Angela Lansbury

While she is best remembered as an Academy award-winning actress, Dame Angela Lansbury DBE – born on October 16, 1925, in Regent’s Park, London, England – was also an accomplished singer with a long list of acclaimed Broadway roles to her name. She began her career in 1940 after her family had moved to New York, singing Noel Coward songs in Canadian nightclubs. In 1942, they relocated to Los Angeles, where her mother, actress Moyna Macgill, tried to resurrect her film career. However, it was Angela Lansbury who was offered a role in the 1944 film Gaslight. Her film career took off and she went on to win six Tony Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, and many others. She was also nominated for three Academy Awards, eighteen Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award. Although it had been sidelined because of her film career, Angela Lansbury returned to music in 1964 when she appeared in her first stage musical, Stephen Sondheim’s Anyone Can Whistle. She went on to perform in the 1969 musical Mame, which earned Angela Lansbury her first Tony Award. She also appeared in Gypsy (1973), The King and I (1978), and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979). While it wasn’t her first stint on the small screen, Angela Lansbury became a staple on television when she starred in the series Murder, She Wrote from 1984 until 2003. A role that brought her to a new – and younger – generation was as Mrs. Pott, the singing teapot, in Disney’s 1991 animated blockbuster Beauty and the Beast. In the film, she performed the song “Beauty and the Beast” and led other cast members in the film’s most popular song, “Be Our Guest.” In 1994, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and, in 2014, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). Angela Lansbury remained active as a performer up until her death on October 11, 2022, at the age of 96. Her recorded legacy includes her work on the soundtrack to Beauty and the Beast (1991), as well as many of her Broadway musicals including Mame (1969) and Gypsy (1973). In 2006, she released the Legends of Broadway compilation which featured many of her greatest Broadway performances.