Angela Lansbury: Remembering Jessica Fletcher and "Murder, She Wrote"

Angela Lansbury in her iconic role as sleuth and mystery writer Jessica Fletcher in "Murder, She Wrote".
Source: https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/angela-lansbury-reveals-only-murder-8725269
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How many murders can happen to one lady in one town the size of Coaldale? I often asked myself that when I watched “Murder, She Wrote”.

Although she had a storied acting career on stage and screen, she made her biggest mark on television as the retired school teacher turned mystery writer who constantly found herself embroiled in murder.

I was thinking about Angela Lansbury recently after I heard she had died back in October, at the age of 96.

Dawn of the decade
Before people had garage sales in their actual garages, there used to be this community flea market at the Lethbridge Exhibition Pavilion, which was essentially one massive garage sale.

I was in Grade 11 or 12 when I went to one. I was thumbing through some books and came upon “The Mirror Crack’d” by Agatha Christie. I flipped it over to discover a photo of Angela Lansbury, as the main character, Miss Jane Marple.

I thought to myself, that makes perfect sense. Lansbury’s character Jessica Fletcher on “Murder, She Wrote” reminded me of Miss Jane Marple.

Little did I realize Lansbury had played Marple on the big screen. I also did not know that she played that role in 1980, at the dawn of a new decade.

By the end of the 1980s, “Murder, She Wrote” and Jessica Fletcher were firmly entrenched on the TV schedule.

Highly recommended
My sister Barb and I had similar interests when it came to TV, movies and even books. She came to the farm every Sunday for dinner. That’s when she told me, one Sunday in 1984, she had seen this great new mystery show on Friday on Channel 9, which was CBC TV.

It was called “Murder, She Wrote.”

So, the next Friday, I tuned in and every Friday after that, and was struck by a number of things.

“Murder, She Wrote” was as good as she said. That first episode I saw was the second one of the inaugural season, and I remember it well. A drag club owner is murdered, and Jessica gets involved. One of the suspects is Freddie York, a stand-up comedian played by Gabe Kaplan. He had made an impression on me as Gabe Kotter in the TV comedy “Welcome Back, Kotter”. Freddie York was a comic, more corny than funny, but as it turned out with a dark side, as Fletcher uncovers he is the murderer.

It was created by Peter S. Fischer, Richard Levinson and William Link, who had cut their teeth with another unassuming yet brilliant detective, – Lieutenant Columbo. It even had the feel of an episode of Columbo, although at that point I hadn’t seen “Columbo” in years.

Character study

As the season went on, there were some recurring characters, but “Murder, She Wrote” was largely a show that focused on Jessica Fletcher. She was a retired English teacher and widow with no children. She lived by herself in Cabot Cove, Maine, even after she gained stardom as a mystery writer, continuing to maintain the friendships that come with small-town living.

Initially, there were two characters I remember well. Grady, her nephew, seemed to attract trouble whenever he appeared. He was played by Michael Horton. Amos Tupper, sheriff of Cabot Cove, was played by Tom Bosley. It was Bosley’s first role after his long run as Howard Cunningham on “Happy Days”, and quite a departure. He was a bit of a bumbler, or so people thought, but was always able to solve his cases, due in large part to the help of Jessica Fletcher.

Timing
“Murder, She Wrote” had two very different time slots in Canada and the U.S.

I watched it Friday nights on CBC at like 7 p.m., back when the national broadcaster still aired American TV. It had to be on that early because “Dallas” was on at 9 p.m. on Friday nights, and that was must-see viewing back then.

The show was precluded from being simulcast like other American shows. That means it is broadcast at the exact same time in Canada as it is in the States, except Canadian commercials are substituted in. The reason it could not be simulcast was that it aired on Sunday nights on CBS. Sunday nights were reserved on CBC for mostly Canadian entertainment such as “The Beachcombers”, variety shows like “Wayne and Shuster”, and movies.

That Sunday night time slot in the States benefitted “Murder, She Wrote” immensely in the ratings, for two reasons. It followed “60 Minutes” which attracted a massive audience that stayed around to watch the latest exploits of Jessica Fletcher. It also benefitted from promos from NFL Football where, at the end of the final game every Sunday, the announcers would say “Stay tuned for ’60 Minutes’ and ‘Murder, She Wrote’.” At first that confused me, because those football games were broadcast in Canada, and those shows were not on after the game.

So, as the 1980s ended, “Murder, She Wrote” was firmly entrenched in the top 10 in the ratings, and would continue to be successful well into the next decade.

Parting thoughts
“Murder, She Wrote” would carry on for 12 seasons, ending its network run in 1996, but live on in four TV movies from 1997 to 2003. Like so much TV of the time, once I began hanging out with my friends on Friday nights starting in the spring of 1986, I lost track of “Murder, She Wrote”. I would pick it up at various times when I was home from university for the summer though.

The reason I kept coming back was that Jessica Fletcher was such a compelling character. She had this keen eye for detail, tremendous powers of observation, and knew just what questions to ask. It was always fascinating to see how she was able to hone in on the killer.

She had this motherly, retired school teacher air about her that I think the audience could relate to as well.

All of that was due to the talents of Angela Lansbury.

It is interesting she was nominated for 12 Emmys for the role, one for each year she played Jessica Fletcher from 1984 to 1996, but never won. In fact, both the number of nominations for outstanding lead actress in a drama series, and the number of times she never won, are both records.

Yet she will live in history as one of the most memorable characters of the 1980s, and one of the greatest actors of all time.

And she was able to put an end to that crime spree in Cabot Cove which, if it were a real life place, would be the murder capital of America.

There really was no one like her.