Nice murder-solving lady and total badass Angela Lansbury died yesterday, and amid videos of her singing Be Our Guest and being utterly charming, a 2014 interview with Mail Online has resurfaced in which she details how she went to great lengths to keep her child safe from one of the most notorious killers in modern American history. Her son Anthony and daughter Deidre has become addicted to heroin as teens in the 1960s and fell in with a bad group that was Charles Manson-adjacent.
“It pains me to say it but, at one stage, Deidre was in with a crowd led by Charles Manson,” Lansbury said at the time. “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.”
To keep Deidre safe (and to help detox her son), Lansbury pulled up stakes and left Hollywood for Ireland.
“I was drawn 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. I still have a house there which I try and visit at least once a year. So I refused all work for a year and simply kept house. . . Certainly, I have no doubt 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 didn’t specify a time in the 1960s when this would have happened, but there was a four-year gap in an otherwise steady career between Mister Buddwing in 1966 and Something For Everyone in 1970. She’d make Bedknobs and Broomsticks in 1971, presumably only a few years separated from moving halfway across the world to ensure her daughter survived.
(via Mail Online)