(Sent back in time from my future-self in 2023, cuz I was still processing
Margaret grief (re-activated by
Nichelle Nichols passing) to do it at the time)
Must admit, I never got into "Murder, She Wrote".
My grandmother loved the shit out of it.
What I remember her best from were "Bedknobs And Broomsticks" and "
The Last Unicorn".
People who only associate her as a G-rated good-guy really need to check her out in the latter.
Course, I'll take any opportunity to plug "Last Unicorn".
Let me ‘splain something upfront. I never met Ms. Lansbury. (Well, technically, several decades after the fact I stood behind her on line in the supermarket, but let’s not complicate things.) What the editor at St. Martin’s Press wanted was what’s known as an “unofficial” biography or, sometimes less flatteringly, a “paste-up” bio.
In short, the writer-contractor wrote entirely based on extant materials – newspaper clippings in those days, TV interviews done by others, if possible, any books already written by or about the subject – putting them all together in a kind of patchwork quilt/jigsaw puzzle/collage of a life story.
These days, it could be done in a couple of weeks by combing the Internet. In 1986, it was a matter of schlepping. Much schlepping. Three months’ worth of schlepping on a six-month deadline.
Why did I do it? I was not Ms. Lansbury’s Biggest Fan. Yes, I’d watched *Murder, She Wrote*. Yes, I was impressed with her work and knew something of her background on Broadway – *Mame*, *Sweeney Todd*, ad infinitum. But the reasons I agreed had nothing to do with adulation.
First, when I’d quit the Day Job, I’d miscalculated just how long it took the Star Trek parent company to cough up the royalties, so it looked as if I’d be short of income for anywhere from six months to a year.
Second, the editor who wanted the unofficial bio of Ms. Lansbury said he was also interested in looking at any fiction manuscript I might be working on. Given the mishegoss with with New American Library (which had finally dumped *Heroic Measures*), I needed a new home for my mainstream efforts.
Third, my agent also represented a journalist who worked for the *New York Post* and who had recently done a similar bio on Meryl Streep. She could get me an in at the *Post* archives – an invaluable resource in the pre-Google days.
I’d earn a little cash, could schlep around to libraries and archives in between the three-days-a-week temp job I’d picked up once I realized that, while *Dwellers in the Crucible* might have made the NYTimes best seller list for two weeks in the summer, I wasn’t going to see any royalties until the following year and, quite frankly, gain entrée to places (such as the Lincoln Center photo archive) that I’d never been before.
So, yes.
And, since I said everything I wanted to up top, I guess that's that.
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