Angela Lansbury is this month's featured actor on Turner Classic Movies. For those who know her only as Jessica Fletcher, the mystery writer and former English teacher who can't leave her Cabot Cove, Maine, front porch without tripping over a dead body, it might come as quite a surprise to learn that Ms. Lansbury made her debut in the Charles Boyer/Ingrid Bergman classic Gaslight. She's also quite amazing in the Frank Sinatra thriller The Manchurian Candidate, and in other films, which I'm sure will be on TCM during the next few weeks.
My favorite Jessica Fletcher line comes from the episode "Evidence of Malice" in season 12. Deputy Andy (Louis Herthum) has bought a house with significant structural problems from one of the town's prominent citizens; as it happens, the two have a history, and when the prominent citizen turns up dead, Deputy Andy is the prime suspect. Nevertheless, when the dead body first turns up, it's not entirely clear that he's the victim of murder, and Sheriff Mort Metzger and Jessica, who find the body, are speculating on the cause. Possibly a mugging? Jessica flips out. "A mugging? Oh, surely not in Cabot Cove!" She just can't fathom it. The woman finds dead bodies every week but she thinks a mugging isn't possible in her town? She maketh me to laugh.
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