Mike Basil Almost unbelievable that 20 years later she was playing the adorable mystery writer Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote. Yes she really was the same actor.
@@ralphficker167 And 20 years earlier (or thereabouts) this lady was a smoldering siren. Check out some of her early films when she was in the full bloom of her youth. I very much love when a talented actress can span a career across several decades. There are not many.
I agree Mrs. Iselin is right up there with Darth Vader. I think it speaks volumes that she and Meryl Streep played Eleanor Iselin it two separate adaptations of The Manchurian Candidate, and it was Lansbury and not Meryl who did it better!
Angela Lansbury has played everything, from a tea pot, to a retirement age detective, to a princess, to an upper echelon Russian agent, and then some. She always did an outstanding job.
Agreed Elizabeth Taylor,Rosalind Russell,Susan Hayward also come to mind.Far out would be Anna Mangania and Marie Dressler. (?).Anne Bancroft All could have put their spin on it.What about Margaret Hamilton or a humorous choice like Majorie Main?Etc.
Yes. Hollywood never appreciated Miss Lansbury. She MADE “Mame” on Broadway and then they snubbed her for Lucy when the movie was made. It was a bomb at the box office and deserved to be. SHE saw to it that Murder, She Wrote was the top notch quality production top to bottom that it was. In Hollywood, there is a lot of politics and “being in their club” governs a heck of a lot.
@@steveweinstein3222 I would have to agree. Though Pati should have been nominated as Best Actress, not supporting, as her role was more crucial to the overall film, not that Anne Bancroft was not wonderful as well.
Beat out of an Academy Award winning by Patty Duke, she certainly is equal to any of the greatest performers of all time. This movie was an exceptional film and none of the actors and actresses were weak. It was a well written, performed and produced project.
Duke may have won the award, but this film likely did more for Lansbury's career than any award could recommend. Duke was good, but her career is essentially forgotten.
@@dttruman Frank Sinatra had rights to the movie. Apparently, he funded and produced it with John Frankenheimer as the Director. The movie had no problems being replayed, it was just that after the slaying of JFK, the situation regarding Oswald's role was so akin to the movie's premise, that he reserved his right to withdraw it from further showings. After Sinatra died, his daughter decided to release it. She was also the producer of the newly created and written re-do of the "Manchurian Candidate" later in the mid-2000s.
@@dttruman In 1962, Patty Duke won the Academy Award edging out Angela Lansbury. This was the film, "The Miracle Worker," which I will admit was a great performance. I've heard conflicting stories, but to the best of my knowledge, since Sinatra had helped produce and finance the film, he had the screen distribution rights. After his hero JFK was killed, he felt the story line was too close to Oswald's alleged role in the assassination, so he withdrew the film from further distribution for many decades. This was information from John Frankenheimer's explanation on why the film suddenly disappeared and wasn't seen for decades.
The last surviving stars of The Manchurian Candidate recently passed away less than a month apart. Henry Silva passed away on September 14, 2022, nine days before his 96th birthday. And Angela Lansbury passed away on October 11, 2022, at age 96.
I for long and very much wanted to know what Angela thought of all this. I can place on a very short list indeed the movies that made me collect myself after my first viewing. This one earned its place on the list.
@Captain Bunwarmer I had the pleasure of meeting her backstage in 2015 after her performance in Noel Coward's "Blithe Sprit" in L.A. She couldn't have been nicer.
@Captain Bunwarmer What a great and correct comment. I remembered saying "Wow, never have seen that in her before..." after seeing Lansbury's performance. And had the same reaction after watching MTM in Ordinary People.
I saw this when it came out and it terrified me. The performances all around are memorable, powerful and credible. It's impact is nearly the same today as it was when it was released.
God bless you for this enlightening interview with the great Angela Lansbury - and the whole history of this film. I had not realized that it was withdrawn because of JFK's assignation, and had to wait until another almost 20 years to be released. Robert Ebert's review says it all - you have to read that. My first viewing put me into shock, and really, I never connected it with JFK. It is a horror story of the first magnitude. ALL the actors were totally brilliant, each in their own roles. As for Angela - well, what she did can never be duplicated; Meryl Streep (?) should never have even tried. In fact, nobody should have ever tried. It is a unique period piece.
My theory is the remake hopefuls want to prove they are just as good or better. They only prove the contrary. Some performances reach such a pinnacle that the role is forever owned by the actor. Nobody else can knock them off that pedestal without appearing lesser.
@@valkyriesardo278 the remakes almost always fail to top or even match the originals. They don't realize that at the end of the day you can't catch lightening in a bottle twice. Look at the remake of The In Laws: Disaster. Ghostbusters: Bigger disaster. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three: Not bad but pales in comparison. And The Manchurian Candidate: Nobody even remembers that remake.
The film is more relevant now nearly 60 years on. Excellent performance by Angela Lansbury. Not sure if this is the only time she has played villain but it was top draw.
Miss Lansbury was a baddie in the film noir "Please Murder Me" w/Raymond Burr and wasn't very nice in her debut film, "Gaslight", as the duplicitous maid, along side Charles Boyer & Ingrid Bergman.
This is the most excellent commentary of one of the most brilliant films about American paranoia and philistinism. It is the most effective thriller which satirizes its own genre AS it thrills you. The comic touches give the audience a chance to catch its collective breath before the next sensational scene slaps up back into your seat. The camerawork rivals Greg Toland's efforts in Citizen Kane. The Manchurian Candidate is more contemporary now than when it was first released--and Miss Lansbury's performance is one of the best even on film.
I think I do understand Leigh's approach to the scene when her character meets Sinatra's. She was attracted to him and astute enough to assess him as a highly competent man who was extremely troubled. She was confident and decisive enough to take the initiative so she followed when he rushed out of the car. She struck a tone that would intrigue him and gently jolt him out of his downward spiral with her absurd remarks about the railroad. All of it conveyed to him that she was very much in his league and on his level. In fact, she was so comfortable with herself that I worried she might be working with the enemy. The only thing that struck me as complete non sequitur is when he asked her if she was an Arab. I have no idea where that came from.
I think Roger Ebert was onto something when he wondered if Rosie was Ben's controller in New York. The seemingly-bizarre conversation (taken almost ver batim by George Axelrod from Richard Condon's book, by the way) would make sense as a loopy imprinting routine for Ben, a victim of "brainwashing" primed to be unlocked by the dialog. (Think of the imprinting scene in Spielber's "AI," where the mother "adopts" the android boy with a series of specific, pre-programmed words; or the Wildfire introduction scene in Wise's "The Andromeda Strain," where the physicist and ag station/Wildfire Lab security agent trade a secret, canned dialog to identify themselves to one another.) The dialog would form a subconscious "handshake" between Rosie and Ben, controller and asset, affixing his psyche to her hypnotic suggestions. I remember that, later in the film, Ben asks Rosie to marry him, but unless I'm mis-remembering, she never gets around to giving him a direct "yes" or "no." If this theory about Ben's "brainwashing" is correct, even though Ben and Rosie are together in the final scene, he only thinks he's been freed and that he's in love: he's not safe at all, and Rosie, his controller is still very much "into" him. It's all in a day's work: the battle plan has had to be altered, but Dr. Yen is not finished.
I never could figure out what Rosie was doing or why. The character seemed superfluous to the plot except as a device for Marko to express out loud what he was thinking. Making her an operative would have made more sense, but she could have easily been just a person the Govt sent to keep an eye on the man. To make her a Commie operative would have complicated the plot much too much and it was already complicated enough.
The scene where she's kissing her son goes into more detail in the book. (She took him to "bed")!! But, they didn't do it in the movie, just the kiss! And she should have won the Oscar for that movie. She got it right when she said she played one of the most evil women in film. I love this movie as much as I love Angela Lansbury!! What a classy lady she was! Thank you for the upload and sharing!!
Angela Lansbury was an extraordinary artist. She played every role to perfection. Nuanced, authentic, realistic portrayals of all types of characters. A joy to watch and admire. Her place on Broadway is legendary adding singing and dancing to her repertoire.
I saw this in high school around the same time I read CATCH-22. In the same theater in Homestead, Florida where I had seen miles of celluloid fluff. I had read all sorts of weird stuff, but this was about stuff I thought I had some sort of handle on, in my teenage way. Ahead of me, of course were the Cuban Missile Crisis and the snuffing out of a President I admired very much, since we both came from the same state.And the Sixties began. R.I.P. to the amazing Angela Lansbury.
shes such a great lady and professional ,,i think she must still have a great way about her and strength bc she is almost 97 this yr coming..wow,,,!!i would have loved to have seen her, if i were born earlier,on broadway,,she was/ is so pretty and songbird like in early movie,,,was it gaslight or dorian gray?,,,,latter i think,,,love u angela i was just speaking of you spontaneously tonight when i was looking for something to watch....manchurian came to mind!!
Such an intelligent interview. She had so much insight to the director and the direction she wanted to go. A true professional actress. Eloquently spoken words, she's so poised and classy. I totally agree with her about playing evil ppl. It doesn't fit her as an actress. I loved her character in the film, Death on the Nile, who she also worked along side Bette Davis. It's Agatha Christy novel to screen.
She certainly gaves us a foretaste of Mrs. Iselin with her role as an icy newspaper magnate manipulating a presidential campaign in Frank Capra’s 1948 “State of the Union”. A really cool customer in her role of Kay Thorndyke, she costarred with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Lansbury was only 22/23 when she made the movie! That film is also just as timely now as is The Manchurian Candidate.
Angela Lansbury was so reliably good in so many fields- stage as much as screen, musicals or straight stories or fables- that she was taken for granted. She had the further drawback of looking young for her age when she started out; but like others she had her revenge in aging beautifully, with the sort of open face and frank manner that is endearing beyond what she says. Just as she seemed to be on the cusp of proper revaluation, like Barbara Stanwyck, she got into a TV series which made her seem like a coasting, cashing-in former semi-star of movies. But during and after 'Murder, She Wrote' she continued to score new triumphs on stage and emerged as a grande dame like Helen Hayes, Lilian Gish or Lynne Fontanne. Anyone who can go from Elvis's mother in 'Blue Hawaii' to the dragon of 'The Manchurian Candidate' without turning a hair has to be a formidable talent. And anyone who can elicit an ounce of sympathy for Laurence Harvey in anything confirms it.
Among the principal actors in The Manchurian Candidate only Angela Lansbury as Eleanor Iselin and Henry Silva as Korean assassin Chunjin are still living, both in their 90's.
So sad that we lost Henry Silva today. What an amazing actor and what a legacy he leaves. Fantastic in the heavy rolls, but also fun as the mama's boy in Jerry Lewis's Cinderfella!
Angela Lansbury was only about 3 years older than Laurence Harvey, but they play their roles so perfectly and are so entirely credible that this fact doesn't detract in the slightest.
You gave me an instant visualization. Crowded elevator with Jessie, Cary, and Vandamm's henchmen. "You gentlemen aren't really going to kill my son, are you?" Everyone in the elevator laughs, except Cary.
It's how Angela Lansbury carried herself, her dress, the hairstyle, the demeanor, She presents as many years older the Lawrence Harvey. But, that kiss upon mouth heavily implies incestuous relationship.
True Angela Lansbury magnificent as the manipulative mother (was Oscar nominated), Sinatra (not nominated), endearing as the fallible hero Major Marco...but it was Laurence Harvey's portrayal as the tragically flawed Raymond Shaw, that stole the show. Oddly enough, he was not even nominated for his amazing performance as the brainwashed political pawn.
Such a lovely lady playing such a despicable person. Of course, her career in musicals, Disney films and her long-running series " Murder, She Wrote, " were all well-received.
I'm sure I saw this movie on network TV in the late 60's, when I was a teenager. I don't think it was completely out of circulation, it was just put forward very much or very often. Just looked it up on Wikipedia: "It was televised nationwide on CBS Thursday Night at the Movies on September 16, 1965."
I really loved the idea that she was reluctant and intimidated by the role at the start, but that Frankenheimer's enthusiasm challenged her to just do it.
The character of Eleanor Iselin is very similar to the character that Evan Peters played in the Cult season of American Horror Story. I found the parallels between the two characters to be so striking. It was uncanny how similar the two characters were.
"They will be pulled down and ground into dirt for what they did to you and what they did in so contemptuously underestimating me." Great line, which I have used, with some modifications, to make a point many times since this great movie was released.
not sure if anyone mentioned this, but i was disapointed that they cut the last sentence in the famous scene (10:30 in the above). Without that last thought, it made her sound like a loving caring mother....no, she was narcissi tic.....turning everything around to focus on her and her thoughts of how she was "contemptionately under estimated"..... that was her driving thought....
The lady could act Angela will be remembered for this movie and her stage work and playing a teapot and many incredible characters including Murder She, Wrote the series that always delivers a interesting plot for murder and Jessica always solves it I along wish Angela would of done one more JB Fletcher mystery I believe she wanted to do one more series even in her 90s as a tribute to this series and her they should setup a new channel called JB Fletcher Channel? RIP Angela you were the best and a sweet smile especially as Jessica Fletcher will miss you but never forget your talent
This is an excellent film and Angela's performance is incredible. Frank Sinatra is also great in his role. Ironically, with the collapse of the USSR we learned that Senator McCarthy was closer to the truth than was known. There were communists working in the State Department. There were communist professors doing Soviet work in the universities.
Yes! This was and still is a classic amongst classics. What I’m not sure of is this: Was the movie shown after completion and if so how long before it was shelved until ‘88. Also, what did she mean when she referred to crushing her handlers into dust for what they did to her son? Was she going to be in a position of power after taking over the U.S to exact revenge? Thx
It was withdrawn from theaters shortly after JFK's assassination. If the dialogue is meant to be prophetic, she was going to be in a power of position, and, therefore, in a position to punish them for brainwashing her son. I'd be pissed too.
fkng adore this movie I wish there was a little more closure for the black vet with the nightmares he could have gotten killed off or whatever for getting too close, but something I did love the humor "Every place we've been in Korea, this joker was born two miles from it."