The late incomparable actress Angela Lansbury, who was nominated for an Oscar twice before she turned 21 and later dominated the stage in New York, winning an astonishing five Tonys, admitted in 2014 that she moved her family to Ireland from California in the 1960s because she feared her daughter’s association with the infamous murderer Charles Manson.
Lansbury and her husband Peter Shaw, to whom she was married for 53 years, found that their teenage children Anthony and Deidre had become drug users.
“It started with cannabis but moved on to heroin, Lansbury told The Daily Mail in 2014. “There were factions up in the hills above Malibu that were dedicated to deadly pursuits. It pains me to say it but, at one stage, Deidre was in with a crowd led by Charles Manson. She was one of many youngsters who knew him — and they were fascinated. He was an extraordinary character, charismatic in many ways, no question about it.”
Lansbury, who became famous among television audiences for her recurring role as Jessica Fletcher in “Murder She Wrote,” recalled telling her husband, “We have to leave.”
She said although she was born in London, she moved the family to Ireland “because it was the birthplace of my mother and it was also somewhere my children wouldn’t be exposed to any more bad influences,” adding, “I refused all work for a year and simply kept house. I bought Elizabeth David’s books and learnt how to cook properly. It was a wonderful time in my life.”
Her children responded positively to the move, she said. “Anthony pulled right out of his bad habits quite quickly. It took Deidre a little longer but she finally got married and she and her husband now live in Los Angeles, where they run their own Italian restaurant.”
Lansbury stated that when she looked back, “It fills me with dread. Peter and I had no idea what had been going on. But then we had no experience of drugs. We didn’t know the significance of finding a pipe in a drawer. Why would we? And when we did, we didn’t know how to help them. Nor were there any experts back then who could offer advice to the parents of kids from good families who were using, and sometimes overdosing on, drugs. It was like an epidemic.”
She expressed her certainty that “we would have lost one or both of our two if they hadn’t been removed to a completely different milieu, the simplicity of life in Ireland.”
“In the end we found a doctor who prescribed methadone, a heroin substitute, which helped with the withdrawal symptoms as Anthony and Deidre were weaned off hard drugs. We were so very, very lucky we spotted what was happening just in time,” she concluded.
Lansbury won her five Tonys for “Mame,” “Dear World,” “Gypsy,” “Sweeney Todd,” and “Blithe Spirit.” She was nominated for three Oscars for the films “Gaslight,” “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” and “The Manchurian Candidate,” in which she managed the feat of making it believable that she was Laurence Harvey’s mother despite the fact she was only three years older than he.
Lansbury, who died at the age of 96 on Tuesday, drank hard liquor when she was young, acknowledging that period as “my nights on the bathroom floor.” But she said prophetically in 2014, “I take excruciating care of myself. I take a lot of vitamins and get enough sleep. At this rate, I see no reason why I shouldn’t live to 98.”
