From California to Conna: How Angela Lansbury ended up living in Co Cork
Angela Lansbury with her son Anthony and daughter Deirdre at their bungalow at Conna, Co Cork, in 1972. They later moved to East Cork. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive
FOR most actors, a standing ovation at the end of a performance is a crowning moment, a show of appreciation for what has gone before. It is not many actors who get an ovation without even uttering a word — as happened when actress Angela Lansbury took to the West End stage a couple of years ago.
John O’Shea, a founder member of Cork’s Everyman Theatre, recounts how the actress’s appearance left the audience starstruck at the performance in 2014.
“I was visiting one of my children in London and I had booked seats for Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit in which Angela was starring as the clairvoyant Madame Arcati. She didn’t appear until halfway through the play and she was given a standing ovation — she had to wait until it was over before she could continue. She was 89 and so beautiful and poised. She was the star. The show ran for six months, with six late performances a week plus two matinees — that’s eight performances a week and she did the whole run.”
Such dedication and commitment illustrates how 90-year-old Lansbury is a trouper in the most theatrical sense of the word. Her career has spanned 75 years and she has starred in more than 60 films, a long list of critically- acclaimed theatrical productions, not to mention her much-loved portrayal of Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote, the longest-running detective drama series in TV history. On the way, she has picked up five Tony awards and six Golden Globes.
More recently, she has become something of a pop culture icon, with one Twitter account, Lansbury Reactions, chronicling Jessica Fletcher’s many inimitable expressions in GIF form. Her achievements will be celebrated at the Dublin International Film Festival this weekend, where she will receive the festival tribute award, the Volta.
Lansbury, whose second name is Brigid, travels on an Irish passport, as her mother, actress Moyna Macgill was born in Belfast. Her paternal grandfather, George Lansbury, was an MP and leader of the Labour Party. Her father Edgar, a timber merchant, died when Angela was just nine, prompting her mother to move to America with Angela, her twin brothers and her half-sister (who later married Peter Ustinov). Fame came quickly for Lansbury when she was cast in Gaslight aged just 17; she received an Oscar nomination for her role as cockney maid Nancy.
“I was wrapping Christmas gifts in a department store one minute, then playing opposite Ingrid Bergman the next. It was little short of a miracle,” she said.
Lansbury was then cast in the The Picture Of Dorian Gray, for which she also received an Oscar nomination. She became firm friends with the actor who played the title role, Hurd Hatfield — like Lansbury, he later went on to become a resident of north Cork. Lansbury moved to the village of Conna with her husband Peter Shaw and their children in the early 1970s. Lansbury has spoken about how she wanted to get away from Los Angeles as her son Anthony had become addicted to drugs and her daughter Deirdre had fallen in with the Manson family.
“They hired a car when they arrived at Shannon and drove around,” says John O’Shea. “They saw the house for sale in Conna and bought it almost immediately. She considered it her home, and she went to LA and London for work.”
O’Shea was a beneficiary of Lansbury’s generosity when she agreed to help out the Everyman Theatre, which was moving from Castle Street to Father Mathew Hall in 1972.
“We were due to open with George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man and we were hunting around for someone well-known — celebrity wasn’t a word really used back then — to do the honours. We had heard Angela and her family were living in Conna. It was a bit of a long shot, but we made contact with her and she jumped at it, no questions asked.
“It was all a bit formal but she was very amusing. She was very glamorous but she had a modesty to her that was very attractive. We had a great night afterwards, in Moore’s Hotel. She didn’t behave like a star, there was nothing of that about her, she was very unassuming.”
O’Shea kept up contact with Lansbury over the years, and recalls how local people mingled with her show-business friends at gatherings in her house in Conna.
“My wife and I were invited up several times and Hurd would be there with other showbiz people like directors, screenwriters and photographers, and local people, who she mixed very well with.”
Potter Stephen Pearce, who is based in Shanagarry, Co Cork, where Lansbury has a house, has been a close friend of hers for many years.
“She was a friend of my mother’s. I got to know her and her kids in the mid-1960s and I helped out a bit when she bought the place in Conna.” Pearce also helped design Lansbury’s house in Shanagarry.
“She and her husband were very involved, although we used to call it the house that was built by fax. They were over in the US making Murder She Wrote when it was being built and we would fax back and forth about changes to be made.”
Lansbury visits east Cork every summer and Pearce says the people there have been instrumental in forging her strong connection to Ireland.
“More than anything else it is her friends and the way she has been able to have privacy. She gets a lot of attention everywhere she goes — it’s incredible how popular Murder, She Wrote is.
“Angela would never see herself as a star, she just likes putting on her wellies, walking down to the shop and getting a pint of milk or whatever. She is a very ordinary person who likes to be just that. The fact that she has this amazing talent and success is kind of by the way.”
Pearce says he has never really talked to Lansbury about acting, that when they meet up, they just like to chat about everyday things.
“She is very funny, she sees life in a very light-hearted way, even though she has had some pretty hard knocks. I’ve never really talked to her about her career, we usually just chat about what has gone on that day. I see her as a dear loyal friend who sends me a box of chocolates every Christmas.”
He says he is in awe of her enthusiasm and vigour. “She is 90-years-old and is still learning her lines and remembering them. I don’t know where she gets the energy to be in Australia doing Driving Miss Daisy one minute, up in London the next.”
Despite her busy schedule, John O’Shea says she always has time for her Cork friends, recalling how he paid an impromptu visit to Lansbury after her performance in Blithe Spirit.
“I approached the stage manager and told her I was from Cork in Ireland, how helpful Angela had been to us in the theatre in Cork over the years and I would love to go around if possible. She said she would speak to the stagehand in charge of the stage door; my son was with me and we went in. She was exhausted and there was a bunch of people there from around Shanagarry; I just congratulated her on her performance and said: ‘It’s a great night for Cork here in London. We are all Corkonians here, including yourself.’ She had a good laugh at that.”
