Angie & Me: Love Affair with a Middle-Aged Lady

Celebrity deaths can be tricky.

There’s the “oh I didn’t even realize she was still alive” comment. There are the mega-fans who are devastated, creating shrines or YouTube tribute videos to weep with. Then there’s the gaggle of crazies that want to elevate the death to a level of 24-hour tribute reporting that the general public finally screams, “Enough, already!” (Think Queen Elizabeth coverage.)

We’ve been all over the losing-a-celebrity map recently – beautiful Olivia Newton-John. James Caan. The one-of-a-kind Jerry Lee Lewis and Loretta Lynn, plus other trailblazers like Nichelle Nichols, Leslie Jordan, Naomi Judd or Sidney Poitier. 

A few years back, friends and I pondered the gasps that’ll be heard around the world as some true biggies shuffle off this mortal coil. Entertainers like Carol Burnett or Dolly Parton – ladies who cross socioeconomic, political, male/female and generational divides to have all types of fans and admirers. Can you imagine the zeitgeist-core-shaking that will happen when now-80-something Julie Andrews is suddenly no longer with us? People will Lose – Their – Shit.

Decades of annual Sound-of-Music-viewing family memories or emotions tied to childhood and any Mary Poppins song will come a’ floodin’. “Feed the Birds”…? “Let’s Go Fly a Kite…”? Sniffle, sniffle.

At the time, I wanted to add a name to the list that would affect me if we ever lost her: Angela Lansbury. But… did she belong on such a list?  She wasn’t quite a superstar like say, a Michael Jackson or John Lennon. I assumed this strong attachment I had would of course only be unique to quirky little me. 

Imagine my shock last month to discover I was wrong. A full week after her death at 96, so many people were still coming to terms with it, feeling compelled to post their Angela Lansbury stories. A cousin even mentioned she and her young teenage kids watch Murder She Wrote episodes in the background while getting ready for the school day. Say what? Apparently there are people across the globe who welcome Angela into their homes daily as comfort food, just like some use The Golden Girls the same way.

But where did this hard-to-explain connection to a 60-something actress start for me? I mean, YES, I was the weird 11-year-old kid who tuned into a Jessica Fletcher mystery every Sunday with the grannies with as much fervor as other boys craving Knight Rider. At the time, I was all about mystery books and whodunit TV specials – the Hardy Boys, Encyclopedia Brown, Perry Mason Returns glossy TV specials, and also therefore, Murder She Wrote.

I knew I was watching a show with “an old lady,” but who cares? – she was smart, funny and exuded a kindness while still pursuing cold blooded killers. And to me, she seemed like and looked like my Grandma Minnie. I remember pointing it out, “Grandma, you look just like Angela Lansbury; she reminds me of you, with your reddish-blonde hair! Don’t ya think?” At the time I wasn’t sure she took it as a compliment, but looking back, Angela was probably a good 12 years younger than Grandma, so perhaps she was flattered… (and mildly concerned her grandson fixated on such things, but I digress).

But it was my new obsession with Agatha Christie books that led me to discovering Angela Lansbury’s lengthy career, in reverse. I’d fired up the VCR to record the 1978 movie version of  Death on the Nile – with an all-star cast! – and was subsequently stunned speechless to discover my dear, sweet Jessica Fletcher inhabiting the character of a gaudy, feather-adorned, turban-wearing, man-hungry romance novelist named Salome Otterbourne, bringing welcomed humor with her always-drunken vibe while tango dancing with David Niven or pawing Peter Ustinov.

A year or so later, I found my calling, my true north: high school musical theater. Diving in head first and researching all-things-showtunes, my 13-year-old show-queen-in-training self was suddenly confronted with clips from the 1979 Broadway musical Sweeney Todd. Wait now, you’re telling me Jessica Fletcher… is a singer, and she’s part of a murderous duo that bakes their victims into meat pies… to be eaten?!? Angela Lansbury did a part like that? She’s one of us “crazy theater people!!” I realized with glee. 

It continued. And wait, Ms. Lansbury was the toast of Broadway when she made a “career comeback” as the original Mame Dennis in the musical Mame in ’66? You say she and Bea Arthur are best pals in real life? (Can you think of two who are more different?) And wait, she made her Broadway debut in an obscure flop called Anyone Can Whistle at a “washed up” age of 39!!!, playing the villainous matron and working with Stephen Sondheim? You mean to tell me she was the first star having the guts to attempt the impossible: to recreate the role of Mama Rose in Gypsy, a role all assumed no one could ever do justice to since Ethel Merman’s voice and personality were forever stamped all over it? 

Whoa. Murder Mysteries: check. A Tony-winning mother hen of the Broadway crowd: checkmate. 

And it was probably ten years later I discovered her old movies, and lo and behold, a whole other side of this woman. Oh, first, she’d been a movie star!?! Nominated for an Oscar in her first movie, Gaslight, and then a subsequent nomination in only her second movie, The Picture of Dorian Gray, age 18 and 19? Check. Part of MGM’s storied studio-system stable of stars? Double check. When I witnessed her as the va-va-voom bad glamour girl against Judy Garland in The Harvey Girls, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

And meanwhile, in my college years she was still out there, putting her vocal stamp on Beauty and the Beast’s Mrs. Potts, to enchant a whole new generation of Disney animation fans for decades.

But still, come on, Joe, there are tons of hard-working actors with lengthy careers. Why did I have this affection, admiration and genuine respect for this particular human? I think I was impressed with her gumption and longevity, her kind, class-act professionalism in a career full of stars who faded out amidst backstabbing hysterics while climbing the ladder. And that she had the talent to back it all up.

Here she was, an obvious, unique talent, nominated for Oscars right out of the gate, but surrounded by sex goddess bombshell babes like Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth. Despite only being in her 20s, poor Angela kept being cast as much older women.

I heard so many people say, “I thought she’d be with us forever – she seemed eternal,” after her death. Well, no wonder she seemed eternal – the woman had been playing middle aged and older since 1955!

My theater-boy soul could relate. (It’s all about me, you see!) At age 13, I was cast as Ado Annie’s old-man father in the musical Oklahoma, then as Hellen Keller’s father in The Miracle Worker the year after. Inside, I wanted to play the handsome leading man type. But with my unnaturally deep voice and old-soul personality, I was always cast as the second lead or someone’s middle-aged dad again and again, before eventually honing in on murderous killer roles with a scary, deep-bass laugh.

I’m not crying for Angela – the woman worked for decades. But she must’ve been so frustrated, in her 20s and 30s, always playing some middle-aged mother to the star, a harpy, a nagging raving bitch of a wife, the hero’s loose and demanding woman on the side, or a power-hungry, sexless political businesswomen. For evidence, check out State of the Union (1948), A Lawless Street (1955), The Long Hot Summer (1958), The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960), Blue Hawaii (1961), All Fall Down (1962), In the Cool of the Day, (1963), The World of Henry Orient (1964), Dear Heart (1964) and Harlow (1965). She reaches a level of shrill that brings your shoulder blades together. 

No wonder she wanted to escape to Broadway. But one of her shrew or villain roles, for me, was elevated to pure evil. When I first was introduced to The Manchurian Candidate, my respect for her reached a new level. Her scene as the mother from hell, briefing her brainwashed son to assassinate a political rival is spine-chilling. Again, she’s only in her late 30s, but plays a 50-something matriarch with conviction. 

Ain’t no trace of Jessica Fletcher there!! What frustrated her so much in youth… is what turned into her superpower – “castable” for decades and then more decades. (Again, back to ME! – I always felt the same way. As a performer in my 20s and 30s, directors had a hard time casting me…. I hadn’t grown into my cast-ability – my baby face and sheltered innocence had to age into my old soul essence.)

I admired and loved Angie because the work stood on its own – the work, the work, the work – and mainly because people of all walks of life had nothing but kind things to say about her. 

A more senior catering friend told me how he encountered her almost daily in his building’s elevator in the ‘70s when he lived in Manhattan, as she resided upstairs. He adored her.   

In a recent documentary, playwright Terrence McNally mentioned, “Angela Lansbury saved my life,” to which I threw up my hands and said, “Of course she did.” He went on to recount how he was deep into alcoholism, career spiraling nowhere, and while other industry types looked the other way, Angela, this major theater star, stopped what she was doing and took the time to take him into a separate room during a party, sat him down and said, “Why are you trying to kill yourself? You’re a bright light, a talented writer. My own kids were decimated by drugs for a long time. Listen to me, very carefully – look me in the eye – STOP drinking.” Peer-to-peer, yet motherly advice. And he did.

She never won an Emmy for Murder She Wrote, (though nominated 12 consecutive times), but as a 60-something woman she dominated television, was a cash cow for CBS and most tellingly, used her power there to cast and hire former peers, MGM star of yesteryear, for guest spots so they could work and qualify for health insurance and pensions.  

A class act. Buckets of talent. A collosal ambition. Yet, a way of treating colleagues with kindness and respect. Plenty of heartaches, disappointments and feeling snubbed, but a woman who learned the art of reinventing herself again, and again and again. 

You’d think I’d have crossed her path a few times with all the industry events I helped cater, but dammit, no, she remained elusive. I should’ve tried harder. 

In 2004 or so I was wandering the New York theater district and the play Deuce was letting out, and there she was, with fans. I stopped to take this pic of Angela and costar Marian Seldes signing autographs. Why I didn’t stick around to at least look her in the eye and say something eludes me. I guess, like everyone, I thought she’d always be with us. In 2005, I had the good fortune to be at a Sondheim tribute at the Hollywood Bowl when she and Len Cariou waltzed out to gasping applause and brought down the house doing the Sweeney Todd Act One closing number, “A Little Priest” flawlessly, even 25 years after they’d debuted in the show as “already middle-aged” actors. 

And then eight years ago, I made it happen. Yours truly finally got to see her perform in her scene-stealing part in the play Blythe Spirit. I witnessed her – at age 87 or 88 – earn laughs with ease, do a little dance where she kicked her leg up above her hip, and I thought to myself, “This woman played Liz Taylor’s teenage sister in National Velvet, and she’s still here, doing what she loves, and doing it well.”

It’s like she was everyone’s Grandmother, for the past four decades. And like many grandmothers, she pursued work and a career in a men’s world of sexual favors, misogyny and casting couches, and made it through. She danced the night away at Oscar night balls, kicked up her heels with the chorus boys in Mame, raised a family, and spearheaded a ratings juggernaut until around age 73.

It has to be a rarity for one actress to say she’s played opposite Katherine Hepburn… and also Jim Carrey. Sassing Ingrid Bergman… and charming Ben Wishaw. Acting with Gene Kelly, Vincent Price and Jerry Orbach – Hedy Lamar, Tony Curtis, Kim Novak and Randolph Scott – with Danny Kaye, Paul Newman and Emma Thompson. Collaborating with Peter Sellers, Jane Fonda and Mia Farrow, to Maggie Smith and Victor Garber. She flew inside animation in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, sang with Linda Ronstadt and Kevin Kline in The Pirates of Penzance, chided Catherine Zeta-Jones on Broadway, and even did an episode of Magnum P.I. with Tom Selleck. She employed more than a thousand working actors on Murder She Wrote (including my partner, Eddie on one episode!), and dropped in on Law and Order – all while still being the actress who once played mom to Warren Beatty… and Elvis. 

THAT is what you call a career that spans decades and makes an impression on different generations. She was that rare thing – a reliable character actress who became an above-the-title, name-up-in-lights star in her middle aged years. And for all these reasons, I loved her. Broadway, classic movies, television – even VHS exercise videos – she did it all and did it well.

Thank you, dear Angela, for proving the naysayers wrong again and again. May we all age with such grace and relevance. Thank you for all the laughs I still get watching you stumble around in Death on the Nile. Thank you for having the power to get me misty-eyed again and again watching you perform Mrs. Potts’ song before a live audience, age 88 or 89.

It’s nice to have finally learned I’m in good company with others who are missing your shining light. For once, “only the good die young” wasn’t true.