After Angela Lansbury‘s death, film fanatics are revisiting her extensive filmography, but a few tricky customers would have you believe she never appeared in one of her most well-known roles.
The actress appeared in over one hundred roles since her debut in 1944, with her first ever role being none other than Gaslight. If the name sounds familiar to you, you’re not crazy. Almost as soon as Lansbury’s death became public, internet jokesters released with unbridled force the same joke about her career: she never appeared in Gaslight.
For the completely uninitiated, gaslighting is a term for manipulating the memory of others into believing things never happened or of intentionally misleading memories of certain events. The term has seen a renaissance in recent years as a buzzword thanks to the Tumblrification of it, but it owes its origins to Lansbury’s first acting credit.
It’s very reminiscent of other big internet fads like Graggle Simpson and Glup Shitto, which led to many wondering if they’d actually gone mad. In reality, there’s no joke funnier online than making people question their memory as they slowly descend into insanity.
Gaslight remains a benchmark film, and was a trailblazer for psychological horror and drama in Hollywood. Directed by George Cukor, Gaslight is remembered as having one of the greatest ever performances to win an Oscar with Ingrid Bergman’s portrayal of Paula Alquist Anton.
Lansbury played the housemaid Nancy Oliver, who is essentially just a supporting character but it clearly worked in getting her into the industry. She went on to receive a Honorary Academy Award, as well as receiving three nominations for best supporting actress throughout her career.
Gaslight is available to rent on Amazon Prime Video, and is still shown in film studies classes in 2022.
