Angela Lansbury Dragged Her Daughter Away From Charles Manson’s Cult

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Angela Lansbury was a classic film star, a Broadway favorite, a TV legend — and a fiercely protective mother. So when her daughter Deidre Shaw got caught up in Charles Manson’s growing cult in 1968, you can bet Lansbury got her the hell out of Los Angele.

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Angela Lansbury’s Family

Angela Lansbury was born in London in 1925 to well-off family: her mother was an Irish actress and her father, a British politician. But amid the Blitz of 1940, Lansbury left her homeland for New York City. She studied acting there for two years before heading off to Hollywood.

She found fast success, first in Gaslight, which earned the up-and-comer her first Oscar nomination at the young age of 20. This was followed by popular turns in The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Manchurian Candidate.

In 1949, Lansbury married her second husband, the producer Peter Shaw. She inherited a stepson, David, from Peter’s first marriage and the couple went on to have two children of her own: Anthony Peter, born in 1952, and Deirdre Ann, born in 1953.

The family was living in a large Santa Monica, but Lansbury did not feel very comfortable in the intense Hollywood social scene. In 1959, they moved further out, to Malibu, in a house along the Pacific Coast Highway. And that’s where Deirde, called Didi, got into trouble.

Didi and the Manson Family

Although Charles Manson is remembered for brainwashing young runaways, at times, the criminal mastermind kept celebrity company. Hoping to make it as a rock star, Manson went out of his way to rub shoulders shoulders with music industry hot shots like producer Terri Melcher, the son of Doris Day whose eventual rejection of Manson led to bitter resentment. (Melcher and his then-girlfriend Candace Bergen resided at the infamous Cielo Drive home before Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski moved in.)

By the summer of 1968, Manson solidified a relationship with Dennis Wilson, the easy-going drummer of the Beach Boys. Dennis allowed Manson and his followers to move into his Palisades mansion, rent-free and enjoyed sex with many of Manson’s young female devotees.

Though men were encouraged to join the Manson family, hopeful girls were groomed by Manson individually, forced to submit to a series of grueling questions and demeaning sexual demands. Once initiated, members have told forfeit all material belongings and , finally, could enter the cult’s pansexual, acid-fueled orgy atmosphere.

However, there was were exceptions to those rules. Anyone with means, who could provide the Family with real money, were exempt from Manson’s rigorous tests and sexual control. Namely, rich girls. And 15-year-old Deidre Shaw, daughter of the famous Angela Lansbury, was one of them.

Deidre crossed paths with Manson in 1968, shortly before the Family set up camp at Wilson’s mansion. At that time, the gang was living in an abandoned house at the mouth of Topanga Canyon… right near the Pacific Coast Highway.

According to the podcast, You Must Remember This, Manson awarded Deidre with “rare, part-time status.” As host Karina Longworth explains, Manson used to pick Deidre up from her private high school and she would let the Family members “go shopping on her mommy’s credit card.” But eventually, Longworth says, “The future Jessica Fletcher canceled her daughter’s credit cards, and Manson subsequently cut Didi off too.”

Decades later, Lansbury opened up about the experience to The Daily Mail. “It pains me to say it but, at one stage, Deidre was in with a crowd led by Charles Manson,” Lansbury told the publication in 2014. As she explained it, “There were factions up in the hills above Malibu that were dedicated to the deadly pursuit.”

Lansbury also qualified the brief association, saying that “many youngsters” were “fascinated” by Manson at the time. “He was an extraordinary character, charismatic in many ways, no question about it.”

Still, the creepy encounters were enough for Lansbury to realize that staying in the area was not an option:

“We upped sticks and moved the family to a house I found in County Cork,” Lansbury said. “I was drawn to Ireland because it was the birthplace of my mother, and it was also somewhere my children wouldn’t be exposed to any more bad influences. I still have a house there which I try and visit at least once a year. So I refused all work for a year and simply kept house.”

— Angela Lansbury in The Daily Mail

But the solution wasn’t simple. By that point, both Deidre and her brother Anthony were heavily addicted to drugs. As Lansbury put it: “It started with cannabis but moved on to heroin.” However, once in Cork, Anthony recovered quickly.

For Deirde, it took “a little longer.” But now, she is married and, as of 2014, was living in Los Angeles again, running an Italian restaurant with her husband.

Read More: Angela Lansbury Was an Epic Movie Villain

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