Angela Lansbury | The New York Observer

Oscar and Me

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:12:26 -0500

The Oscars are like dividend statements from Bernie Madoff. You know they’re coming, you expect the worst, but you open the envelopes anyway, with your fingers crossed, hoping this year will be better. It never is, but despite rock-bottom ratings, and dwindling interest in too many nominees nobody ever heard of, too many categories nobody cares about and too many movies nobody wants to see, the people who put on this annual clambake never...

Coram Boy a Deranged Dickensian Delight; Deuce Double-Faults Despite Lansbury and Seldes

Tue, 15 May 2007 15:04:20 -0400

Coram Boy, the play with music that comes to us via acclaim at London’s National Theatre, is a wonderful, near-mad folly on Broadway.

Let me say at the outset that, unlike many of my miserable colleagues, I found this rollicking Gothic drama based on Jamila Gavin’s historical novel for young adults enchanting from beginning to end. (Like the best children’s books, it’s also for adults). Nothing about it is unambitious or small....

Jimmy Fallon Wants $3.75 M. on Gramercy

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 14:28:12 -0500

Jimmy Fallon. In Sunday's New York Times, Willie Neumann is reporting that Saturday Night Live comic Jimmy Fallon is marketing two apartments at 34 Gramercy Park. (Personal information alert: It caught my eye especially because one of us lived briefly in the building in the 1990's and because it's my favorite building on the park.) Here's the listing. He bought the first of the two apartments in the terra-cotta-brick building--it's the one on the southeast...

Hearty Harrison Still Does Stunts!

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 19:00:00 -0500

I guess everyone has to start somewhere, but a Bernard Malamud novel-into-film starring Snoop Dogg? To quote Dorothy Parker, “What fresh hell is this?” The 2006 kind, I’m afraid, that pretty much demonstrates how low movies have sunk in these desperate times. But let’s forget about The Tenants, a grim look at two bums fighting for space in a graffiti-splattered slum dwelling in Brooklyn waiting for the wrecker’s ball—one of a glut of new...

See Ya, Lindsay Lohan! Who Says All Men Prefer Younger Women?

Sun, 19 Dec 2004 19:00:00 -0500

Thanks to Desperate Housewives, suburban fortysomethings have replaced Britney and Lindsay as the sex symbols du jour. It's about time. While the cultural wisdom may suggest that most men favor pop superstars just old enough to drink legally, some of us recognize that women over 40 can make better girlfriends and more sophisticated lovers than their more youthful, belly-ringed counterparts. Like the lawn boy on ABC's campy hit series, I had my own brief...

Angie, Baby!

Sun, 01 Feb 2004 19:00:00 -0500

This is not your mother's Angela Lansbury. In fact, when a generation that faithfully watched Murder, She Wrote every Sunday night for 12 years gets a look at the woman they came to know as mystery writer and crime solver Jessica Fletcher in The Blackwater Lightship , they will not believe their eyes. The fact that this next presentation on the prestigious Hallmark Hall of Fame , scheduled to be broadcast Feb. 4 on...