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Major General <mask>,  (10 February 1885 – 5 March 1945) was an Australian soldier, general, surgeon and historian in the first half of the 20th century. <mask> attended the University of Melbourne, graduating with his medical degrees in 1907. He returned to the university to pursue a Doctor of Medicine degree, which was awarded in 1911. The son of British Army officer Major <mask>, <mask> joined the Army as a trumpeter while he was still at school. He was commissioned as a captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps in 1908, and joined the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in 1914 as its youngest lieutenant colonel. He served in the Gallipoli campaign, and was appointed Assistant Director of Medical Services (ADMS) of the newly formed ANZAC Mounted Division in 1916, which he combined with the post of ADMS AIF Egypt. In 1917, he became Deputy Director of Medical Services (DDMS) of the Desert Mounted Corps.After the war, he wrote articles on medical aspects of the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, and the section on the campaign for the official history. Returning to Australia, <mask> became an honorary consulting surgeon at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne and Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, and honorary surgeon at Prince Henry's Hospital. He became a foundation fellow of the College of Surgeons of Australasia in 1927, and president of the Victorian branch of the British Medical Association in 1935. He lectured on medical ethics at the University of Melbourne, writing the course textbook. He was also Victorian State Commissioner of the St. John Ambulance Brigade, which he led for 25 years, and was president of the St John Ambulance Association for eight years. In 1934 <mask> became Director General of Medical Services, the Australian Army's most senior medical officer, with the rank of major general. He oversaw the construction of major military hospitals in the capital cities.In 1944 he accepted a commission to edit the medical series volumes of the Official History of Australia in the War of 1939–1945 but was never able to do so as he was killed in a plane crash in 1945. Education and early life
<mask> <mask> was born on 10 February 1885 in Mitcham, South Australia. He was the youngest of fifteen children of Colonel Major <mask>—a British Army officer—and his wife Helen Maria, formerly Chamberlin, only five of whom survived to adulthood. After service in the Crimean War, Colonel <mask> served as commandant of the Colonial forces of South Australia and Victoria and retired with the rank of major general in the Australian Army in 1902. <mask> was educated at Haileybury, Melbourne as a boarding student. In March 1901, at the age of 16, he joined the Victorian Horse Artillery (St Kilda Battery), a part-time volunteer militia unit, as a trumpeter. In May 1901 he served in this capacity at the opening of the inaugural Parliament of Australia by The Duke of Cornwall and York at the Royal Exhibition Building.In 1903, <mask> became a medical student at the University of Melbourne. A good result in his first year examinations earned him a residential scholarship to Ormond College, and he graduated with the double degree of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) in 1907. Soon after graduation, <mask> enlisted in the Militia. He was commissioned as a captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps on 1 July 1908 and was promoted to major on 26 March 1913. He served his residency at Melbourne Hospital and became a general practitioner in Malvern, Victoria, but soon returned to the university to pursue a doctorate. His Doctor of Medicine (MD) thesis, entitled "The anatomical relations of the Thymus, especially considered in regard to thymic death with an account of cases of abnormality", was accepted in 1911. He also did the coursework for a Master of Surgery (MS), and this degree was conferred in 1912.<mask> married Doris Mary Robb on 20 November 1913 at St John's Church, Toorak, Victoria. They had three children: Rosemary Major, born in 1914; Valerie Major, born in March 1918; and <mask> Major, born in 1922. First World War
<mask> joined the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) on 2 October 1914, assuming command of the 2nd Light Horse Field Ambulance with the rank of lieutenant colonel—making him the youngest officer of that rank in the AIF at the time. Soon after his taking command, the unit was renamed the 3rd Light Horse Field Ambulance. After training at the Broadmeadows Army Camp near Melbourne, the unit embarked for Egypt on the transport Chilka on 2 February 1915. The 3rd Light Horse Field Ambulance departed Alexandria for Gallipoli on 17 May 1915. It moved to Lemnos in June, where it operated a hospital, but returned to ANZAC Cove for the August offensive.<mask> missed this operation, as he remained on Lemnos supervising the hospital until he returned to Anzac on 11 August. He remained with his unit until 13 November, when he departed for Lemnos and then Egypt. After the evacuation of Gallipoli, <mask> was appointed Assistant Director of Medical Services (ADMS) of the newly formed ANZAC Mounted Division on 15 March 1916. He was given the temporary rank of colonel, before substantive promotion on 20 February 1917. <mask> combined this post with that of ADMS AIF Egypt from 6 September 1916. <mask> therefore had to travel back and forth to Cairo. In November 1916, a Deputy ADMS was appointed to assist him.Medically speaking, the health of the Anzac Mounted Division was remarkably good, but the Sinai Peninsula still had its challenges—especially for medical officers unfamiliar with conditions in the Middle East. The Battle of Romani revealed the importance of transportation in an area with few roads. A poorly organised casualty evacuation effort caused a great deal of preventable hardship and suffering for the wounded, and resulted in a number of avoidable deaths. An inquiry into the matter was held after the battle, at which <mask> was called to testify. The Commander in Chief if the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF), General Sir Archibald Murray, declined to assign blame to any individual, but implemented the inquiry's recommendations for improving the casualty evacuation process. There was also the heat, and the problem of supplying adequate quantities of potable water. Diseases included cholera, typhus and bilharzia.To combat these, <mask> obtained the services of the Lieutenant Colonel Charles James Martin,  and created the Anzac Field Laboratory to investigate these diseases. As a result of aggressively tackling the problem, <mask> reduced rates of disease among Australian and New Zealand troops well below those of British troops serving alongside them. Martin advanced the notion that heat exhaustion and heat stroke were not the result of defective evaporation, as had previously been believed, but simply a matter of failing to drink enough water. He in turn converted Downes to the belief that "provided water is available in adequate amount the heat mechanism of the body can defy all ordinary climatic ranges of temperature even under conditions of hard work." With so many people and horses, sanitation was a challenge, and discipline in this area was initially slack, as it had been with disastrous results at Gallipoli. <mask> took measures to improve the situation. Although not normally one to engage in disputes, <mask> repeatedly clashed with the British medical officers of the EEF, especially the DMS EEF, Colonel Alfred  Keble, whose attitudes <mask> regarded as endangering his troops.Doris travelled to Egypt to visit her husband in March 1917. By June, <mask> was becoming increasingly immersed in preparations for the Third Battle of Gaza and Doris, who had become pregnant during her visit, decided to return home. On her return journey to Australia in June 1917, her ship, the P&O liner Mongolia struck a mine and was sunk in the Indian Ocean with the loss of 23 lives. Doris spent 11 hours in a crowded lifeboat, before being rescued by a passing steamer, which took her to Bombay. From there she eventually made her way back to Australia via Singapore and Batavia. In 1918 Doris was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her volunteer work among soldiers' families as secretary of the Friendly Union of Soldiers' Wives and Mothers. On 10 August 1917, <mask> became Deputy Director of Medical Services (DDMS) of the Desert Mounted Corps, while still retaining the post of ADMS AIF Egypt.He was therefore answerable to three superiors—to Lieutenant General Harry Chauvel, the commander of the Desert Mounted Corps and AIF Egypt; to Major General Neville Howse, the DMS AIF in London; and to the new British DMS EEF, Major General William Travers Swan. As the EEF advanced into Palestine, the major medical problem remained transportation. During the operations in the Es Salt area, <mask> experimented with the delivery of drugs and medical supplies by air. In the Jordan valley in 1918, however, <mask> was confronted with an epidemic of malaria and vigorous preventative and prophylactic efforts were required in order to bring it under control. In October 1918, with victory near, <mask> was confronted by his most serious medical crisis. Damascus contained over 3,000 sick and wounded Turkish soldiers, many of them in appalling condition. <mask> appointed the DADMS of the Australian Mounted Division, Major W. Evans, as Principal Medical Officer of Damascus, and gave him orders to organise the medical arrangements, bury the dead and provide care for the living.The task was made more difficult by the poor communications and transport shortages, which hampered the delivery of supplies and evacuation of the hospitals; by shortages of medical units; and by the actions of Lieutenant Colonel T. E. Lawrence, who was more concerned with establishing the political authority of Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca over Damascus. At this point the Desert Mounted Corps itself began to experience epidemic diseases, particularly of bronchopneumonia, cholera and malaria, putting the medical services under enormous pressure. Through extraordinary measures, including the diversion of lighthorsemen and motor vehicles to medical units, <mask> managed to evacuate the sick to Beirut, and the crisis abated. For his service in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, <mask> was mentioned in despatches four times, and was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George on 1 January 1918. His citation read:

Interwar years
Returning to Australia, <mask> was discharged from the AIF, but remained in the Army as a reservist. He became an honorary consulting surgeon at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne and Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, and honorary surgeon at Prince Henry's Hospital. He was a founding fellow of the College of Surgeons of Australasia in 1927, and became president of the Victorian branch of the British Medical Association in 1935.He established a reputation as one of Melbourne's leading paediatric surgeons, but found himself in disagreement with certain medical practices then in vogue. In a 1922 paper published in the Medical Journal of Australia, he examined 100 cases of tonsillectomy in children, and concluded that the majority of them were unnecessary. It would be another four decades before the medical profession in Australia accepted this. He lectured on medical ethics at the University of Melbourne from the late 1930s until his death in 1945, and wrote a course textbook on the subject, entitled Medical Ethics, which was published

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 in 1942. In addition to his medical writings, <mask> wrote a book-length section on the Sinai and Palestine campaign for Volume I of the Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services in the War of 1914–1918 in the late 1920s under the direction of Medical Series editor Graham Butler. The two men had discussed the prospect during a visit Butler made to Egypt in 1918 to inspect the medical records of the AIF, and again in France in 1919. <mask> published an article in the Journal of the British Army Medical Corps entitled "The Tactical Employment of the Medical Services in a Cavalry Corps" in 1926, which was expanded into one of the chapters of the Official History.<mask>' manuscript proved too long for the proposed book, and was extensively edited by Butler before it was published in 1930. <mask> was instrumental in supporting Butler's Medical Series and helped obtain the funding necessary to complete the project. <mask> was chairman of the Masseurs' Registration Board, a councillor of the Victorian division of the Australian Red Cross, and chairman of the Red Cross National Council. He was Victorian State Commissioner of the St. John Ambulance Brigade for 25 years. He was also president of the St John Ambulance Association for eight years, and chairman of the Victorian Civil Ambulance Service from 1937 to 1938. In 1930, he was appointed a Commander of the Venerable Order of Saint John, and later became a Knight of Grace of the order in 1937. At the same time, Doris became an Officer of the Order of Saint John, in recognition for her fund raising efforts for the Victorian branch.She also later served as a member of its council from 1942 to 1953. <mask> was instrumental in persuading the various state branches to come together as a national organisation, arguing that without a national body, the organisation would be eclipsed by the Red Cross. In 1930, <mask>' son John, then in his first year as a boarder at Geelong Grammar School, fell seriously ill with meningitis. Despite the best efforts of two eminent medical practitioners, Dr Keith Fairley and Dr Reginald Webster, John succumbed to toxaemia and died in 1933, at the age of 10. The failure of modern medicine to save his son affected <mask> deeply, and led him to abandon his medical career in favour of a military one. <mask> remained in the Army throughout the inter-war period. He became a colonel in the Australian Army Medical Corps on 8 January 1920.He was DDMS of the 3rd Military District (Victoria) from 1 July 1921 to 26 June 1933, and Officer in Charge of Voluntary Aid Detachments from 1 July 1921 to 15 March 1940. He also served as head of the medical services of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Although the RAAF had become a separate service in 1921, the Minister for Defence decided in 1927 that the Army's Director General of Medical Services should be responsible for the administration of the RAAF's medical services. In this capacity, <mask> was answerable to the Air Board. In addition, he was honorary surgeon to the Governor General of Australia from 1 July 1927 to 30 June 1931. On 20 August 1934 <mask> became Director General of Medical Services (DGMS), a full-time post and the Army's most senior medical officer. His priority was a recruiting campaign to increase the number of medical professionals in the Army.The Munich Crisis caused people to believe that another war was imminent, and an Army-wide recruiting campaign led by Major General Sir Thomas Blamey doubled the size of the Army from 35,000 in 1938 to 70,000 in 1939. <mask>' efforts at recruiting were far more modest. In 1934, there were 299 part-time officers in the AAMC; by 1939 there were 394, and increase of only 32 per cent. This included 320 medical practitioners, 37 dentists and 13 pharmacists. <mask> was acutely aware that a large Army would require mobilisation of the country's doctors, and pushed for all doctors to be prepared for either military service or direction by civil authorities. He presided over a major effort to stockpile drugs and medical equipment required for a mobilisation. With the help of the Department of Health and the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, most of this was delivered by July 1939.In 1939, <mask> began a tour of military and other medical centres in India, the Middle East, the United Kingdom, France, the United States and Canada. While in London, he arranged for Doris and Valerie to be formally presented to the King and Queen at Buckingham Palace by Ethel Bruce, the wife of Stanley Bruce, the Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. <mask> foresaw a major war, fought in the islands to the north of Australia. While in London, he took steps to obtain the services as consultants of two eminent Australian physicians, the surgeon Sir Thomas Dunhill and Neil Hamilton Fairley, an expert on tropical diseases. The outbreak of the Second World War caused <mask> to curtail the North American leg of his tour, and return to Australia in October 1939. Second World War

<mask>, in his role as DGMS, pressed for the construction of major military hospitals in the capital cities. He argued that, after the war, they should be handed over to the Repatriation Commission for the care of sick and disabled ex-service personnel.Despite strong opposition on the grounds of cost, <mask> won his case in October 1940. Time soon vindicated his judgement; and today the major military hospitals in the state capital cities, the Concord Repatriation General Hospital in Sydney, the Austin Hospital in Melbourne and Greenslopes Private Hospital in Brisbane remain his greatest legacy. In late 1940, medical units in the Middle East were experienced "precarious and at times acute" shortages of medicals stores. Units were sent to the Middle East as fully equipped as was possible, with the expectation that the British Army would make up the difference, but British policy was that all possible sources had to be exploited before any demands could be made on the United Kingdom's sources. General Sir Thomas Blamey, the Commander in Chief of the AIF, recognised this as something that had to be negotiated between the two governments, but medical officers in the Middle East blamed the Medical Services in Australia—and therefore <mask>—for the situation. The Minister of the Army, Percy Spender decided to pay a visit to the Middle East to see the situation for himself but before he did so, he resolved that <mask> should become Director of Medical Services, AIF (Middle East). On arrival in the Middle East with the Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Vernon Sturdee, Spender found that Blamey had already appointed Major General Samuel Burston to that post.This came as a surprise to them as they had not realised that Blamey had the authority to make such an appointment; but on seeing the situation for himself, Spender confirmed Burston's appointment. On returning to Australia, Spender appointed Major General Frederick Maguire as DGMS and <mask> was appointed to the newly created post of Inspector General of Medical Services (IGMS). As IGMS, <mask> toured extensively—he visited all the Australian states and overseas locations where Australian troops had been sent, including Papua and New Guinea, Malaya, the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia), India and East Africa. When Blamey reorganised the Army on his return to Australia in 1942, he appointed Burston as Director General of Medical Services. <mask> became DMS of the Second Army on 6 April 1942. He joined the Second AIF as a major general on 27 June 1942, receiving the AIF serial number VX57673. Death and legacy
<mask> held this post until 22 August 1944.Due to the run-down of the Army, the Second Army, always mainly a paper organisation, increasingly had less and less to do. Now nearly sixty, he then accepted an invitation to write the medical history series of the official history of Australia in the war. As part of this, in March 1945, he decided to accompany Major General George Alan Vasey to New Guinea, where Vasey's 6th Division had encountered an atabrine-resistant strain of malaria in the Aitape-Wewak campaign. On 5 March 1945, the RAAF Lockheed Hudson aircraft they were travelling in crashed into the sea about  from Machans Beach, just north of the mouth of the Barron River near Cairns. <mask> and Vasey were killed along with all nine other Australian service personnel on board. Their bodies were recovered and buried in Cairns War Cemetery with full military honours. <mask> was survived by Doris, Valerie and Rosemary.A memorial service was held at St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne on 9 March 1945. He became the third most senior Australian officer to die in the Second World War, after General Sir Brudenell White, who died in the Canberra air disaster in 1940, and Lieutenant General Henry Wynter, who died on 7 February 1945. <mask>' papers are in the Australian War Memorial. The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons established the triennial <mask> Memorial Lecture in his honour. The subject of the Lecture is "related to some aspect or aspects of military surgery, medical equipment (military and civil), the surgery of children, neurosurgery, general surgery, medical ethics or medical history; these being subjects in which <mask> was particularly interested". <mask> Memorial Lectures
 1950 Major General Samuel Burston Some Medical Aspects of Atomic Warfare
 1954 A.S. Walker The Following Wind of History
 1957 Major General Frank Kingsley Norris Be Strong and of Good Courage
 1961 Sir Albert Coates The Doctor in the Services
 1965 D. Waterson Œsophageal Replacement in Pædiatric Surgery
 1970 J.H. Louw The Scientific Method in Surgery
 1972 H.E.Beardmore Pædiatric Surgery – Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
 1976 P.P. Rickham Nephroblastoma – a New Look at an Old Problem
 1978 C.M. Gurner Military Medical Preparedness
 1980 D.G. Hamilton One Hundred Years of Pædiatric Surgery in Sydney
 1983 G.B. Ong The Trifacetted Nature of Surgery in Hong Kong
 1988 B.A. Smithurst Distinguished Australian Military Surgeons
 1990 Patricia K. Donahoe The Development of Tumour Inhibitors
 1994 General Sir Phillip Bennett Medical Aspects of Australia's Defence
 1996 Professor Averil Mansfield Arterio-Venous Malformations and their Treatment
 1998 D. Trunkey I am Giddy, Expectation Whirls me Round
 2000 A. Wyn Beasley Of Scurvy and Shipwreck – the Dutch Discovery of Australasia
 2002 Colonel D. Beard The Music of Warfare
 2005 Robert Pearce Trust me, Claudius
 2008 Professor Arthur Li Ethics and standards
 2011 Major General John Pearn Pro patria et spe gentis
 2014 Air Vice Marshal Hugh Bartholomeusz Tissue reconstruction in war and peace
 2017 Professor Michael Besser The anatomical enlightenment

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1885 births
1945 deaths
People educated at Haileybury (Melbourne)
20th-century Australian historians
Accidental deaths in Queensland
Australian Companions of the Order of St Michael and St George
Australian generals
Australian military doctors
Australian military historians
Australian military personnel of World War I
Australian surgeons
Deaths in tropical cyclones
Fellows of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons
Knights of Grace of the Order of St John
Melbourne Medical School alumni
Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1945
Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in Australia
Australian Army personnel of World War II
Australian military personnel killed in World War

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Dame <mask>  (born 16 October 1925) is an Irish-British actress and singer who has played many film, theater, and television roles. Her career has spanned over 80 years, much of it in the United States; her work has received much international attention as well. Upon the death of Olivia de Havilland in July 2020, <mask> became the earliest surviving Academy Award nominee and one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. <mask> was born to an upper-middle-class family in central London, the daughter of Irish actress Moyna Macgill and English politician <mask>. To escape the Blitz, in 1940 she moved to the United States, there studying acting in New York City. Proceeding to Hollywood in 1942, she signed to MGM and obtained her first film roles, in Gaslight (1944) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), earning her two Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe Award. She appeared in 11 further MGM films, mostly in minor roles, and after her contract ended in 1952 she began supplementing her cinematic work with theatrical appearances.Although largely seen as a B-list star during this period, her appearance in the film The Manchurian Candidate (1962) received widespread acclaim and is cited as being one of her finer performances. Moving into musical theatre, <mask> finally gained stardom for playing the leading role in the Broadway musical Mame (1966), which earned her her first Tony Award and established her as a gay icon. Amid difficulties in her personal life, <mask> moved from California to County Cork, Ireland in 1970, and continued with a variety of theatrical and cinematic appearances throughout that decade. These included leading roles in the stage musicals Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, and The King and I, as well as in the hit Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). Moving into television in 1984, she achieved worldwide fame as fictional writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the American whodunit series Murder, She Wrote, which ran for 12 seasons until 1996, becoming one of the longest-running and most popular detective drama series in television history. Through Corymore Productions, a company that she co-owned with her husband Peter Shaw, <mask> assumed ownership of the series and was its executive producer for the final four seasons. She also moved into voice work, contributing to animated films like Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Don Bluth's Anastasia (1997).Since then, she has toured in a variety of international productions and continued to make occasional film appearances such as Nanny McPhee (2005) and Mary Poppins Returns (2018). <mask> has received an Honorary Academy Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the BAFTA and has won five Tony Awards, six Golden Globes, and an Olivier Award. She has also been nominated for numerous other industry awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on three occasions, and various Primetime Emmy Awards on 18 occasions, and a Grammy Award. In 2014, <mask> was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. She has been the subject of three biographies. Early life and childhood
<mask> was born to an upper middle class family on 16 October 1925 in the district of St Pancras in central London. Her birthplace is sometimes given, wrongly, as Poplar, East London.<mask> says she has ancestral connections to Poplar but she was born in Regent's Park, Central London. Her mother was Belfast-born actress Moyna Macgill (born Charlotte Lillian McIldowie), who regularly appeared on stage in the West End and who had also starred in several films. Her father was the wealthy English timber merchant and politician <mask>, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and former mayor of the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar. Her paternal grandfather was the Labour Party leader and anti-war activist <mask>, a man whom she felt "awed" by and considered "a giant in my youth". <mask> had an older half sister, Isolde, who was the daughter of Moyna's previous marriage to writer and director Reginald Denham. In January 1930, when <mask> was four, her mother gave birth to twin boys, Bruce and Edgar, leading the Lansburys to move from their Poplar flat to a house in Mill Hill, North London; on weekends they would vacate to a rural farm in Berrick Salome, near Wallingford, Oxfordshire. When Lansbury was nine, her father died from stomach cancer; she retreated into playing characters as a coping mechanism.Facing financial difficulty, her mother became engaged to a Scottish colonel, Leckie Forbes, and moved into his house in Hampstead, with Lansbury receiving an education at South Hampstead High School from 1934 until 1939. She nevertheless considered herself largely self-educated, learning from books, theatre and cinema. She became a self-professed "complete movie maniac", visiting the cinema regularly and imagining herself as certain characters. Keen on playing the piano, she briefly studied music at the Ritman School of Dancing, and in 1940 began studying acting at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art in Kensington, West London, first appearing onstage as a lady-in-waiting in the school's production of Maxwell Anderson's Mary of Scotland. That year, <mask>'s grandfather died, and with the onset of the Blitz, Macgill decided to take <mask>, Bruce and Edgar to the United States; Isolde remained in Britain with her new husband, the actor Peter Ustinov. Macgill secured a job supervising 60 British children who were being evacuated to North America aboard the Duchess of Atholl, arriving with them in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in mid-August. From there, she proceeded by train to New York City, where she was financially sponsored by a Wall Street businessman, Charles T. Smith, moving in with his family at their home at Mahopac, New York.Lansbury gained a scholarship from the American Theatre Wing allowing her to study at the Feagin School of Drama and Radio, where she appeared in performances of William Congreve's The Way of the World and Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan. She graduated in March 1942, by which time the family had moved to a flat in Morton Street, Greenwich Village. Acting career

Film

Career beginnings and breakthrough (1940–50)
Macgill secured work in a Canadian touring production of Tonight at 8.30, and was joined in Canada by her daughter, who gained her first theatrical job as a nightclub act at the Samovar Club, Montreal. Having gained the job by claiming to be 19 when she was 16, her act consisted of her singing songs by Noël Coward, and earned her $60 a week. She returned to New York City in August 1942, but her mother had moved to Hollywood, Los Angeles, in order to resurrect her cinematic career; Lansbury and her brothers followed. Moving into a bungalow in Laurel Canyon, both Lansbury and her mother obtained Christmas jobs at the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles; Moyna was sacked for incompetence, leaving the family to subsist on Lansbury's wages of $28 a week. Befriending a group of gay men, Lansbury became privy to the city's underground gay scene, and with her mother, attended lectures by the spiritual guru Jiddu Krishnamurti; at one of these, she met Aldous Huxley.At a party hosted by her mother, <mask> met John van Druten, who had recently co-authored a script for Gaslight (1944), a mystery-thriller based on Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play Gaslight. Set in Victorian London, the film was being directed by George Cukor, and starred Ingrid Bergman in the lead role of Paula Alquist, a woman being psychologically tormented by her husband. Van Druten suggested that <mask> would be perfect for the role of Nancy Oliver, a conniving cockney maid; she was accepted for the part, although, since she was only 17, a social worker had to accompany her on the set. Obtaining an agent, Earl Kramer, she was signed to a seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, earning $500 a week and using her real name as her professional name. Already her casting received attention, with Variety magazine in August 1943 claiming Lansbury to have gone from unknown to movie star in just four days. Upon release, Gaslight received mixed critical reviews, although Lansbury's role was widely praised; the film earned six Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Supporting Actress for Lansbury. Her next film appearance was as Edwina Brown, the older sister of Velvet Brown in National Velvet (1944); the film proved to be a major commercial hit, with Lansbury developing a lifelong friendship with co-star Elizabeth Taylor.<mask> next starred in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), a cinematic adaptation of Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel of the same name, which was again set in Victorian London. Directed by Albert Lewin, <mask> was cast as Sibyl Vane, a working-class music hall singer who falls in love with the protagonist, Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield). Although the film was not a financial success, <mask>'s performance once more drew praise, earning her a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture, and she was again nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards, losing to Anne Revere, her co-star in National Velvet. On September 27, 1945, <mask> married Richard Cromwell, an artist and decorator whose acting career had come to a standstill. Their marriage was troubled; Cromwell was gay, and had married <mask> in the unsuccessful hope that doing so would turn him heterosexual. The marriage ended in less than a year when she filed for divorce on September 11, 1946, but they remained friends until his death. In December 1946, she was introduced to fellow English expatriate Peter Pullen Shaw at a party held by former co-star Hurd Hatfield in Ojai Valley.Shaw was an aspiring actor, also signed to MGM, and had recently left a relationship with Joan Crawford. He and <mask> became a couple, living together before she proposed marriage. The couple were intent on getting married back in Britain, but the Church of England refused to marry two divorcees. Instead, they wed in a Church of Scotland ceremony at St. Columba's Church in Knightsbridge, London in August 1949, followed by a honeymoon in France. Returning to the U.S., where they settled into <mask>'s home in Rustic Canyon, Malibu, in 1951 both became naturalised U.S. citizens and retained their British citizenship via dual nationality. Established character actress (1950–60)
Following the success of Gaslight and The Picture of Dorian Gray, MGM cast <mask> in 11 further films until her contract with the company ended in 1952. Keeping her among their B-list stars, MGM used her less than their similar-aged actresses; biographers Edelman and Kupferberg believed that the majority of these films were "mediocre", doing little to further her career.This view was echoed by Cukor, who believed <mask> had been "consistently miscast" by MGM. She was repeatedly made to portray older women, often villainous, and as a result became increasingly dissatisfied with working for MGM, commenting that "I kept wanting to play the Jean Arthur roles, and Mr Mayer kept casting me as a series of venal bitches." The company themselves were suffering from the post-1948 slump in cinema sales, as a result slashing film budgets and cutting their number of staff. Lansbury played her first American character as "Em", a tough honky-tonk saloon singer who slaps Judy Garland's character in the Oscar-winning Wild West musical The Harvey Girls (1946). She appeared in The Hoodlum Saint (also 1946), Till the Clouds Roll By (1947), If Winter Comes (1947), Tenth Avenue Angel (1948), The Three Musketeers (1948), State of the Union (1948) and The Red Danube (1949). She was loaned by MGM first to United Artists for The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947), and then to Paramount for Samson and Delilah (1949). She appeared as a villainous maidservant in Kind Lady (1951) and a French adventuress in Mutiny (1952).Turning to radio, in 1948 she appeared in an audio adaptation of Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage for NBC University Theatre and the following year she starred in their adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Moving into television, she appeared in a 1950 episode of Robert Montgomery Presents adapted from A.J. Cronin's The Citadel. Unhappy with the roles she was being given by MGM, <mask> instructed her manager, Harry Friedman of MCA Inc., to terminate her contract in 1952, in the same year that her son Anthony was born. Soon after the birth, she joined the East Coast touring productions of two former-Broadway plays: Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's Remains to Be Seen and Louis Verneuil's Affairs of State. Biographer Margaret Bonanno later stated that at this point, Lansbury's career had "hit an all-time low". In April 1953, her daughter Deirdre <mask> was born.Shaw had a son by a previous marriage, David, and after gaining legal custody of the boy in 1953, brought him to California to live with the family; with three children to raise, the Shaws moved to a larger house on San Vincente Boulevard in Santa Monica, California. However, Lansbury did not feel entirely comfortable in the Hollywood social scene, later asserting that as a result of her British roots, "in Hollywood, I always felt like a stranger in a strange land." In 1959, the family moved to Malibu, settling into a house on the Pacific Coast Highway that had been designed by Aaron Green; there, she and Peter escaped the Hollywood scene, and were able to send their children to a local public school. Returning to cinema as a freelance actress, Lansbury found herself typecast as women older (sometimes far older) than herself in many films in which she appeared during this period. As she later stated, "Hollywood made me old before my time," noting that in her 20s she was receiving fan mail from people who believed her to be in her 40s. She obtained minor roles in the  films A Life at Stake (1954), A Lawless Street (1955) and The Purple Mask (1955), later describing the last as "the worst movie I ever made". She played Princess Gwendolyn in the comedy film The Court Jester (1956), then took the role of a wife who kills her husband in Please Murder Me (1956).She appeared as Minnie Littlejohn in The Long Hot Summer (1958), and as Mabel Claremont in The Reluctant Debutante (1958), which she filmed in Paris. Biographer Martin Gottfried said that it was these latter two cinematic appearances which restored <mask>'s status as an "A-picture actress". Throughout this period, she continued making appearances on television, starring in episodes of Revlon Mirror Theatre, Ford Theatre and The George Gobel Show, and became a regular on game show Pantomime Quiz. Independent films and further acclaim (1960–80)
<mask>'s rare sympathetic role as Mavis in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960) drew critical acclaim, as did her performances as sinister characters in All Fall Down (1962), as a manipulative, destructive mother,  and the Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1962) as the scheming ideologue Mrs. Iselin. In the latter, she was cast for the role by John Frankenheimer based on her performance in All Fall Down. Lansbury was only three years older than actor Laurence Harvey who played her son in the film. She had agreed to appear in the film after reading the original novel, describing it as "one of the most exciting political books I ever read".Biographers Edelman and Kupferberg considered this role "her enduring cinematic triumph", while Gottfried stated that it was "the strongest, the most memorable and the best picture she ever made ... she gives her finest film performance in it." <mask> received her third Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination for the film, and was bothered by the fact that she lost, losing to Patty Duke for The Miracle Worker (1962). <mask> followed this with a performance as Sybil Logan in In the Cool of the Day (1963), a film she renounced as awful, and appeared as wealthy Isabel Boyd in The World of Henry Orient (1964) and the widow Phyllis in Dear Heart (1964). <mask> declined several cinematic roles, including the lead in The Killing of Sister George (1968) and the role of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). Instead, she accepted the role of the Countess von Ornstein, an aging German aristocrat who falls in love with a younger man, in Something for Everyone (1970), for which she filmed on location in Hohenschwangen, Bavaria. The same year, she appeared as the middle-aged English witch Eglantine Price in the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971); this was her first lead in a screen musical, and led to her publicising the film on television programmes like the David Frost Show. She later noted that as a big commercial hit, this film "secured an enormous audience for me".<mask> spent most of the 1970s on stage rather than on screen, but was acclaimed for her supporting performance in 1978's Death on the Nile, which Johnny Depp cited as one of his inspirations for his portrayal of Ichabod Crane in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. <mask> appeared as Miss Froy in The Lady Vanishes (1979), a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's earlier film released in 1938. The following year's The Mirror Crack'd featured her in another film based on an Agatha Christie novel, this time as Miss Marple, a sleuth in 1950s Kent. <mask> hoped to get away from the depiction of the role by Margaret Rutherford, instead returning to Christie's

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 description of the character; in this she created a precursor to her later role of Jessica Fletcher. She was signed to appear in two sequels as Miss Marple, but these never were made. <mask>'s next film was the animated The Last Unicorn (1982), for which she provided the voice of the witch Mommy Fortuna. Beauty and the Beast and other roles (1990–2000)
Throughout the run of Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury had continued making appearances in other television films, miniseries and cinema.In 1986, she co-hosted the New York Philharmonic's televised tribute to the centenary of the Statue of Liberty with Kirk Douglas. She appeared as the protagonist's mother in Rage of Angels: The Story Continues (1986)  and portrayed Nan Moore – the mother of a victim of the real-life Korean Air Lines Flight 007 plane crash – in Shootdown (1988); being a mother herself, she had been "enormously touched by the incident". She was featured in The Shell Seekers (1989) as an Englishwoman recuperating from a heart attack, and starred in The Love She Sought (1990) as an American school teacher who falls in love with a Catholic priest while visiting Ireland; Lansbury thought it "a marvelous woman's story". She next starred as the Cockney Mrs Harris in a film adaptation of the novel Mrs 'Arris Goes to Paris (1992), which was directed by her son and executive produced by her stepson. Her highest profile cinematic role since The Manchurian Candidate was as the voice of the motherly teapot Mrs. Potts in the Disney animation Beauty and the Beast (1991), an appearance that she considered to be a gift to her three grandchildren. Lansbury performed the title song to the film, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media. In 2021, <mask> made a surprise appearance referencing her role as Mrs. Potts on the audio guide of "Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts", The Metropolitan Museum of Art's first ever exhibition about Walt Disney and his Studios.Return to film (2005–19)
She starred in the film Nanny McPhee (2005) as Aunt Adelaide, later informing an interviewer that working on Nanny McPhee "pulled me out of the abyss" after the loss of her husband. She then appeared in the film Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), opposite Jim Carrey. In 2012, it was announced that <mask> was set to star in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel; however, she had to back out of the project (with Tilda Swinton replacing her) due to prior scheduling conflicts with the Australian production of Driving Miss Daisy, in which she co-starred alongside James Earl Jones. In November 2013, she received an Academy Honorary Award for her lifetime achievement at the Governors Awards which was presented to her by Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies. Emma Thompson and Geoffrey Rush also offered tributes. She also appeared in a supporting role in Mary Poppins Returns (2018), a sequel to the 1964 original film, set 20 years later in Depression-era London which features Emily Blunt as the title character. Filming began at Shepperton Studios in February 2017, and the film was released in December 2018 to positive reviews.In January 2019, Lansbury was invited to the American Film Institute's luncheon to give the annual benediction where she talked about her experiences at MGM, the craft of acting and the importance of a film community. The appearance was a surprise to the group of film and television stars who gave her a standing ovation. Lansbury concluded her remarks by giving advice to the possible Oscar, and Golden Globe contenders about the awards season stating "As you leave here today and are invited to endure a seemingly endless parade of programs that label you a 'winner' or a 'loser' – I've been there, I've done that, remember this room, when we are all together as one." Theatre

Career beginnings and breakthrough (1957–61)
In April 1957, she debuted on Broadway at the Henry Miller Theatre in Hotel Paradiso, a French burlesque set in Paris, directed by Peter Glenville. The play only ran for 15 weeks, although she earned good reviews for her role as "Marcel Cat". She later stated that had she not appeared in the play, her "whole career would have fizzled out"/ She followed this with an appearance in 1960s Broadway performance of A Taste of Honey at the Lyceum Theatre, directed by Tony Richardson and George Devine. Lansbury played Helen, the boorish, verbally abusive, otherwise absentee mother of Josephine (played by Joan Plowright, only four years Lansbury's junior), remarking that she gained "a great deal of satisfaction" from the role.During the show's run, <mask> developed a friendship with Plowright, as well as with Plowright's lover and future husband, Laurence Olivier. It was from <mask>'s rented flat on East 97th Street that Plowright and Olivier eloped to be married. After a well-reviewed appearance in Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1959) – for which she had filmed in Sydney, Australia – and a minor role in A Breath of Scandal (1960), she appeared in 1961's Blue Hawaii as an overbearing mother, whose son was played by Elvis Presley, despite his being her junior by only nine years. Acknowledging that the film was of poor quality, she commented that she agreed to appear in it because "I was desperate." Her first appearance in a theatrical musical was the short-lived Anyone Can Whistle, written by Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim. An experimental work, it opened at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway in April 1964, but was critically panned and closed after nine performances. <mask> had played the role of crooked mayoress Cora Hoover Hooper, and although she loved Sondheim's score she faced personal differences with Laurents and was glad when the show closed.In 1965, she appeared in a second-season episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. as a flamboyant and wealthy actress. She appeared in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), a cinematic biopic of Jesus, but was cut almost entirely from the final edit. She followed this with an appearance as Mama Jean Bello in Harlow (1965), as Lady Blystone in The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965), and as Gloria in Mister Buddwing (1966). Despite her well-received performances in a number of films, "celluloid superstardom" evaded her, and she became increasingly dissatisfied with these minor roles, feeling that none allowed her to explore her potential as an actress. Returning to musical cinema, she starred as Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance (1983), a film based on Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera of the same name, and while filming it in London sang on a recording of The Beggar's Opera as a mezzo-soprano. This was followed by an appearance as the grandmother in the gothic fantasy film The Company of Wolves (1984).Lansbury had also begun work for television, appearing in a television film with Bette Davis titled Little Gloria... Happy at Last (1982). She followed this with an appearance in The Gift of Love: A Christmas Story (1983), later describing it as "the most unsophisticated thing you can imagine". In the television film A Talent for Murder (1984), she played a wheelchair using mystery writer; although describing it as "a rush job", she agreed to do it in order to work with co-star Laurence Olivier. Two further miniseries featuring Lansbury appeared in 1984: Lace and The First Olympics: Athens 1896. Broadway stardom (1966–80)

In 1966, Lansbury took on the title role of Mame Dennis in the musical Mame, Jerry Herman's musical adaptation of the novel Auntie Mame. The director's first choice for the role had been Rosalind Russell, who played Mame in the non-musical film adaptation Auntie Mame, but she had declined.Lansbury actively sought the role in the hope that it would mark a change in her career. When she was chosen, it came as a surprise to theatre critics, who believed that it would go to a better-known actress; Lansbury was forty-one years old, and it was her first starring role. Mame Dennis was a glamorous character, with over twenty costume changes throughout the play, and Lansbury's role involved ten songs and dance routines which she trained extensively for. First appearing in Philadelphia and then Boston, Mame opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in May 1966. Auntie Mame was already popular among the gay community, and Mame gained Lansbury a cult gay following, something that she later attributed to the fact that Mame Dennis was "every gay person's idea of glamour ... Everything about Mame coincided with every young man's idea of beauty and glory and it was lovely." Reviews of Lansbury's performance were overwhelmingly positive. In The New York Times, Stanley Kauffmann wrote: "Miss Lansbury is a singing-dancing actress, not a singer or dancer who also acts ...In this marathon role she has wit, poise, warmth and a very taking coolth." The role resulted in <mask> receiving her first Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. Lansbury's later biographer Margaret Bonanno claimed that Mame made <mask> a "superstar", with the actress herself commenting on her success by stating that "Everyone loves you, everyone loves the success, and enjoys it as much as you do. And it lasts as long as you are on that stage and as long as you keep coming out of that stage door." The stardom achieved through Mame allowed <mask> to make further appearances on television, such as on Perry Como's Thanksgiving special in November 1966. Her fame also allowed her to engage in a variety of high-profile charitable endeavors, for instance appearing as the guest of honor at the 1967 March of Dimes annual benefit luncheon. She was invited to star in a musical performance for the 1968 Academy Awards ceremony, and co-hosted that year's Tony Awards with former brother-in-law Peter Ustinov.That year, Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Club elected her "Woman of the Year". When the film adaptation of Mame was put into production, <mask> hoped to be offered the part, but it instead went to Lucille Ball, an established box-office success. <mask> considered this to be "one of my bitterest disappointments". Her personal life was complicated when she learned that both of her children had become involved with the counterculture of the 1960s and had been using recreational drugs; as a result, Anthony had become addicted to cocaine and heroin. <mask> followed the success of Mame with a performance as Countess Aurelia, the 75-year-old Parisian eccentric in Dear World, a musical adaptation of Jean Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot. The show opened at Broadway's Mark Hellinger Theatre in February 1969, but <mask> found it a "pretty depressing" experience. Reviews of her performance were positive, and she was awarded her second Tony Award on the basis of it.Reviews of the show more generally were critical, however, and it ended after 132 performances. She followed this with an appearance in the title role of the musical Prettybelle, which was based upon Jean Arnold's The Rape of Prettybelle. Set in the Deep South, it dealt with issues of racism, with <mask> as a wealthy alcoholic who seeks sexual encounters with black men. A controversial play, it opened in Boston but received poor reviews, being cancelled before it reached Broadway. <mask> later described the play as "a complete and utter fiasco", admitting that in her opinion, her "performance was awful". The year 1970 was traumatic for the <mask> family, as Peter underwent a hip replacement, Anthony suffered a heroin overdose and entered a coma, and in September, the family's Malibu home was destroyed in a brush fire. They then purchased Knockmourne Glebe, a farmhouse constructed in the 1820s which was located near the village of Conna in rural County Cork, and, after Anthony quit using cocaine and heroin, took him there to recover from his drug addiction.To help her children out, the family had moved to Ireland. <mask> didn't work for a whole year so she could be there for Anthony and Deidre while they were recovering from their addiction. He enrolled in the Webber-Douglas School, his mother's alma mater, and became a professional actor, then moved into television directing. <mask> and her husband did not return to California, instead dividing their time between County Cork and New York City. In 1972, <mask> returned to London's West End to perform in the Royal Shakespeare Company's theatrical production of Edward Albee's All Over at the Aldwych Theatre. She portrayed the mistress of a dying New England millionaire, and although the play's reviews were mixed, Lansbury's acting was widely praised. This was followed by her reluctant involvement in a revival of Mame, which was then touring the United States, after which she returned to the West End to play the character of Rose in the musical Gypsy.She had initially turned down the role, not wishing to be in the shadow of Ethel Merman, who had portrayed the character in the original Broadway production, but eventually accepted it; when the show started in May 1973, she earned a standing ovation and rave reviews. Settling into a Belgravia flat, she was soon in demand among London society, having dinners held in her honour. Following the culmination of the London run, in 1974 Gypsy went on a tour of the U.S., and in Chicago <mask> was awarded the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance. The show eventually reached Broadway, where it ran until January 1975; a critical success, it earned <mask> her third Tony Award. After several months' break, Gypsy then toured throughout the country again in the summer of 1975. Desiring to move on from musicals, Lansbury decided that she wanted to appear in a production of one of William Shakespeare's plays. She obtained the role of Gertrude in the National Theatre Company's production of Hamlet, staged at the Old Vic.Directed by Peter Hall, the production ran from December 1975 to May 1976, receiving mixed reviews; <mask> later commented that she "hated" the role, believing it too restrained. Her mood was worsened by the news that in November 1975 her mother had died in California; <mask> had her mother's body cremated and the ashes scattered near her own County Cork home. Her next theatrical appearance was in two one-act plays by Edward Albee, Counting the Ways and Listening, performed side by side at the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut. Reviews of the production were mixed, but <mask> was again singled out for praise. This was followed by another revival tour of Gypsy. In April 1978, <mask> appeared in 24 performances of a revival of The King and I musical staged at Broadway's Uris Theatre; <mask> played the role of Mrs Anna, replacing Constance Towers, who was on a short break. Her first cinematic role in seven years was as novelist and murder victim Salome Otterbourne in  Death on the Nile (1978), an adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1937 novel of the same name that was filmed in both London and Egypt.In the film, <mask> starred alongside Peter Ustinov and Bette Davis, who became a close friend. The role earned <mask> the National Board of Review award for Best Supporting Actress of 1978. In March 1979, Lansbury first appeared as Nellie Lovett in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a Stephen Sondheim musical directed by Harold Prince. Opening at the Uris Theatre on Broadway, she starred alongside Len Cariou as Sweeney Todd, the murderous barber in 19th century London. After being offered the role, she jumped on the opportunity due to the involvement of Sondheim in the project; she commented that she loved "the extraordinary wit and intelligence of his lyrics". She remained in the role for fourteen months before being replaced by Dorothy Loudon; the musical received mixed critical reviews, although it earned <mask> her fourth Tony Award and After Dark magazine's Ruby Award for Broadway Performer of the Year. She returned to the role in October 1980 for a ten-month tour of six U.S. cities, with George Hearn playing the title character; the production was also filmed and broadcast on the Entertainment Channel.In 1982, she took on the role of an upper middle class housewife who champions workers' rights in A Little Family Business, a farce set in Baltimore in which her son Anthony also starred. It debuted at Los Angeles' Ahmanson Theatre before heading on to Broadway's Martin Beck Theatre. It was critically panned and induced accusations of racism from the Japanese-American community. That year, <mask> was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, and the following year appeared in a Mame revival at Broadway's Gershwin Theatre. Although <mask> was praised, the show was a commercial flop, with <mask> noting that "I realised that it's not a show of today. It's a period piece." Return to Broadway (2001–09)

Following the end of Murder, She Wrote, <mask> returned to the theatre.Although cast in the lead role in the 2001 Kander and Ebb musical The Visit, she withdrew before it opened due to her husband's deteriorating health. Peter died in January 2003 of congestive heart failure at the couple's home in Brentwood, California. <mask> felt that after this event she would not take on any more major acting roles, and that instead might make a few cameos but nothing more. Wanting to spend more time in New York City, in 2006 she purchased a $2 million condominium in Manhattan. <mask> returned to Broadway after

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 a 23-year absence in Deuce, a play by Terrence McNally that opened at the Music Box Theatre in May 2007 for a limited run of eighteen weeks. <mask> received a Tony Award nomination for Best Leading Actress in a Play for her role. In March 2009 she returned to Broadway for a revival of Blithe Spirit at the Shubert Theatre, where she took on the role of Madame Arcati.This appearance earned her the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play; this was her fifth Tony Award, tying her with the previous record holder for the number of Tony Awards, Julie Harris, albeit all of Harris' Tonys were for Best Leading Actress. From December 2009 to June 2010, Lansbury then starred as Madame Armfeldt alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones in the first Broadway revival of A Little Night Music, held at the Walter Kerr Theatre. The role earned her a seventh Tony Award nomination, while in May 2010, she was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from Manhattan School of Music. Return to the West End (2012–19)

From April to July 2012, <mask> starred as women's rights advocate Sue-Ellen Gamadge in the Broadway revival of Gore Vidal's The Best Man at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. From February to June 2013, Lansbury starred alongside James Earl Jones in an Australian tour of Driving Miss Daisy. From March to June 2014, Lansbury reprised her performance as Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit at the Gielgud Theatre in London's West End, her first London stage appearance in nearly 40 years. While in London, she made an appearance at the Angela Lansbury Film Festival in Poplar, a screening of some of her best known films organised by Poplar Film.From December 2014 to March 2015, she joined the tour of Blithe Spirit across North America. In April 2015, aged 89, she received her first Olivier Award as Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Arcati, and in November 2015 was awarded the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre. On June 2, 2016, it was officially announced that <mask> would return to Broadway in the 2017–2018 season in a revival of Enid Bagnold's 1955 play The Chalk Garden. The play was produced by Scott Rudin at a theatre to-be-announced. However, in an interview published on September 20, 2016, Lansbury stated that she will not be performing in The Chalk Garden, saying: "At my time of life, I've decided that I want to be with family more and being alone in New York doing a play requires an extraordinary amount of time left alone." On November 18, 2019, <mask> returned to Broadway portraying Lady Bracknell in a one-night benefit staging of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest for Roundabout Theatre Company's American Airlines Theatre. In October 2020, Variety magazine considered her career to "defy all logic" and continued "Though powerful women were sometimes maligned, it was thought you needed to be heartless to survive in showbiz, Lansbury has created a 77-year career and nobody has a bad word to say about her."Television

Murder, She Wrote (1984–96)

In 1983, <mask> was offered two main television roles, one in a Norman Lear sitcom opposite Charles Durning and the other in a detective series by co-creators William Link and Richard Levinson of Columbo fame. Unable to do both, she chose to do the detective series despite the fact her agents had advised her to accept the sitcom. The series Murder, She Wrote centered on the character of Jessica Fletcher, a retired school teacher from the fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine, who became a successful detective novelist after her husband's death, also solving murders encountered during her travels. <mask> described the character as "an American Miss Marple". The series was created by Peter S. Fischer, Richard Levinson and William Link, who had earlier had success with Columbo and the role of Jessica Fletcher had been first offered to Jean Stapleton, who declined the role, as did Doris Day. The pilot episode "The Murder of Sherlock Holmes" premiered on on September 30, 1984, with the rest of the first season airing on Sundays from 8 to 9 p.m. Although critical reviews were mixed, it proved highly popular, with the pilot having a Nielsen rating of 18.9 and the first season being rated top in its time slot.Designed as inoffensive family viewing, despite its topic the show eschewed depicting violence or gore, following the "whodunit" format rather than those of most contemporary U.S. crime shows; <mask> herself commented that "best of all, there's no violence. I hate violence." <mask> was protective of Jessica Fletcher, having creative input over the character's costumes, makeup and hair and rejecting pressure from network executives to put her in a relationship, believing that the character should remain a strong single female. When she believed that a scriptwriter had made Jessica do or say things that did not fit with the character's personality, <mask> ensured that the script was changed. She saw Jessica as a role model for older female viewers, praising her "enormous, universal appeal – that was an accomplishment I never expected in my entire life." Lansbury biographers Rob Edelman and Audrey E. Kupferberg described the series as "a television landmark" in the U.S. for having an older female character as the protagonist, thereby paving the way for later series like The Golden Girls. Lansbury herself noted that "I think it's the first time a show has really been aimed at the middle aged audience," and although it was most popular among senior citizens, it gradually gained a younger audience.By 1991, one third of viewers were under age 50. It gained continually high ratings throughout most of its run, outdoing rivals in its time slot such as Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories. In February 1987, a spin-off was produced, The Law & Harry McGraw, although it was short-lived. As the show's run continued, Lansbury assumed a larger role behind the scenes. In 1989, her company Corymore Productions began co-producing the show with Universal. Nevertheless, she began to tire of the series and in particular the long working hours, stating that the 1990–91 season would be the show's last. She changed her mind after being appointed executive producer for the 1992–93 season, something that she felt "made it far more interesting to me".For the 8th season, the show's setting moved to New York City, where Jessica had taken a job teaching criminology at Manhattan University. The move was an attempt to attract younger viewers and was encouraged by <mask>. Having become a "Sunday-night institution" in the U.S., the show's ratings improved during the early 1990s, becoming a Top Five programme. However, CBS executives, hoping to gain a larger audience, moved it to Thursdays at 8pm, opposite NBC's sitcom Friends. <mask> was angry at the move, believing that it ignored the show's core audience. The final episode of the series aired in May 1996, and ended with <mask> voicing a "Goodbye from Jessica" message at the end. Tom Shales wrote in The Washington Post: "The title of the show's last episode, "Death by Demographics", is in itself something of a protest.Murder, She Wrote is partly a victim of commercial television's mad youth mania." At the time, it tied the original Hawaii Five-O as the longest-running detective series in television history, and the role would prove to be the most successful and prominent of <mask>'s career. <mask> initially had plans for a Murder, She Wrote television film that would be a musical with a score composed by Jerry Herman. While this project did not materialise, it was transformed into Mrs Santa Claus – in which <mask> played Santa Claus' wife – which proved to be a ratings hit. <mask>'s higher profile gained from Murder, She Wrote resulted in her being employed to appear in advertisements and infomercials for Bufferin, MasterCard and the Beatrix Potter Company. In 1988, she released a video titled <mask>'s Positive Moves: My Personal Plan for Fitness and Well-Being, in which she outlined her personal exercise routine, and in 1990 published a book with the same title co-written with Mimi Avins, which she dedicated to her mother. As a result of her work, she was appointed a CBE, awarded to her in a ceremony by the Prince of Wales at the British consulate in Los Angeles.While living most of the year in California, <mask> spent Christmases and summers at Corymore House, her farmhouse overlooking the Atlantic Ocean at Ballywilliam, near Churchtown South, Cloyne, County Cork, which she had specially built as a family home in 1991. Law & Order and other guest roles (2005–17)
She made an appearance in a Season 6 episode of the television show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series in 2005. In December 2017, <mask> played Aunt March on the BBC miniseries Little Women. <mask> received acclaim for her performance with Variety film critic Jaqueline Cutler writing, "That's Aunt March, played with magnificent imperiousness by <mask>, wielding power by lording her wealth over all." Daniel Feinberg at The Hollywood Reporter praised <mask> declaring, "<mask> towers over a solid cast...rests on no laurels and steals her every scene." Personal life

Off-screen, Lansbury has spoken throughout her life with an English accent. She holds Irish citizenship.Biographer Martin Gottfried characterized her as "Meticulous. Cautious. Self-editing. Deliberate. It is what the British call reserved," adding that she was "as concerned, as sensitive, and as sympathetic as anyone might want in a friend". Also noting that she had "a profound sense of privacy", he added that she disliked attempts at flattery. Lansbury has been married twice, first to the actor Richard Cromwell, when she was 19 and Cromwell was 35.Cromwell and <mask> eloped and were married in a small civil ceremony on September 27, 1945. The marriage ended in divorce in 1946, but they remained friends until his death in 1960. In 1949, she married actor and producer Peter Shaw, and they remained together for 54 years until his death in 2003. She acquired a step-son, David, from Shaw's first marriage. They had two children of their own, Anthony Peter (b. 1952) and Deirdre Ann (b. 1953).While Lansbury repeatedly stated that she wanted to put her children before her career, she admitted that she often had to leave them in California for long periods when she was working elsewhere. She brought up her children to be Episcopalian, although they were not members of a congregation. She has stated that "I believe that God is within all of us, that we are perfect, precious beings, and that we have to put our faith and trust in that." In the latter part of the 1960s, Anthony and Deirdre became involved in the growing counterculture movement and started using recreational drugs. Deirdre developed an acquaintance with the Manson family, while Anthony became addicted to cocaine and heroin, giving it up in 1971. After recovering, Anthony became a television director and directed 68 episodes of Murder, She Wrote; he also married and had three children. Deirdre married a chef, and together they opened a restaurant in West Los Angeles.Lansbury is a cousin of the Postgate family, including the animator, writer and social activist Oliver Postgate. She is also a cousin of the academic and novelist <mask>, whose son is former Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull. As a young actress, Lansbury was a self-professed homebody, who commented that she loved housekeeping. She preferred spending quiet evenings inside with friends to the Hollywood night life. Her hobbies at the time included reading, horse riding, playing tennis, cooking, and playing the piano; she also had a keen interest in gardening. She has cited F. Scott Fitzgerald as her favorite author, and cited Roseanne and Seinfeld as being among her favorite television shows. Lansbury was an avid letter writer who wrote letters by hand and made copies of all of them.At Howard Gotlieb's request, <mask>'s papers are housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University. <mask> is a supporter of the United States Democratic Party (describing herself as "Democrat from the ground up") and the British Labour Party. Throughout her career, <mask> supported a variety of charities, particularly those such as Abused Wives in Crisis that combated domestic abuse and those who worked toward rehabilitating drug users. In the 1980s, she began to support a number of charities engaged in the fight against HIV/AIDS. In early life, <mask> was a chain smoker. She gave up the addiction in the mid-1960s. In 1976 and 1987, she had cosmetic surgery on her neck to prevent it from broadening with age.During the 1990s, she began to suffer from arthritis. Lansbury underwent hip replacement surgery in May 1994 and knee replacement surgery in 2005. Acting credits

<mask> has had a prolific career in film, theatre and television. She is one of the last film stars of the golden age of Hollywood, having been a contract player with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1940s. She acted alongside actors such as Ingrid Bergman, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman, Orson Welles, Bette Davis and Maggie Smith in such classic films as Gaslight (1944), National Velvet (1944), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), The Harvey Girls (1946), State of the Union (1948), The Court Jester (1956), The Long, Hot Summer (1958), The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Death on the Nile (1978). She is also known for her roles in classic children's films as Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), The Last Unicorn  (1982), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Anastasia (1997), Fantasia 2000 (2000), Nanny McPhee (2005), The Grinch (2018) and Mary Poppins Returns (2018). Lansbury is also known for her iconic work in Broadway musicals working Stephen Sondheim's Anyone Can Whistle (1964), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1978), Gypsy (1973), and A Little Night Music (2009–2010).She also starred in Jerry Herman's Mame (1966), and Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I (1978). She is also known for her performances in plays such as the Terrence McNally play Deuce (2007), the Noël Coward comedy Blithe Spirit (2014), the Gore Vidal political drama The Best Man (2012). She gained international fame for her role as mystery writer turned sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the CBS crime series Murder, She Wrote (1984–1996). Honours and legacy

In the 1960s, The New York Times referred to <mask> as the "First Lady of Musical Theatre". Lansbury described herself as an actress who also could sing, with Sondheim stating that she had a strong voice, albeit with a limited range. Lansbury's authorised biographer Martin Gottfried described her as "an American icon", with a "practically saintly" public image. A 2007 interviewer for The New York Times described her as "one of the few actors it makes sense to call beloved", noting that a 1994 article in People magazine awarded her a perfect score on its "lovability index".The New Statesman commented that she "has the kind of pulling power many younger and more ubiquitous actors can only dream of, while an article in The Independent has suggested that she could be considered Britain's most successful actress. She is a gay icon, and has asserted that she is "very proud of the fact", attributing her popularity among the LGBT community to her performance in Mame, while Murder, She Wrote broadened that appeal. She has been recognized for her achievements in Britain on multiple occasions. In 2002, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) gave <mask> a Lifetime Achievement Award. <mask> was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1994 Birthday Honours, and promoted to a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to drama, charitable work, and philanthropy. On being made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle, <mask> stated: "I'm joining a marvellous group of women I greatly admire like Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. It's a lovely thing to be given that nod of approval by your own country and I really cherish it."Lansbury has never won an Emmy Award despite 18 nominations (17 of them Primetime Emmy Awards) for which she was nominated over a 33-year period. As of 2009, she held the record for the most Emmy losses by a performer. She has been nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress but has never won; reflecting on this in 2007, she stated that she was at first "terribly disappointed, but subsequently very glad that [she] did not win" because she believes that she would have otherwise had a less successful career. However, she has received Golden Globe and People's Choice Awards for her television and film work. In 2013, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors voted to bestow upon her an Honorary Academy Award for her lifetime achievements in the industry. Emma Thompson and Geoffrey Rush offered tributes at the Governors Awards where the ceremony was held, and Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies presented her with the Oscar saying in part "<mask> has been adding class, talent, beauty, and intelligence to the movies ever since" her film debut in 1944. The Oscar statue is inscribed "To <mask>, an icon who has created some of cinema's most memorable characters inspiring generations of

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Angela Lansbury


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Z<mask> (May 30, 1904 – May 1, 1968) was an American watercolor painter who gained national attention in the 1930s and 40s, mainly for her paintings of scenes in Eastern Washington. She painted with a bold, Precisionist style not commonly associated with watercolor, rendering landscapes, industrial scenes, and houses with a Magic Realist touch that gave them a forlorn, isolated quality, somewhat in the manner of Charles Sheeler and Edward Hopper. She spent most of her career in the Pacific Northwest (later moving to California), but was popular in New York art galleries, was a member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, and, in 1943, was included in a major exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. She continued painting and exhibiting after moving to Los Angeles with her husband, architect Jack Paterson, but her career was slowed by the post-war rise of Abstract Expressionism, and later by the health problems of both her and her husband. They died a few days apart, in 1968. For many years Helder's work was out of vogue and largely forgotten by the public, but the power of her art has gradually been rediscovered, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. The Tacoma Art Museum held an exhibition of her work in 2013, and the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane has her twenty-two piece series relating to the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam – generally considered her masterwork – in its permanent collection.Early life
Zama <mask> was born May 30, 1904, in the town of Lynden, near Bellingham, in Whatcom County, Washington. The name "Zama" (which Helder disliked) was taken from the ancient Carthaginian battle site where Hannibal was defeated by the Romans, reputed to be a place of spiritual energy, making it significant to her parents, who were interested in Theosophism and Spiritualism. Her father, Rynard, was a businessman; her mother, Anna, was a music and art lover who gave young <mask> her first painting lessons. She had a brother, R. Wright <mask>, who became a professional photographer. <mask> became proficient in landscape painting with watercolor at an early age. She graduated from Whatcom High School and studied at the University of Washington before winning, in 1934, a scholarship to the Art Students League of New York. There, she studied under well-known artists such as Robert Brackman,  Frank DuMond, and George Picken.Career
In New York, Helder quickly attracted notice. She gained membership in both the Association of Women Painters and Sculptors and the American Watercolor Society, which led to inclusion in group shows at prominent galleries, and eventually representation by the Grant Studio, and later the Macbeth Gallery. Although she painted a variety of subjects in a variety of locations, her realist yet unearthly Northwest landscapes proved popular in New York, and she regularly traveled back to Washington to go on painting trips with friends such as Ebba Rapp and Blanche Losey, who were fellow members of the Women Painters of Washington association. In 1937, Helder moved to Seattle to take up a Works Progress Administration (WPA) job offered by Bruce Inverarity, the Federal Art Project director for Washington. This included painting murals at the Washington State Capitol in Olympia and at Sand Point Naval Air Station in Seattle (both now lost). She entered several paintings in the Northwest Annuals, and had a solo exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum. In 1939, at Inverarity's request, she began teaching classes in watercolor, oil painting, and lithography at the Spokane Art Center, working alongside avant-gardists such as Margaret Tomkins, Carl Morris, and Guy Anderson.As an established professional working in a more traditional style, she was somewhat out of place on the faculty, but was able to spend a great deal of time roaming about Eastern Washington, painting landscapes. It was in this period, from 1939 to 1941, that she painted the Grand Coulee series, often cited of as her best work. Wrote Seattle Times art critic Michael  Upchurch in 2013:

"The contrast in these, between geometric structures (the dam in progress, the outbuildings arrayed around it) and the more organic flow of the dam's natural surroundings (scalloped desert hills, plunging watercourses), continually draws the eye. 'Sand and Gravel Works', for instance, is a whole symphony of interconnected inclines, angles, slopes and shadows. 'Jackhammer Crew' makes the most of the interplay between standing human forms, their drills and coiling drill hoses and the craggy rock beneath them. [...] There's a thrilling dynamism to the way she mixes stone outcrop, flowing water and sky reflection in these paintings." After moving back to Seattle in 1941, Helder married industrial architect Robert J.S."Jack" Paterson. Following the Pearl Harbor attack, she joined the Washington State Artists Council for Defense. She continued exhibiting locally and nationally, and in 1943 reached a high point in her career when works of hers were selected for inclusion in American Realists and Magic Realists, a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. A dozen of her paintings were hung alongside works by John James Audubon, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler, and Andrew Wyeth. Following the triumph of the MoMA show, Helder moved to Los Angeles to be with her husband, who had moved there for work reasons. With her typical energy and sense of professionalism, she joined the California Watercolor Society, did volunteer work with wounded soldiers, lectured on art, continued to exhibit in New York, and, in 1945, had a solo show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. From 1952 to 1955 she taught at the Los Angeles Art Institute.Later years
Helder made some attempt to keep pace with post-war changes in artistic taste, but was eventually squeezed out of the New York galleries by the popularity of Abstract Expressionism. In the Pacific Northwest she came to be overshadowed by Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Guy Anderson, and other artists of the "Northwest School". Nevertheless, she remained a well-respected "WPA artist" and master of watercolor. Aware of its artistic and cultural value, Helder had resisted selling pieces of the Grand Coulee series individually, finally selling the complete collection to the Eastern Washington State Historical Society (now the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture) in 1954. Both <mask> and her husband suffered from poor health, and she spent much of her energy in her last years caring for him. She died on May 1, 1968, a week after her husband, in Los Angeles. Legacy
Works by <mask>er have been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Oakland Museum, the Denver Art Museum, and the Seattle Art Museum; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds, WA and Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA; and numerous other museums and galleries.In 2013 the Tacoma Art Museum presented a major retrospective of her work, and the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, WA has displayed her Grand Coulee series on several occasions. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Seattle Art Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Newark Museum, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA, the Portland Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the St. Louis Art Museum, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, N.Y., IBM Corporation, and the Northwest Museum of Art and Culture in Spokane. Her art has been documented in the books Austere Beauty: The Art of Z. <mask>er by Margaret Bullock and David F. Martin and An Enduring Legacy: Women Painters of Washington, by Martin. References

1904 births
1968 deaths
American watercolorists
American women painters
Painters from Washington (state)
Federal Art Project artists
Women watercolorists
People from Lynden, Washington
20th-century American painters
20th-century American women artists

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. Vanessa Helder
Vanessa Helder
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Vanessa Held