It's Dame Angela Lansbury to you now

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

What took them so long?

Way overdue!

This makes me so happy! Well deserved and overdue.

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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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

'...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

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

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?)

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.