After years of winning awards and critical praise for her work on Broadway and in Hollywood, Angela Lansbury finally became a household name in a television role. Lansbury portrayed Jessica Fletcher in CBS's Murder, She Wrote for 12 years beginning in 1984, serving as the program's executive producer for its last four. The program, television's longest-running detective show, was canceled in 1996 amid vocal protests from its loyal fans. Since then, Jessica Fletcher has lived on in syndication and in occasional made-for-television Murder, She Wrote movies that Lansbury and her husband Peter Shaw have produced, and her son Anthony has directed. Other members of her family have been involved in her career, as well: her brother Bruce served as supervising producer on Murder, She Wrote, her son Anthony and her stepson David have served as executive producers, and her husband, to whom she credits much of her success,helped to run their production company, Corymore Productions. For her work in television, Lansbury has received 16 Emmy nominations (12 for Murder, She Wrote). She received her first Academy Award nomination at age 17 for her performance in Gaslight, and went on to receive two more Academy nominations and four Tony awards.

     As a mystery writer who relied on her extraordinary powers of intuition, Lansbury's Jessica Fletcher entered prime time as a sincere if somewhat dowdy widow who, over time, transformed into a sophisticated, appealing, and successful older businesswoman. Jessica's balance of smart professional action and strong com­mitments to traditionally feminine practices and be­liefs, along with the program’s strong slate of guest performers, allowed the series to appeal to women across a range of backgrounds. By its second season, the program ranked among the top ten according to Nielsen audience ratings, and would remain in this position for most of its years on the air, attracting such big-name advertisers as the Ford Motor Company.

     Murder, She Wrote has spawned three made-for­ television film successors: Murder, She Wrote: South by Southwest (1997), Murder, She Wrote: A Story to Die For (2000), and Murder, She Wrote: The Last Free Man (2001). Lansbury has starred in a number of other made-for-television movies as well, including The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax and Mrs. Santa Claus. Most recently, she has hosted ABC television's reintroduction of The Wonderful World of Disney and the Disney Channel's airing of its family programming. Today, thanks to syndication and numerous airings of quality feature films on cable film channels, hardly a week goes by when viewers cannot find the much-loved Angela Lansbury somewhere on television.