Irish Examiner View: Angela Lansbury was a star with a love of Cork
Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher in 'Murder, She Wrote'. Picture: Randy Marcus/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
The death of Angela Lansbury brings an end to a dazzling show business career, one marked by success from the 1940s onwards.
The term ‘show business’ is a deliberate choice, as Lansbury starred in every medium available to her. Her first film appearance, at 17 years of age, was an Oscar-nominated turn in , released during the Second World War. Over 70 years later, she featured in .
Even that brief sketch omits such roles as Mrs Potts in the animated version of , another role which resonated with audiences for decades.
Between those career highlights, Lansbury was also a huge star on Broadway — one of her roles was as the original Mrs Lovett in Stephen Sondheim's , while for years she was also one of television’s biggest stars.
As the amateur detective Jessica Fletcher in , that fondly remembered mainstay of 1980s programming schedules, Lansbury was a hugely popular presence on TV screens.
Beyond those decades of success, however, Lansbury’s passing will reverberate here in Ireland because she spent decades living in Cork.
In the late 1960s, as the hippie dream darkened in California, her teenage daughter fell in with associates of Charles Manson, and Lansbury decided it would be safer for her children to leave such influences behind. The family left the US and moved to Ireland, settling on Conna in East Cork in 1970.
When her children got older, the family moved back to California and Lansbury enjoyed that late career boost with the role of Jessica Fletcher.
In an interview on her 90th birthday, however, she said that when she had gone back to California, she found that she missed Cork, so she built a home in Ballycotton, which she visited regularly.
“You would have to love Cork,” she said. And it loved her.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
