I Did Angela Lansbury’s Positive Moves
After being put through the wringer by various Marvel heroes, I sought a less vigorous workout. Perhaps nothing suggests “less vigorous” as much as the cover of Angela Lansbury’s Positive Moves, co-written by Dame Lansbury herself and former LA Times staff writer Mimi Avens. Delacorte Press released the book in 1990, following on the heels of Lansbury’s successful VHS workout tape of the same name that capitalized on the celebrity workout craze of the 80s and 90s. If you’re too young to remember, it was a perfect storm of spandex and leg warmers, brought on by Jane Fonda’s Workout Book and Olivia Newton John’s “Physical,” and culminating in every single famous person ever putting out a workout video. (Seriously, everyone from Marky Mark to La Toya Jackson, and that includes Golden Girl Estelle Getty, the least-memorable kid on The Cosby Show, and — somehow — comedian David Brenner.)
Angela Lansbury’s career has spanned so many decades that she means very different things to people of different ages. For some, she’s a film noir femme fatale, and for others, the voice of the teapot in Beauty and the Beast, with starring roles in Broadway’s Mame and Sweeney Todd somewhere in the middle. (For a ’70s kid like me, she was notable for being the witchy woman in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, a Disney film that climaxes with live-action suits of armor coming to life and fighting off Nazis.) When Positive Moves came…