Photo by Alan Light, via Flickr
The queen is dead, and I don’t mean Loretta Lynn.
Angela Lansbury died last week at age 96.
Lansbury was given the Meadows Award at SMU in 1998, and Kessler Park resident Cooper Smith Koch was there.
Koch was working at SMU at the time and got to interact with Lansbury and her bestie Bea Arthur during the award activities.
He writes:
There was a flurry of activities surrounding the award, including her visit to campus and interacting with students, alumni and donors. One of the events was a small-ish sit down chat between her and Bea Arthur. It was a fabulous time full of stories and delicious barbs from their time as Mame and Vera Charles on Broadway, how much Bea Arthur hated her ex-husband who directed the film version of Mame and how Bea was the only actress taller than Angela that she’d ever worked with (or perhaps vice versa). You could really tell that they were close friends and adored each other.
Why is Angela Lansbury the G.O.A.T?
The actress, at 17 years old, perfectly nailed her first-ever film role, as the naughty maid in the 1944 film Gaslight. She was nominated for Academy Awards for her first two films. She was cast as the lead in feature films well into her 40s. In her late 50s, she became TV’s Jessica Fletcher, a childless widow and mystery novelist who either solves murders everywhere she goes, or is a serial killer who always gets away with is by pinning it on someone else. Murder, She Wrote aired for 12 seasons, from 1984-1996, totaling 264 episodes and four movies.
She also won seven Tony Awards for her Broadway performances over the years, including one when she was in her 80s.
The G. William Jones Film & Video Collection recently digitized video of an interview she gave at the time. She talks about her upbringing, her family and her start in show business, including how she was cast in Gaslight after two years in Hollywood.
“You’re only as good as the part that’s written,” she said. “And that part was a wonderfully written part.”
Around the 18-minute mark, she talks about how she was appreciated in Hollywood because she was a theatrically trained actor who could really act, “I wasn’t tits and ass,” she said, noting that she played older characters when she was in her teens. I’m telling you, the woman is a treasure. Watch below.
