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It's Angela Lansbury's birthday and she's great so we're celebrating her with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" over at The Film Experience - go forth and vote, y'all. And I knew the only chance anybody might have getting a vote against her would be to just go for it and so I put her up against Meryl fucking Streep! Will that be enough? I doubt it, but she'll certainly do better than Laurence Harvey would have.
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Angela is surely divine but I must throw a shout out for my favorite movie star Linda Darnell born this same day but two years before Dame Lansbury. Sadly she died in a house fire 52 years ago at only 41.
If you aren't familiar with her I say an acquaintance with her films will turn you into a fan.
Her very best was A Letter to Three Wives but she's great in, well everything but especially Fallen Angel, Hangover Square, Summer Storm, Everybody Does It and This Is My Love. Early in her career she was also the doe-eyed ingenue to Tyrone Power in a succession of films but most famously in Blood & Sand and The Mark of Zorro.
Angela Lansbury is one of the greatest actress of the 20th Century, and a smart woman. When Hollywood couldn't figure out what to do, she went into the theater, and as Rex Reed said regarding her appearance at the 1967 Oscars, "Mame came back from Broadway and rubbed their noses in it!" I had the pleasure of seeing her in Blithe Spirit, and she was really nice afterwards, when I met her, too.
She should have gotten the Oscar for The Manchurian Candidate. It should have been a tie with Agnes Moorehead in Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte! Alas, they both lost to Lila Kedrova.
Streep can't hold a candle to these two great, classy actresses! They'd wipe their bottoms with her!
Regarding Linda Darnell, she was a fine actress as well. I read recently that when she was cast as Our Lady of Lourdes in Song of Bernadette, people were up in arms! She still played it, but was shot at a distance. She is divine in A Letter to Three Wives, a fine work of 1950s cinema indeed!
Angela Lansbury forever!!
I agree that Angela Lansbury should have won the Oscar for The Manchurian Candidate, in which she gave one of the all-time great movie performances, and one of the best of her long, rich career, but you seem to have your dates confused.
She was nominated for The Manchurian Candidate for the 1963 Oscars, and lost to Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker.
Agnes Moorehead was nominated for Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte!, and lost to Lila Kedrova for Zorba the Greek two years later, at the 1965 Oscars.
Never understood why folks feel the need to often cast great actresses against one another. Angela Lansbury is amazing. And so is Meryl Streep. If they aren't already, I'll be these two women would be great friends and not rivals. I've probably seen more of Meryl's output than Angela's but they're both great
Aww, but I really liked Laurence Harvey (and wish more people would watch Room at the Top). But yes, sure, Angela all the way, and she should've won the Oscar for this.
Thanks for correcting me, Bill Carter. I thought they all were nominated for 1962. My mistake. Aquinas 1220, take a look at Pauline Kael's review of Sophie's Choice in her book, State of the Art. She writes that Streep acts from the neck up and picks an affectation for the movie, then does it to death. I later read another analysis that she's busy watching her own performance. She never connects with anyone else in the movie, she's always an entity unto herself. Thus, someone else in the movie is acting rings around her: Jeremy Irons in French Lieutenant's Woman; Cher in Silkwood, everyone else in Mamma Mia. I generally avoid her movies, but sometimes I can't. I simply can't watch her on the screen. She's all technique and no substance.
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