Silly people, Jessica Fletcher was never the villain. Jessica Fletcher was working with Eglantine Price to stop the real killers – spymaster Mrs. Iselin and the diabolical crackpot crockery Mrs. Potts!
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Oh shit she’s not around anymore, we’re all in danger.
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Hey now. Sheriff Amos may have been portrayed as kind of a bumpkin, but Sheriff Metzger wasn’t all that bad. He was a former NY cop … in the 1970s and 1980s … so you know he’s seen some shit. He also gets points for having a pretty cool car that he also used for official police stuff.
It’s said that the network brass kept pushing for there to be some sort of romantic plot or love interest for Jessica, and this was always flatly rejected by Lansbury. There were plenty of people who expressed interest in Jessica throughout the show, and at time there were hints of something that had happened or may be happening but never anything overt and it wasn’t ever really important to the plot. I always thought that was pretty cool.
One final thing about MSW is much like many of its contemporaries that along with established character actors, there’s just so many young or unknown at the time actors that would go on to become bigger stars. A few that come to mind are Bryan Cranston (as three different characters, once with early career Linda Hamilton), a 10 year old Joaquin Phoenix, George Clooney, Julianna Margulies, Jim Caviezel, and many others. It’s practically a drinking game.
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I remember watching MSW with my great-grandmother.
Rest in Glory, Dame Lansbury.
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I was always surprised that she managed to avoid the worst of HUAC and McCarthyism. Her father was the Communist mayor of Poplar, and was arrested for not paying taxes that unfairly burdened poor people and benefited rich people, and her grandfather was a former leader of the Labour party.
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Here she is talking about her new movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks from 1972.
We have a retro channel that shows Dick Cavett, the shows from the 70s are my favorites.
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(She was well into her tenth decade, not her ninth)
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Nifty noir film: PLEASE MURDER ME! Lansbury in a tune-up role for devious Mrs. Shaw in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, with a bonus role for Raymond Burr - in a tune-up for PERRY MASON.
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I am proud to say I saw her in that, on Broadway.
What a queen.
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More of a coincidence than a synchronicity: last night to I decided to re-watch the classic 1945 The Picture of Dorian Gray, mostly because I remember loving the odd tone of Wilde’s story on film, George Sanders as the Wilde-like character, and the weird “handsome” look of Hurd Hatfield. The sets are amazing, too.
I had forgotten that Angela Lansbury played the beautiful young lower-class singer of the vacuous “Goodbye Little Yellow Bird”, and who Dorian rakes over. As I’m watching her, I thought, “Damn she was pretty back in the day, I wonder if she’s still alive?”, suspecting she died 15 years ago. I haven’t seen an episode of “Murder She Wrote.”
But hoo-boy! Frankenheimer’s 1962 The Manchurian Candidate? Aye!
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Them pussycats are quick.
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Apparently over the 12-year course of the show 60 out of the show’s hundreds of murders took place within that town (population 3,560) so that’s an annual murder rate of about 140 per 100,000. Currently El Salvador has the world’s highest murder rate at 62 per 100,000. Even when Honduras was at its peak it was about 84 per 100,000.
So best to avoid visiting Cabot Cove if at all possible.
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Cabot Cove, twinned with Oxford, England.
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Never seen the show, but surely the creators of Murder she Wrote had St Mary Mead in mind?
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I’ve seen comments in the Guardian UK posted by folks who are convinced John Nettles has been the murderer all along. They point out all the killings that happened in Jersey* once Bergerac appeared…and my Gods, don’t get them started on Midsomer Murders!
Yeah, dose broads playin’ dat Marple dame always seemed mighty suspicious, too…especially Margaret Rutherford, Joan Hickson, Geraldine McEwan, and…Angela Lansbury!
*The lovely Yurpeen island, not the lovely land of turnpikes
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Mom and I watched a Caribbean-flavoured M,SW, and despite the decades, I immediately recognized Hurd Hatfield. Mom said, “WHO?” and I gleefully told her he’d played Dorian Gray to her sadly suicidal Sibyl.
She provided roles for soooo many old friends. Just wonderful.
@tcg550
@ Dick Cavett
Yeah, Oxford, where John Thaw once ran amok, and now Shaun Evans is doing all the killing there whilst pretending to be a good guy.
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Oh yeah, I’ve watched that film. It’s quite good imo. The intro credits itself is just awesome.
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