Angela Lansbury Dead At 96

Lansbury, then 37, was cast to play Harvey’s mother — he was 34. In the interview with Walters, Lansbury, who never shied away from being honest about her feelings, said that being cast in older roles was something she resented. “Yeah, I did mind — more than I ever let on,” she said. “I covered it up with a professional bravado.”

Nevertheless, Lansbury stunned as The Manchurian Candidate‘s Eleanor Iselin, a brutal, ambitious political wife and secret communist. She is the deeply sinister force behind her silly husband, a senator whom she uses to try to exercise her diabolical, murderous scheme. Which is no less than overthrowing the US government. Though the movie bombed initially, Lansbury was nominated for her third Best Supporting Actress Oscar. (If you want to see why, watch Iselin’s chilling monologue in this scene with Harvey, which culminates in her kissing her son on the mouth.) In 1988, The Manchurian Candidate was rereleased into theaters, became a hit, and is now considered a classic.

If Lansbury’s time in film had some frustrations for her, in musical theater, she found only success. Mame had been a play and a movie (Auntie Mame), both of which starred Rosalind Russell as the title character. But when Russell said no to a musical adaptation, Lansbury stepped in to play the eccentric Mame, who unexpectedly becomes a surrogate parent to her nephew. It was a huge hit for which she won the first of her five Tony Awards. (Only Audra McDonald has more, with six.)

Besides Mame, Lansbury’s other signature Broadway musical role was Nellie Lovett in Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. She was living in Ireland when Sondheim made her the offer by telegram, and she told the Television Academy that both she and her husband, Peter Shaw, remembered the character as a “legendary bogeyman” from 19th-century serialized fiction, and were intrigued. “On the other hand,” Lansbury recalled, sounding mischievous, “the old star said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, this is called Sweeney Todd, how does Mrs. Lovett fit in?'”