Though today’s generation probably best knows the late Angela Lansbury as Murder, She Wrote’s geriatric mystery writer and sometime sleuth Jessica Fletcher or the soothing voice of the kindly teapot Mrs. Potts in Disney’s animated Beauty and the Beast (1991), the three-time Oscar nominee wasn’t strictly a family-friendly kind of lady. At least not according to John Waters.
As Page Six reports, the cult indie filmmaker behind the X-rated Pink Flamingos says he once spotted Lansbury at a dungeonesque New York City sex club known as Hellfire during the ‘80s. In his 2019 memoir, Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder, Waters — the so-called Pope of Trash — claimed to have once spotted Lansbury “checking out the scene” at the club, which was a hotspot for “gay and straight perverts alike.”
While Waters didn’t go into much detail about what Lansbury was doing there, if he knew at all (maybe Jessica Fletcher was investigating some sort of BDSM mystery) the director — who was an enormous fan of the beloved English star — couldn’t help but be struck by her mere presence.
“[Angela] was pure class even 40 years ago when these kind of clubs were all the rage,” Waters told Page Six. “It may have been the only night she was ever there, but just her presence made Hellfire a little more welcoming.”
(Via Page Six)