Steve Barnes' World of Happiness

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Angela Lansbury.

My childhood would not have felt the same without her countenance in Bedknobs And Broomsticks, imbued with a propriety and dignity that made a fanciful film feel down-to-earth and believable.

She was role-defining in Beauty And The Beast. I also caught her as Ruth in the film of the Joseph Papp update to The Pirates Of Penzance, and was glad to see her simply shoehorned in to the Disney-fuelled sequel to Mary Poppins. (I've heard her often mentioned of the originator of Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd as well.)

But her full career is the iceberg to that tip, an inkling I got a while ago when discovering her unexpectedly in the fast-paced musical The Court Jester. Very cool to see her before she had fully grown up to be the staple I knew.

Murder, She Wrote is the other series commonly associated with her name, and it's one I may have to sample. If the dead could be gratified, I imagine there would be gratification in knowing they'd left material into which others, one day, would peek at their leisure.