It's Dame Angela Lansbury to you now

[Will42]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 5:52pm

Angela Lansbury and Penelope Keith have been recognised in this year's New Year's Honours List, both receiving damehoods.

Lansbury makes her West End return in 2014 in Blithe Spirit, and is honoured in the diplomatic and overseas list for drama, charitable work and philanthropy.

Keith, who has been a star of the stage and small screen for decades, is honoured for services to the arts and to charity.

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Angela-Lansbury-And-Penelope-Keith-Receive-Damehoods-20131230

Fantastic news! So deserving!

Update:
Angela Lansbury: 'I have always been a dame' (video): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25550387

Updated On: 12/31/13 at 05:52 PM

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 5:54pm

So pleased about this. I had the privilege of seeing each of them as Madame Arcati.

[SidebySidebyLogan]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 5:59pm

About time! I've mistakenly called her Dame Angela a time or two

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 6:10pm

What took them so long?

Way overdue!

[Gorlois]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 6:15pm

Took long enough!

[Kad]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 6:41pm

This makes me so happy! Well deserved and overdue.

[Neshinda]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 7:03pm

Finally Well deserved I am shocked she was not recognised earlier. Where has everyone seen her on stage to celebrate her history.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 7:05pm

I don't normally care about such things, but this is surely the exception!

Congratulations, Dame Angela! You have brought great joy and learning to my life.

[ukpuppetboy]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 8:03pm

The honours list was made for this and rarely has a recipient been as worthy. It may have taken a while but at least they got there in the end.. Which is more than can be said for the Emmy Awards panel..

Did anyone ever have a bad word to say about her, ever? So gracious, generous and talented. She has indeed ALWAYS been a Dame but lovely to see her join those select ranks none the less. Truely, 'when you tire of (Dame) Lansbury, you tire of life'.
"I will still be the same silly ass that I've always been"

[Gothampc]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 9:46pm

I don't know who advises the Queen on these matters, or what Angela Lansbury did to piss that person off, but this is long overdue.

If anyone deserves to be a Dame, it's Angela Lansbury.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 9:51pm

It may just be a matter of the majority of her career having been spent in the States. It's probably no coincidence that she's receiving the honor just prior to her return to the West End. Not in a "she was being punished" sort of way; she just may not have been as much in the British consciousness as she is in ours.

Maybe one of our UK friends has some insight?

[Gothampc]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 9:55pm

Elizabeth Taylor was made a Dame years ago and I consider her more in the American and British consciousness than Angela Lansbury.

Updated On: 12/30/13 at 09:55 PM

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 9:57pm

That's true, though her international film stardom was far, far greater than Lansbury's.

At any rate, I agree it's an honor long in coming.

[Will42]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 7:25am

Bump for a video update with Dame Angela's reaction to her DBE.

[Ed_Mottershead]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 7:36am

Congratulations, Dame Angela!!! Off the topic, but why hasn't Mark Rylance been knighted?

[Princeton Returns]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 8:33am

Lol they don't hand them out like sweets (although in recent years they have been accused of that). He hasn't really done anything that deserves being knighted for. Generally they are reserved for people at the end of their careers or who have done something truly exceptional. If he carries on the way he is I can see him getting one when he is older but not yet.

Even Angela Lansburys, much as I love her, I'm not fully convinced by. From a British point of view she hasn't done that much for a very long time and over here she is mainly known as the lady from Murder She Wrote, and to some the lady from Bedknobs and Broomsticks. In fact many think she is American. Her film career never really took off to reach international movie star status like Elizabeth Taylor and Julie Andrews (and even these were questioned at the time), she isn't an ambassador for the UK in anyway, and has often played down her British routes and called herself an American. Sure she has had an amazing career, but on Broadway and in America.

It can't be a coincidence that she is opening in the West End in a couple of months and is only now receiving her Dame honour.

[best12bars]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 9:47am

Elizabeth Taylor could have easily been knighted years before it happened, too. I think it has to do with both of their careers really beginning and flourishing in the United States ... and the same year (1944, when Taylor became a star and Lansbury got her first nomination for her first film) at the same studio (MGM).

Here's to Velvet Brown and her older sister Edwina. Two great dames!

[The Glenbuck Laird]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 2:57pm

'...but why hasn't Mark Rylance been knighted? ...'

He he made me laugh this. Maybe it is because he told them to
f@?# off last time they asked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declining_a_British_honour

There is some greats on that list. And each and every one a hero of mine

Updated On: 12/31/13 at 02:57 PM

[MCfan2]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 4:03pm

Good for you, Dame Angela!

[Princeton Returns]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 4:06pm

He was offered a CBE, very different to a knighthood,

[The Glenbuck Laird]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 5:06pm

Commander of the British Empire one step off a 'K', Rylance would have been knighted now if he accepted the first honour.

Anyway, joke still works

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 10:02pm

Hopefully now more of her films will be on DVD. (Is there some sort of rights issues reasoning for why the film of Inge's Dark at the Top of the Stairs is so impossible to find?)

[Gothampc]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 10:30pm

"Hopefully now more of her films will be on DVD."

And "Little Gloria...Happy At Last" Although I wonder if Anderson Cooper is keeping this in the vaults.

[Scripps2]

Posted: 1/5/14 at 7:36am

They do look at everything about a person before conferring an honour. I know someone who was asked to submit his CV to the relevant government department some time ago and who then got very excited about the possibility of receiving an honour. When nothing was forthcoming, he commented: "The bastards must have looked at my tax records!"

I've shared in other threads on this subject about how it would never have been forthcoming for Lansbury under a Labour government (unlike Taylor and Andrews) due to her family's history of bad feeling with the Labour party. To paraphrase one of her greatest shows, they never forgive and they never forget.

Nor did she do herself any favours in one of her speeches at the Tony awards (available on YouTube) where she talks about being grateful to the US for providing shelter to her and her family during WWII. In the UK, people who left for safer shores during WWII were largely regarded as cowards.

But I should imagine the main reason, as already noted, is that she simply doesn't have a high profile over here.

[Scripps2]

Posted: 1/5/14 at 7:38am

As for Penelope Keith, why not Felicity Kendal whose career has had a much broader scope?