Celebrity chef Darina Allen paid tribute to her dear friend Angela Lansbury as she revealed the Hollywood star stayed with her at Ballymaloe House for five months to help her children recover from addiction issues.
The founder of the Cork cookery school told how the Murder She Wrote star – who passed away peacefully in her home in Los Angeles on Tuesday - took a year out of her own career to look her children, Anthony and Deirdre, after they fell into bad company in California.
Darina said her mother-in-law Myrtle Allen was best pals with the global superstar.
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She said: “She was indeed and so are we all because when she came to Ireland - she loved Ireland - she came to Ballymaloe a lot and actually spent five months living in our house, in our own home here.
“She came to Ireland at a time when two of her children Anthony and Dee Dee were going through a difficult patch. They got caught up in drugs and so on.”
Angela previously revealed how Anthony and Deirdre had become “heavily involved with drugs. It started with cannabis but moved on to heroin.”
“It pains me to say this but at one stage Deirdre was in with a crowd led by Charles Manson. Something had to be done so Peter and I agreed that we had to leave – and soon. We considered Ireland for peace and quiet, so we upped sticks and moved to Cork. It was a decision we never regretted,” Angela said at the time.
Speaking yesterday to Newstalk Breakfast, Darina told how Angela put her own life on hold to care for her children in Ireland.
“We admired her I so many ways, but the main thing was when she took almost a year out of her career to bring them to Ireland away from California. She succeeded in getting them back on track again, which was wonderful. That was when she stayed with us here.”
Darina said Angela loved to cook on the Allen family’s aga, while also gardening.
“We have an old aga in our kitchen and she loved to cook on the aga. She loved gardening but we have so many happy memories of her.”
However, she recalled how Angela chipped her knee and ended up wheelchair bound after falling over while gardening – but it didn’t stop her from attending a small private screening at the Allen’s grain store.
“My brother-in-law Rory who was doing a screening of Driving Miss Daisy in the grain store at Ballymaloe and there was 70 people waiting.
“Something happened and the film, it went all wrong and he had to say to people you can have your money back and Angela was coming to Ireland a couple of weeks later and he was doing a re-screening of Driving Miss Daisy and he asked Angela would she come along so she came along and was there on the night and even more remarkable was the fact that she had been gardening and had slipped and had chipped her knee and she arrived in a wheelchair despite that.
“This is just so much Angela. It was an incredible night.”
In a statement on Tuesday, said: “The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles at 1:30 AM today, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday."
Darina said Angela was “so witty” and “elegant”, adding: “not in any way bling”.
“She was brilliant. She was so witty. The other thing about her was that she was so elegant and gracious and not in any way bling. She always had a twinkle in her eye, and she loved gardening and nature and the sort of realness of Ireland.
“She loved mixing with all the locals and everything. She was wonderful.”
Darina said she spread joy everywhere she went, recalling how one time when she walked out on stage before a West End play, punters gave her a standing ovation before the show had even started.
“She was much loved and rightly so by so many people who weren’t necessarily high brow actors and so on… it was because she was so genuine and lovely.”
In 2008, Angela told Newstalk that coming to Cork was like restarting all over again.
"My grandmother, who lived in Belfast, used to come to Cork every winter because it was warmer down here.
"I think that was one of the reasons I thought 'If we're going to live in Ireland, we want to try and live in a climate that is a little less difficult and sharp - such as the north or Dublin, which is a good deal colder than Cork.
"So I decided we should come to Cork and we did.
"We bought a glebe house down in Cork and we gardened, and I learned to cook - really cook - for the first time and used all the produce from the garden.
"The kids worked around and got jobs in Ballymaloe House and places, it was wonderful.
"We started a whole new life," she recalled at the time.
"We never were able to give it up; we sold that house, but we had to come back - which we did 10 years later.
"(We) bought a piece of land and built a new house, and we did that in '92 and I've had it ever since," she added.
Angela bought two houses in Cork. Her first home was a farmhouse and was bought in the 70s was located in Conna in North Cork before she sold that home and moved to Ballycotton in east Cork in late 1992.
Corymore House, Ballywilliam in Cloyne was designed by her friend the famous pottery maker Stephen Pearce. Pearce’s own home had inspired Angela for ideas that she wanted the same design as her close pal. Angela owned a U-shaped clifftop house on 9.2 (22.8 acres) hectares at Ballinwilliam, Ballycotton, Co Cork.
The U shape is designed to create a sheltered courtyard, which neutralises the strong sea breezes. Architectural Digest visited the property in 2007, where Pearce revealed his inspiration for the design.
He said at the time: “My entire inspiration came from farm cottages—every detail and proportion. Every room is traditionally Irish, except for the size of the main room.
“The question that always came up was, how can something be done more simply or in a way that's more economic? Building something simple takes work—more than something complicated.”
He also said that Angela wanted "something that would feel intimate but could be expanded to accommodate everybody.”
Angela spent summers and Christmas’ at the house and relished in having a “private life” in Cork where Angela’s children Anthony and Deirdre and their elder step-brother, David could be protected from a drug-free environment in California.
In 2015, Angela opened up to Ireland’s Own about her pride at being an Irish citizen as her mother, actress Moyna Macgill and her side of the family came from Belfast, though Angela herself was born in London as her father was British politician Edgar Lansbury.
“Today I live in Brentwood in California but I still have my house in Ballycotton, which I try to visit at least once a year,” she said at the time.
“When I first moved to Cork in 1970 with my late husband Peter and our two children Anthony and Deirdre, who were teenagers at the time, it was the sanctuary we needed after a fire destroyed our home in Malibu.
“Besides, we needed to get away from California and the drug culture and all that. Moving to Ireland was like beginning all over again and it afforded us that time to get back to basics really.
“We bought a house in Cork and we did the gardening and I learned how to cook for the first time. We used all the produce from the garden and so on. Ireland offered us a new life and it meant the children wouldn’t be exposed to any more bad influences like they encountered in California.
“Both the children had fallen in with an unsuitable crowd and had become heavily involved with drugs. It started with cannabis but moved on to heroin. It pains me to say this but at one stage Deirdre was in with a crowd led by Charles Manson. Something had to be done so Peter and I agreed that we had to leave – and soon. We considered Ireland for peace and quiet, so we upped sticks and moved to Cork. It was a decision we never regretted.
“We sold that first house and moved back to the US to see if things there had changed but they hadn’t. In any event, we found that we missed Cork and vowed to go back. We did that in 1992 when we bought a piece of land and built a new house and we’ve had that place ever since. You would have to love Cork, with its beautiful scenery, pace of life, friendly people and all that.
“Also, and this is important, was the way the local community respected our privacy. In America you would be mobbed by fans whenever you went out in public. Everybody wanted to meet Jessica Fletcher and get her autograph. I really had no private life. It’s so different in Cork, thankfully. Don’t forget to mention, too, that I’m proud of my Irish citizenship.”
In February 2016, Angela was honoured with the Dublin International Film Festival's Volta Award for lifetime achievement, presented to her by the then Taoiseach, Enda Kenny.
At the event in Dublin's Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Lansbury discussed the secret of her success with RTÉ Entertainment.
"I think it has a lot to do with one's emotional makeup as an individual. You know, we're all different. We react differently to things and places," she said.
"I am a very emotional person, and if you have that quality and you're half-Irish, it will take you sailing through, believe me!"
She saluted her mother for giving her such a bond with Ireland.
"I was brought up with her sense of humour, her dirty stories - I mean, everything that was so funny to me! - and her recitations.”
Reflecting on her life and work, she said: "What's been very important to me is to balance my life between family and career.
"If I'd had my way, I wouldn't have done half the things that I did, which took me away from my family.
"My husband (the producer Peter Shaw, who died in 2003) was the one who said, 'Do it. Go. Do it. Take the children with you. We'll manage. I will see that everything will be alright at home. Don't worry, go ahead and do it'.
"That was really the tremendous drive that was provided for me by him," she added. "He was a huge help to me. I'm ever grateful to him for that because, otherwise, I would have stayed home, I really would. I was a big homebody."
Her career on stage and screen spanned over 80 years and she was a three-time Oscar nominee.
She earned nominations as Best Supporting Actress for two of her first three films, Gaslight (1945) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1946). She was nominated again for Best Supporting Actress in 1962 for The Manchurian Candidate and her deadly portrayal of a Communist agent - the title character's mother.
She received an honorary Oscar in 2013 from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Angela, who was 88 at the time, told the Los Angeles Times: "It's very, very special for me. It is very unique and wonderful to receive at my time of life though I am still in the running - doing things and acting."
She also won five Tony awards, most recently in 2009 for Best Featured Actress for Blithe Spirit.
Her other Tony wins were for Best Actress in a Musical for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in 1979, Gypsy in 1975, Dear World in 1969 and Mame in 1966.
Angela took her singing skill from Broadway to the big screen in Disney's 1991 animated musical Beauty and the Beast.
She voiced Mrs Potts and sang the critically acclaimed and much-loved song Tale As Old As Time.
However, it was her portrayal of sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the television series Murder, She Wrote that gained her millions of fans across the world.
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