The first memory I have of seeing Angela Lansbury perform was on Broadway as the dazzling and outsized titled character in the 1983 revival of “Mame.” She was glorious.
A year later, there she was on CBS starring in “Murder, She Wrote” and playing a decidedly different character: The practical and always incisive Jessica Fletcher, who was the opposite of the grandiose Auntie Mame. Lansbury was nearly 60 when she started the series, playing the mystery writer and amateur sleuth from Cabot Cove, Maine, and it was a late-in-life infusion of stardom for a career that had long already made its mark.
Lansbury died Tuesday at the age of 96 — just five days shy of her 97th birthday.
