Iselin, the icy, ruthless mother of a war veteran-turned-brainwashed-Communist assassin. She won much critical praise for her chilling performance, and won a third Oscar nomination. In the film, Lansbury's son was played by Laurence Harvey, who was only three years younger than she. Lucille Ball had been considered for the role that went to Lansbury, but didn't get it. A decade later, Ball got Lansbury's title role in the film version of Mame, the role Lansbury created on Broadway. Lansbury has been quoted in an interview with CNN's Larry King as saying that her character in The Manchurian Candidate was her favorite of her many film roles. Such an evil character was unlikely to win Lansbury the Supporting Oscar over little Patty Duke's Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker, however, and Duke won the award that year.
On Broadway, Lansbury first received good reviews from her very first musical outing, the short-lived 1964 Stephen Sondheim musical Anyone Can Whistle, which co-starred Lee Remick.
Perhaps the biggest triumph of Lansbury's career was her smash hit success on the New York stage in the title role of Mame , the musical by Jerry Herman, based on the movie Auntie Mame that had originally starred Rosalind Russell. Opening at The Winter Garden Theater on May 24,1966, Mame ran for 1508 performances. Lansbury's long-running portrayal as Herman's version of Mame, opposite Bea Arthur as Vera, earned her a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical, her first. She and Bea Arthur became life-long friends. Lansbury was the "toast of Broadway" in the Tony award winning musical in which she was nightly singing and dancing to not only the memorable title song, but to such classic hits as: Open a New Window, We Need a Little Christmas, Bosom Buddies, It's Today, and If He Walked Into My Life.
During the 1960s Lansbury's popularity from, and association with, Mame had her much in demand everywhere in the media of the era. Ever the humanitarian, she wisely used her fame during her appearances as an opportunity to benenfit others wherever possible. For example, she did a stint as a guest panelist on the popular Sunday Night CBS-TV quiz show, What's My Line?. During the program, Lansbury made an impassioned plea for viewers to contribute to the 1966 Muscular Dystrophy Association fundraising drive, on behalf of chairman Jerry Lewis, to much applause and fanfare.
Subsequent Tony awards were earned by Lansbury for Dear World (1969) and the first Broadway revival of Gypsy (1974). She is a two-time winner of the Sarah Siddons Award (1975 & 1980) for dramatic achievement in Chicago theatre.
promotional poster for the 1945 film The Picture of Dorian Gray, featuring a young Angela Lansbury as Sibyl Vane.Back in the world of films years later after a string of further Tony Awards on Broadway, Lansbury returned to films, playing Salome Otterbourne in Death on the Nile (1978). Lansbury played Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack'd (1980) somewhat unsuccessfully. She then turned to character voice work in animated films like The Last Unicorn (1982), winning a great deal of praise for her affectionate turn as the singing teapot Mrs. Potts in the Disney hit Beauty and the Beast (1991). She reprised the role as Mrs. Potts in the Square-Enix/Disney video game Kingdom Hearts II in 2006, and also did character work as the Dowager Empress in the less well-received animated film Anastasia in 1997.
Her English music-hall turn as the affection-starved meat-pie entrepreneuse, Mrs. Lovett, in Stephen Sondheim's ballad opera Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street earned her yet another Tony Award in 1979. In a television interview with Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies aired in August of 2006, Lansbury stated that, theatrically, she feels she would "most like to be remembered for this role" as Mrs. Lovett. She also stated that this production was also a triumph and a comeback of sorts for Stephen Sondheim, whom she admires. She has received a Tony nomination for every lead role she has essayed on Broadway, and won each time (total of 4 times), unlike her unlucky record at the Oscars, or at the Emmys. In the same interview, Lansbury did note that she is the happy recipient of several other prominent awards including People's Choice Awards and Golden Globe Awards.
As Jessica Fletcher in the long-running television series, Murder, She Wrote (1984 - 1996), she found her biggest success and a worldwide following. It was to be one of the longest running prime time detective drama series in US TV history and made her one of the highest paid actresses in the world and a record as the most nominated lead actress without a win in the prime time Emmy awards (with 12 nominations).
In the early 1990s Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom awarded Angela Lansbury (a presumably honorary) CBE. She was named a Disney Legend in 1995. She received a Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997, and Kennedy Center Honors in 2000.
*Wikipedia*
Nanny McPhee- Aunt Adelaide (2005)
Beauty and the Beast- Voice- Mrs. Potts (1991)
Murder, She Wrote- Jessica Fletcher (1984-1996)
Bedknobs and Broomsticks- Eglantine Price (1971)
The Manchurian Candidate- Mrs. Iselin (1962)
The Long, Hot Summer- Minnie Littlejohn (1958)
Gaslight- Nancy Oliver (1944)
