Angela Lansbury Movies

Anthony Shaw directs his mother, Angela Lansbury of Murder She Wrote, in this lighthearted made-for-television adventure. Set in the 1950's, Lansbury stars as Mrs. Harris, a common British woman so intent on owning a Dior gown, that she slaves and scrimps for years. However, upon travelling to Paris to make the purchase, Mrs. Harris encounters a series of unexpected characters and events that stand between her and the coveted gown. Originally broadcast in 1992, the film also features supporting performances by Diana Rigg, Lothaire Bluteau, and Omar Sharif. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide

Ingrid Bergman was both one of Hollywood's most sought after stars and a controversial public figure. Her bright and acclaimed acting career came to a halt after a very public scandal caused her to leave the country and live in Europe for a time. Resilient and strong, Ingrid Bergman did not let her public humiliation end her career or prevent her life from moving on. She came back to America determined to put her past behind her and succeeded with her performance in Anastasia, for which she won a Best Actress Oscar. This documentary on her life, narrated by Sir John Gielgud, includes clips from 25 of her films and interviews with friends and people who worked with her, including Liv Ullmann, Angela Lansbury, Anthony Quinn, and Jose Ferrer. Also included are rare early screen tests, home movies from the 1940s, and footage from her press conference after she returned from Europe. ~ Cecilia Cygnar, All Movie Guide

Angela Lansbury stars as an unmarried teacher at a Minnesota Catholic grade school. An ongoing battle with new bishop Robert Prosky, coupled with her friendship with an unwed mother, awakens hera to the possibility that she hasn't lived her life to the fullest. When her grateful school staff bankrolls her vacation to Ireland, Lansbury uses the opportunity to meet the man (Denholm Elliot) with whom she has secretly corresponded for years--and with whom she has fallen in love, sight unseen. Arriving on the Emerald Isle, Lansbury eagerly arranges a meeting with her dream lover. Will she be surprised. Made for television, Love She Sought was filmed under the working titles A Green Journey and Last Chance for Romance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Middle-aged mystery novelist and part-time sleuth Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) finds murder in such exotic locales as Jamaica, Athens, and Sicily during season six of Murder, She Wrote. However, longtime fans of the series could not help but notice -- and regret -- that Jessica was conspicuous by her absence in several episodes, due to star Angela Lansbury's desire to lighten her considerable workload during this season. Thus, in several instances, Jessica only shows up long enough to "narrate" the adventures of other eminent sleuths, such as secret agent Michael Hagarty (Len Cariou), Agatha Christie-like novelist Lady Abigail Austin (June Havoc), homicide detective Jake Ballinger (Barry Newman), and reformed jewel thief-turned-insurance investigator Dennis Stanton (Keith Michell). This experiment in "rotating detectives" did not gain public favor, thus Angela Lansbury stepped up her Murder, She Wrote appearances during the subsequent seventh season. ~ All Movie Guide

This documentary video looks at the life of actress Ingrid Bergman. Clips from her movies, home life and interviews are all included. ~ All Movie Guide

Having carried virtually the whole weight of Murder, She Wrote during the series' first four seasons, star Angela Lansbury began curtailing her appearances during season five. A handful of episodes are built not around grandmotherly mystery writer Jessica Fletcher (Lansbury, of course), but instead around such fellow sleuths as Keith Michell as reformed jewel thief Dennis Stanton and Len Cariou as secret agent Michael Hagarty. Nonetheless, Jessica is given ample screen time to poke her nose into other people's business and calmly solve baffling murders in the process. With Tom Bosley having exited the role of Cabot Cove's sheriff Amos Tupper, Jessica finds herself with a new friendly adversary, Sheriff Mort Metzger, played by Ron Masak. Like Tupper, Metzger is none too keen on having Jessica accompany him on his various murder investigations, but he is invariably grateful for her assistance when she helps him collar the guilty party. Among the many guest stars dotting the series' landscape during its fifth season are former movie ingenues Teresa Wright and Joan Leslie, wonderfully cast as a pair of dotty Arsenic and Old Lace-like spinster sisters; Jean Peters, former wife of Howard Hughes, in a rare latter-day acting performance; Jane Greer, one of the foremost film noir heroines of the 1940s; and onetime Man From U.N.C.L.E. co-star David McCallum, in an espionage escapade set in Moscow. The season ends with the two-part "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall," which pits the likable Jessica against her unlikable literary rival Eudora McVeigh Shipton (Jean Simmons). ~ All Movie Guide

Season four of Murder, She Wrote finds Angela Lansbury back on duty as Jessica Fletcher, a middle-aged author of murder mysteries who can't help getting mixed up in (and invariably solving) real-life homicide. The season opens as Jessica goes on another vacation jaunt, this one to Paris, where she is confronted with the murder of a nasty loan shark. In later excursions, Jessica would ply her trade in Quebec, London, Washington, D.C., and the Deep South, encountering such guest stars as Claire Trevor, Theodore Bikel, Macdonald Carey, Janet Leigh, Henry Gibson, Jane Powell, Shirley Jones, and Eddie Albert. This season marks a "return appearance" by Jessica's British cousin Emma MacGill (also played by Angela Lansbury, whose real name is McGill). This time around, Emma performs the old music-hall ditty "Spoon With Me" which Lansbury previously sang in the 1946 feature film Till the Clouds Roll By. Season four also represents the final appearance of Jessica's close friend Sheriff Amos Tupper, a character written out of the series when actor Tom Bosley defected for his own weekly detective show, Father Dowling Mysteries. ~ All Movie Guide

Season three of Murder, She Wrote finds peppery mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) periodically leaving the comfort of her hometown of Cabot Cove for business-and-pleasure jaunts in such locales as Washington, D.C., New York City, and California. No matter where she goes, however, murder is sure to follow -- and, of course, Jessica will be able to apply her acute skills as an amateur detective to solve the case. The season opens with the two-part "Death Stalks the Big Top," in which such notable actors as Jackie Cooper and Martin Balsam figure into the intrigue. In later episodes, the guest-star roster includes Pat Hingle, Susan Anton, David Hemmings, Adrienne Barbeau, and future ER leading man George Clooney. Episodes worthy of special notice include "Murder in a Minor Key," wherein for the first time Jessica Fletcher does not appear as the main character, but instead "narrates" an adventure from her latest novel; the two-part "Magnum on Ice," in which Tom Selleck recreates his famous TV role as Hawaii-based detective Thomas Magnum; and "The Days Dwindle Down," a mystery built around black-and-white footage from the 1949 B-picture Strange Bargain, and featuring three of that film's leading players, Jeffrey Lynn, Martha Scott, and Harry Morgan. ~ All Movie Guide

Angela Lansbury plays a dual role in this episode, as Maine-based mystery writer Jessica Fletcher and as Jessica's flamboyant cousin, British music-hall headliner Emma MacGill. Arriving in London to attend Emma's funeral, Jessica is surprised to learn that her cousin is still alive. Having survived one murder attempt, Emma has decided to "play dead" until she can find out why someone wants to kill her--allowing Jessica to join in on the sleuthing, of course. The highlight of this episode is Emma's performance of the sentimental ditty "Goodbye, Little Yellow Bird"--which Angela Lansbury had previously sung to great acclaim in the 1945 theatrical feature The Picture of Dorian Gray. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The pride of Cabot Cove, ME, sprightly mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) indulges her hobby of solving real-life murders throughout the first season of Murder, She Wrote. No sooner had the series joined CBS' Sunday-night lineup than Jessica was busily trying to determine who killed a Sherlock Holmes lookalike at a costume ball. In the second episode, Tom Bosley is introduced as Jessica's best friend, Cabot Cove sheriff Amos Tupper, who as usual gripes and grumbles that Jessica is sticking her nose where she shouldn't -- and putting herself in harm's way in the process -- as she tries to find out who knocked off a wealthy and much-hated patriarch. Likewise bemused by Jessica's private investigations is Tupper's superior officer Captain Ethan Cragg, a character played during season one by Claude Akins. Michael Horton also pops up for the first time in the role of Jessica's trouble-prone nephew Grady. Among the "special guest suspects" (and "special guest victims") seen during Murder, She Wrote's maiden season are Samantha Eggar, Roger Miller, Peter Graves, William Conrad, José Ferrer, Edie Adams, Bobby Sherman, Robert Goulet, Linda Blair, Eddie Bracken, Joey Bishop, and Stella Stevens. Also worth noting is the guest appearance in the episode "Death Takes a Curtain Call" of Hurd Hatfield, with whom Angela Lansbury co-starred in the 1945 film The Picture of Dorian Gray -- not to mention the appearance of William Windom in a later episode, playing a character other than his familiar series guise as Cabot Cove's crotchety general practitioner Dr. Seth Hazlitt (just as Ron Masak, later seen on the series as Sheriff Mort Metzger, shows up as a certain "Lt. Meyer") . ~ All Movie Guide

Little Gloria...Happy at Last is the two-part TV adaptation of Barbara Goldsmith's 1980 best-seller. The film concerns the true-life custody battle over the daughter of millionaire Reggie Vanderbilt (Christopher Plummer) and his "child bride," Gloria Morgan (Lucy Gutteridge). When the over-imbibing Reggie dies, Gloria enjoys the high life as a wealthy widow, leaving her daughter in the care of her sister-in-law, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (chillingly portrayed by Angela Lansbury in her TV-movie debut). Gloria's personal income, predicated on the child's inheritance, is severely cut, whereupon Gloria sues the indomitable Vanderbilts for custody of her daughter. We won't tell you the outcome, but we can tell you that "Little Gloria," the ten-year-old focus of the custody fight, grew up to be the same Gloria Vanderbilt who went into the designer jeans business. Little Gloria...Happy at Last was originally telecast October 24 and 25, 1982. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Debuting September 30, 1984, Murder, She Wrote, TV's longest-running mystery series, might never have come about had producers Richard Levinson and William Link enjoyed a success with their 1975 TV weekly Ellery Queen. That particular series folded after a single episode, but Levinson and Link were still committed to the concept of a best-selling murder-mystery novelist who solved real murders when not at the typewriter. By changing the gender of their protagonist from male to female, and transforming the character from a good-looking, absentminded young pedant to a middle-aged, down-to-earth widow, the producers were able to parlay their "mystery writer/amateur detective" premise into a 13-year hit for CBS. Angela Lansbury starred as Jessica Fletcher, who after being widowed in her early fifties achieved success as a mystery writer. Despite fame and fortune, Jessica remained a resident of Cabot Cove, a cozy coastal town in Maine, and maintained her links with all of her old friends, never letting the popularity of her novels go to her head. Jessica's one eccentricity was an insatiable curiosity, especially whenever murder reared its ugly head. Funny thing, but no matter where Jessica went (and she traveled all over the world, often as a lecturer on criminology and creative writing), a murder seemed to occur. The "official" police were almost always willing to slap the cuffs on the most likely suspect, but Jessica invariably felt that the so-called guilty party wasn't. Carefully and methodically piecing the clues together, gently but firmly asking questions that no else had asked, and refusing to give up her investigation despite warnings to do so, Jessica always managed to trap the guilty party -- who, given the series' "special guest star" policy, was often played by a famous film or TV personality.

While Angela Lansbury was the series' only true regular, several other characters made recurring appearances, notably her Cabot Cove friends Sheriff Amos Tupper (Tom Bosley, later replaced by Ron Masak as Sheriff Mort Metzger) and crusty general practitioner Dr. Seth Hazlitt (William Windom). During the series' eighth season, Jessica accepted a full-time teaching job in New York, returning to Cabot Cove on weekends, where she often compared notes with Deputy Andy Broom (Louis Herthum). Also showing up from time to time was Jessica's nephew Grady Fletcher (Michael Horton), who through no fault of his own always seemed to be in trouble with the law, obliging Aunt Jessica to help him out -- and to solve another murder or two along the way. Though Angela Lansbury seemed to enjoy carrying the load of the series by herself (she was also one of the executive producers), beginning in season six the actress cut back her appearances, allowing such other sleuths as reformed jewel thief Dennis Stanton (Keith Michell), retired spy Michael Hagarty, (Len Cariou) and down-at-the-heel private eye Harry McGraw (Jerry Orbach) to take center stage. Viewers, however, didn't like Jessica's frequent absences during this period, so the "replacement detective" policy was eventually dropped.

A Sunday-evening tradition for over a decade, Murder, She Wrote was moved to Thursdays during its twelfth and final season, much to the dismay of its star, especially as she was forced to go head-to-head with NBC's extremely popular Friends. Not surprisingly, ratings plummeted on Murder throughout the season, and the show was canceled in August of 1996. However, Angela Lansbury fans could take heart in the fact that she would sporadically revive the character of Jessica Fletcher in a handful of feature-length Murder, She Wrote specials during the early years of the 21st century. ~ All Movie Guide