From ‘Mame’ to ‘Sweeney Todd,’ Angela Lansbury was a Broadway goddess
nypost.comdied Tuesday at age 96. The denizens of Shubert Alley were overcome with grief and shock when they learned of the actress’ passing in the early evening.
Lansbury, a mainstay since 1944, had an eternal quality that suggested she’d never go away. And in quiet moments on the stages and in the hallways of the storied theaters surrounding Times Square, indeed she won’t.“Dim Broadway’s lights?” said a theater agent. “Shut em’ down.”Of course, because of the ubiquity of TV, Lansbury was best known as Jessica Fletcher on the TV series “Murder She Wrote.” She also had an illustrious resume on the big screen in movies like “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “The Manchurian Candidate.” But it’s the indelible stamp she made on Broadway that changed an art form and New York.The remarkably transformative British actress boasted an electrifying presence that was a rare storm of contradictions: maternal and brutal, hilarious and heartbroken, elegant and muddy.
And what she achieved from 1966 to 1980, I reckon, is a breadth of supersize, totally opposite roles that no other star of her magnitude has matched in such a short amount of time ever since.
In 1966, there was “Mame” at the Winter Garden Theatre. She wasn’t the first choice for the part of Mame Dennis, a witty, fun-loving New Yorker who “made us feel alive again, and given us the drive again.” That was Mary Martin.
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