In 1975, Lansbury was reunited with Sondheim when she starred in the first Broadway revival of Gypsy (and for which she would win another Tony), setting the stage for their next venture together—and perhaps Lansbury’s greatest Broadway role—Mrs. Lovett in the Grand Guignol musical Sweeney Todd.
But that collaboration got off to a slightly rocky start. “I was in Ireland when a woman called to say, ‘There’s a telegram here from New York from a fella named Harold Prince,’” Lansbury told New York magazine in 2009, referring to the show’s director. “Hal said he wanted me to play the role of Nellie Lovett. I put down the phone and said to my husband, ‘Hmmm, all right, this show is called Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Then who is Nellie Lovett?’”
Later convinced by Sondheim and Prince that the role was equal to the one that would eventually go to Len Cariou, Lansbury signed on, and delivered a performance that The New York Times described as “towering” (and that, luckily, was later recorded for television). The show went on to win eight Tony Awards, including ones for Lansbury—her fourth—Cariou, Prince, Sondheim, and for the show itself as best musical. (Lansbury’s fifth and final Tony would come in 2009, for best supporting actress in a play—the revival of Blithe Spirit—which she won 43 years after her first. “Thank you for having me back,” she said in her emotional acceptance speech.)
In 1984, Lansbury took on the role that brought her the most fame among American audiences: Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote, a Miss Marple-type character in a mystery series set in rural Maine. The CBS series ran for 12 seasons and brought Lansbury 12 straight nominations for best lead actress in a drama series at the Emmys. She lost every single time—and not without some annoyance. “It pissed me off!” she told Radio Times in 2017. “Because I just didn’t add up at all in Hollywood. Everywhere else in the U.S., Murder, She Wrote was huge, but not in Hollywood—no, no, no, they didn’t want to know. I wasn’t upset… well, I was upset, really. It rankled me. I can’t say it didn’t.”
Other accolades would come, however: Lansbury was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2014 and was inducted into both the American Theater Hall of Fame and the Emmy Hall of Fame. She also received an honorary Academy Award in 2013.
In that 2011 talk before the screening of The Manchurian Candidate, Lansbury expressed some regret that she never became a major Hollywood star—“to be Joan Crawford or Kate Hepburn, to have that kind of clout”—but quickly added that she really couldn’t complain. It’s not “sour grapes,” she said. “I had a great career—and I’m still out there doing it.”
This obituary first appeared on Vogue.
