Just last night, the York Theatre Company honored Broadway and Hollywood legend Angela Lansbury with the 2015 Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre. The evening's entertainment was directed by Kurt Stammc(York's Closer Than Ever; Our Sinatra), with music direction by Andrew Gerle (York's Closer Than Ever).
Angela Lansbury has enjoyed a career spanning nearly 75 years in film, stage, and television. Winner of five Tony Awards, she made her Broadway debut in 1957 in Hotel Paradiso. In 1960, she returned to Broadway in Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey. In 1964, she starred in her first musical, Anyone Can Whistle, and in 1966, she triumphed as Mame, winning her first Tony. She won three more Tonys for Dear World (1968), Gypsy (1974), and Sweeney Todd (1979). After a 23-year hiatus, she returned to Broadway in 2007 in Terrence McNally's Deuce. In 2009 she won her fifth Tony Award as Madame Arcati in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit. She also appeared as Madame Armfeldt in A Little Night Music (2010), and in Gore Vidal's The Best Man (2012). In 2013, she appeared in the acclaimed Australian tour of Alfred Uhry's Driving Miss Daisy, with James Earl Jones and Boyd Gaines, a production which was filmed for cinemas.
In March 2014 she again played Madame Arcati at London's Gielgud Theatre, for which she won the Olivier Award. Previous London appearances were in the RSC's production of Edward Albee's All Over at the Aldwych, Gypsy, and Hamlet.
She has appeared in over 60 films starting with Gaslight at age 17 (first Academy Award nomination), The Portrait of Dorian Gray (second Academy Award nomination), and The Manchurian Candidate (third Academy Award nomination). She was the voice of Mrs. Potts in Disney's Beauty and the Beast and more recently, she co-starred inEmma Thompson's Nanny McPhee and with Jim Carrey in Mr. Popper's Penguins.
From 1984 through 1996 she starred as Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote, the longest-running detective drama series in TV history, for which she won four of her six Golden Globe Awards. She is recipient of the National Medal of the Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors. In addition to her five Tonys, Olivier, and six Golden Globes, she has been nominated for eighteen Emmys and three Oscars, and in 2013 was awarded an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in Motion Pictures. She was named a Dame of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II and was invested at Windsor Castle on April 15, 2014.
Photo Credit: Jennifer Broski
Josh Bergasse, Robert Creighton
Victor Garber, Angela Lansbury, Len Cariou
Melissa Errico, Angela Lansbury, Karen Mason
Melissa Errico, Angela Lansbury
Sheldon Harnick, Angela Lansbury, Margery Gray Harnick
Cady Huffman, Angela Lansbury, Mark Linn-Baker, Betsy Wolfe
James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury
James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury
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