Edgar Lansbury, a Tony Award-winning producer and younger brother of actress Angela Lansbury, died Thursday at age 94 at his home in Manhattan, according to his son. No cause was given.
Peggy Gordon, who played in Lansbury’s Godspell, posted the news on Facebook.
“My huge adorable and adoring Godspell family, we have now lost our surrogate daddy, Edgar Lansbury. How blessed was he to live such a full, rich, wonderful life surrounded by people who adored him. Don Scardino says there will be a memorial probably this fall. Contact any and all of your Godspell family members from all ten original companies, plus London (hi Gay) and anyone else I”ve missed. Man, if Joe Beruh was waiting for Edgar with a cigarette in his mouth, I have no doubt Edgar made Joe stomp on it. Love never dies. It’s an energy that only transmutes into matter. That’s all of us. So, I believe Edgar’s energy continues.”
His credits included the Broadway and film productions of Godspell and The Subject Was Roses (his Broadway debut and which won the Tony for Best Play in 1964), as well as the 1974 Broadway revival of Gypsy that starred his sister, Angela, and won a Tony.
Film and television credits include The Wild Party, Blue Sunshine, Squirmand Coronet Blue.
Other Broadway credits include The Only Game in Town (1968), Look to the Lilies (1970), The Magic Show (1974), American Buffalo (1977, Drama Desk Nomination), and Lennon (2005).
Lansbury was also a producer on the 2011 Broadway Revival of Godspell.
Lansbury’s off-Broadway credits include Promenade at the Promenade Theater on the Upper West Side, which he designed and operated, Arms and the Man, Waiting for Godot, Long Day’s Journey into Night, and As Bees In Honey Drown (Drama Desk nomination).
He received the John Houseman Award in 2007, given by The Acting Company to honor his commitment to the development of classical actors and a national audience for the theater.
Survivors include his children David, an actor, James (an assistant director on Seinfeld), George, Michael, Brian and Kate, and his second wife, artist Louise Peabody.
