BBC Radio 2 to pay tribute to The Legendary Angela Lansbury

Published on October 13, 2022 - 4:09 pm

There’s to be another chance to hear The Legendary Angela Lansbury on BBC Radio 2 later this month.

The special programme is to air in tribute to Dame Angela, who passed away aged 96 earlier this week.

Emma Thompson talks her good friend Angela, who was one of Hollywood and Broadway’s most legendary figures, about her long career.

Best-known as Jessica Fletcher in ‘Murder She Wrote’, Angela’s career was launched at the age of 17 alongside Hollywood film star Ingrid Bergman in the film ‘Gaslight’ when she landed a contract with MGM for the next fifteen years or so.

Angela shares many anecdotes from her Hollywood days including how she and Ingrid towered over fellow actor Charles Boyer in the making of the movie and how on screen this was resolved – to great comic effect!

Theatre critic John Lahr, who says Angela had one of the most enduring and successful acting careers there has ever been, describes how his father, Bert Lahr (the Cowardly Lion in ‘The Wizard of Oz’) starred with Angela in her Broadway debut ‘Hotel Paradiso’ in 1957.

Angela worked with some of the biggest names in the business including Judy Garland in ‘The Harvey Girls’, Elizabeth Taylor in ‘National Velvet’, Elvis in ‘Blue Hawaii’ and Frank Sinatra in ‘The Manchurian Candidate’.

It was thought she didn’t have the required sex appeal that Hollywood looked for at the time, so was drawn to Broadway where she enjoyed huge success, earning a string of Tony Awards.

Despite it being a golden era for Angela, Emma asks what it was really like behind the scenes, juggling a successful career and her family life, and how musical theatre challenged being a film star.

She also reveals how Frank Sinatra, who was nearing the end of his life, stunned Angela in conversation when they went out for dinner together.

You can hear The Legendary Angela Lansbury on BBC Radio 2, early Sunday morning 30 October, 1-2am. It’s the morning when the clocks go forward an hour at 2am. The programme is currently available on BBC sounds.