Tonight The Drama League, along with the brightest stars of Broadway and Hollywood, will pay tribute to the grande dame of the American theatre, Angela Lansbury.  It’s a privilege to have this opportunity, one that all of us take very seriously.   For truly, there is no one quite like Angela in the entire world — a star on stage, in film and television, at the peak of her creative powers six decades into her career.  Tonight, we’ll give a sense of her stunning achievements in these fields, as well as her commitment to arts education and the newest generation of theatre practitioners.

Ms. Lansbury has enjoyed a career without precedent. Her professional life spans more than a half-century during which she flourished, first as a star of motion pictures, then as a five-time Tony Award-winning Broadway musical star. She is currently appearing on Broadway in the role of Madame Armfeldt in A Little Night Music. She recently appeared on Broadway as Madame Arcati in the 2009 revival of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, for which she received her fifth Tony Award, as well as Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards; and in 2006 in Terrence McNally’s Deuce, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award.

She made her Broadway debut in 1957 starring as Bert Lahr’s wife in the French farce, Hotel Paradiso. In 1960, she came back to Broadway as Joan Plowright’s mother in the season’s most acclaimed drama, A Taste of Honey, by Shelagh Delaney.  A year later, she starred on Broadway in her first musical, Anyone Can Whistle. Lansbury returned to New York in triumph in 1966 as Mame, for which she won the first of her unprecedented four Tony Awards® as Best Actress in a Musical. She received the others as the Madwoman of Chaillot in Dear World (1968), as Mama Rose in the 1974 revival of Gypsy and as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd (1979).

From 1984-1996 she starred as Jessica Fletcher, mystery-writing amateur sleuth, on “Murder, She Wrote,” the longest-running detective drama series in the history of television, for which she won four Golden Globe Awards. In 1994, Queen Elizabeth II named her a Commander of the British Empire, and in 2000 she received the Kennedy Center Honors. Angela and her husband Peter were married in 1949 and worked together until his death in 2003.

She has three grown children and three grandchildren.  In 2009, she was honored with The Drama League’s Unique Contribution To The Theatre Award, recognizing a lifetime of extraordinary performances and her unparalleled service to the theatre.

Tonight, we give a little back to the legendary woman who has given us so much.  Thank you, Angela…for everything.