![]() ![]() In a 2019 overview of Lansbury's career, Variety's Tim Gray noted of "Murder, She Wrote" that "the show relied on Lansbury's intelligence, integrity and warmth, which no actress can fake. She would earn three more Tonys in the same category: in "Dear World" (1969) an adaptation of Jean Giraudoux's "The Madwoman of Chaillot" by the creators of "Mame" as Mama Rose, a part she had originated in a London revival, in the 1974 Broadway production of "Gypsy," the musical bio of ecdysiast Gypsy Rose Lee by Sondheim, Laurents and Jule Styne and in Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's "penny dreadful" musical "Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street." She received a fifth Tony, for best featured actress in a play, as Madame Arcati in the 2009 revival of Noel Coward's supernatural comedy "Blithe Spirit." (It was a hit 1958 movie vehicle for Rosalind Russell.) Lansbury appeared in the long-running smash for nearly two years, taking just a two-week break, and she notched a Tony Award as best actress in a musical. Lee) of Patrick Dennis' autobiographical novel about life with his wealthy madcap aunt. Two years later, she took the title role in "Mame," the musical adaptation (by Jerry Herman, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. In 1964, she appeared in Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents' "Anyone Can Whistle." The tuner was a quick flop, lasting only nine performances but it would be the last time she would fail on the Great White Way. Lansbury bowed on Broadway in the French comedy "Hotel Paradiso" (1957), and enjoyed strong notices in Shelagh Delaney's drama "A Taste of Honey" (1960). In 1961, when she turned 36, she played 26-year-old Elvis Presley's mother in "Blue Hawaii." The following year, she took the role of the malevolent mother of brainwashed ex-serviceman Laurence Harvey (who was only three years her junior) in John Frankenheimer's Cold War thriller "The Manchurian Candidate" she collected her third supporting actress Oscar nomination for the performance. Lansbury displayed a unique ability to play older than her years, specializing in iron-fisted matriarchs. She made memorable appearances in such '50s dramas as "The Long, Hot Summer" (1958) and "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs." Lansbury scored a contract at MGM and appeared in such high-profile pics as "Till the Clouds Roll By" (1946), "State of the Union" (1948) and "The Three Musketeers" (1948). ![]() She repeated as a supporting actress Oscar nominee with her third feature, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945), for which she scored a second supporting actress award portraying the ill-fated music hall performer Sybil Vane in the adaptation of Oscar Wilde's horror tale. ![]()
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