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“She was a dear friend of the Rose Tree and she loved coming to tea here,” he told Pasadena Now Wednesday.
Fry actually worked with her on an episode of her ‘90s series, “Touched by an Angel.”
Once, he recalled, while on the set with the show in Salt Lake City, Fry realized that Lansbury was born in the same English village that he was.
“It was quite ironic because my wife, Mary, who came with us, as I was helping with the script on that episode, asked her, “What year did you leave England?”
Fry himself had not realized that Lansbury was English. She told them she left in 1940, which was the year Fry himself was born.
“Mary made a joke about me being left on a doorstep, and Angela was just such a wonderful woman and a wonderful actress,” Fry remembered. “We had a very nice relationship, and we took two or three wonderful photos for the episode.”
Ironically, said Fry, Lansbury played an executive for a tea company in the episode, an industry in which Fry worked for many years.
“So we had a very strong connection and then she came to the Rose Tea Cottage for tea. I just thought that was so nice, and her passing is just a real shame.”
The photos are prominently displayed at the Rose Tree and feature Fry, wife Mary and Lansbury on the set of the TV show, as well as Lansbury’s visit to the Cottage.
Fry and his wife Mary have run the Rose Tree Cottage for 45 years, after Fry’s successful career of buying tea for the legendary Bullock’s Wilshire tea room. It is a living tribute to the Mother Country, festooned with photos, flags, and mementos, selling English teas, sundries and delicacies, and serving an authentic High Tea on weekends.
The Rose Tree Cottage is at 801 South Pasadena Avenue, Pasadena, CA. (626) 793-3337. www.rosetreecottage.com.
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