Angela Lansbury was only three years older than Laurence Harvey when she played his mother in The Manchurian Candidate. To say I didn't notice would be an understatement. Ms. Lansbury so scared the shit out of me in 1962--at the height of the Cold War--that I couldn't appreciate the depth of her talent until David and I went to see Sweeney Todd on Broadway nearly two decades later. Amoral characters didn't phase her, and both the Queen of Hearts and meat pies will forever trigger intense memories of an actress who couldn't have cared less about glamour, sympathy and acclaim. Angela Lansbury was the real deal.
That said, what could my mother have been thinking when she took a nine-year-old to see a film that makes Mommie Dearest look tame by comparison!
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