Parents and family

Coral Lansbury was born in the Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

 suburb of St Kilda

St Kilda, Victoria

St Kilda is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 6 km south from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Port Phillip...

. Her parents were Oscar Vincent Stephen Lansbury (died 1968, Sydney) and his wife, May (née Morle; died 1968, Sydney). They were touring Australia in a production of the musical Showboat

Showboat

A showboat, or show boat, was a form of theater that traveled along the waterways of the United States, especially along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers . A showboat was basically a barge that resembled a long, flat-roofed house, and in order to move down the river, it was pushed by a small tugboat...

, and were stranded by the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

. She was a distant cousin of actress Angela Lansbury

Angela Lansbury

Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...

.

Education

Lansbury graduated from North Sydney Girls High School

North Sydney Girls High School

North Sydney Girls High School is an academically selective, public high school for girls, located at Crows Nest, on the Lower North Shore of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia....

 and entered the University of Sydney

University of Sydney

The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...

 at age 15, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts

Bachelor's degree

A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...

.

Marriages and child

Lansbury married three times. Her first husband was the iconic radio actor and producer George Edwards

George Edwards (Actor)

George Edwards was an Australian actor and producer.Edwards was a pioneer of the radio serial in Australia. Prior to that he was a comedian, vaudeville artist, acrobatic dancer and stage performer...

, né Harold Parks, best known today for creating and starring in the radio version of Dad and Dave. Edwards had had three previous wives. He left his wife, actress Nell Stirling, for the much younger Lansbury. They married on 20 February 1953. Edwards died in 1953.

On 24 October 1954, Coral Lansbury gave birth to a son, Malcolm Turnbull

Malcolm Turnbull

Malcolm Bligh Turnbull is an Australian politician. He has been a member of the Australian House of Representatives since 2004, and was Leader of the Opposition and parliamentary leader of the Liberal Party from 16 September 2008 to 1 December 2009.Turnbull has represented the Division...

, by Bruce Bligh Turnbull, whom she married in 1955. When Malcolm was nine years of age, Lansbury left the family, and Australia. She subsequently married Prof. John Salmon

John Salmon

-Life:Salmon's family was hereditary goldsmiths to the diocese of Ely. His parents were Salomon and Alice, and he was the eldest of three brothers. He entered the Benedictine priory of Ely sometime before 1291...

, a New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

-born academic and
foundation professor of history at the University of New South Wales

University of New South Wales

The University of New South Wales , is a research-focused university based in Kensington, a suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...

 from 1960-65. John Salmon died on 9 February 2005.

Malcolm Turnbull became leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party and Opposition Leader in the Australian Parliament on 15 September 2008. He is a prominent Australian republican and Roman Catholic convert.

Early work in Australia

Lansbury's father worked in the early radio industry in Australia with the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) as it was then known. He got her a part in a radio drama. She worked for the ABC into the 1960s but as television supplanted radio drama she turned more to academic interests.

Lansbury worked as both a scriptwriter and actor in radio during its heyday. The National Film and Sound Archive holds a collection of many radio programs. They feature many of the great actors from the time, many of whom also became famous in Australia, and some overseas, for theatre, film and television work. The NSA list of the productions with which she is associated includes:

Actor

Escape me Never: Love story of a wealthy English girl, Fenella (Lansbury) and a struggling musician, Caryl (Michael Pate. 52 x 15min episodes. 1950s

Strange Life of Deacon Brodie: True story of the man who inspired Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

 to write Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. 52 x 15 min episodes. 1950s. Broadcast on 2UW at 10.15am Mon-Thur

Scriptwriter

Becket: Re-enactment of the relationship between Henry II and Thomas Becket. 104 x 15 min episodes

Empty Arms: Drama serial about adoption and the effect on the mother. 104 x 15 min episodes

Fallen Angel: Angel, a successful model whose husband dies leaving her with a newborn child. 146 x 15 min episodes (1955)

Judith: Based on the biblical story of Judith, played by actress Judi Farr

Judi Farr

Judi Farr is an Australian theatre, film and television actor best known for several situation comedy roles on Australian television.She first became known for her role of Rita in the situation comedy My Name's McGooley, What's Yours?...

. 104 x 15 min episodes.

The Reverend Matthew: A story about a country minister. 1105 x 15 min episodes (1956-59)

Stairway to Fame: Cast included Sheila Sewell, Ray Barrett, Dinah Shearing, Lyndon Barbour, John Meillon, Max Orbiston, Margo Lee, Neva Carr Glyn, Ruth Cracknell, Queenie Ashton

Queenie Ashton

Edith "Queenie" Ashton AM was an English-born Australian soprano and character actress who had a long career primarily on radio, although she was also a renowned theatre actress, who also added television and film performances to her impressive repertoire...

. 208 episodes (c. 1954)

Thirty Minutes To Go: Mystery drama. 30 minutes.

This Was Sylvia: Dramatic story of a beautiful and insatiably ambitious woman. 208 x 15 min episodes. 1956

True Dog Stories: Stories about different breeds of dogs. 26 x 15 min episodes (1960s)

In the United States

After leaving Australia, Lansbury worked as an academic in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Her major interest was Victorian literature

Victorian literature

Victorian literature is the literature produced during the reign of Queen Victoria . It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic period and the very different literature of the 20th century....

. Netween 1975 and 1984 she wrote four books on Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire...

 and other Victorian literary figures. She served as president of the Victorian Studies Association and of the Victorian executive committee of the Modern Language Association.

She was the Professor Of English at Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

 and first dean of the Graduate School at the Camden Campus of Rutgers University

Rutgers-Camden

Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey, USA , is a state-funded, coeducational, public, research university. Founded in the 1920s, Rutgers–Camden began as an amalgam of the South Jersey Law School and the College of South Jersey. It is the southernmost of the three regional campuses of Rutgers,...

.
Lansbury wrote five works of fiction: Ringarra(1985),Sweet Alice (1986), Felicity (1987), The Grotto (1989) and, published posthumously, Opium!

Lansbury's works include:

One reviewer of one of her books, The Reasonable Man: Trollope's Legal Fiction was her son, Malcolm Turnbull

Malcolm Turnbull

Malcolm Bligh Turnbull is an Australian politician. He has been a member of the Australian House of Representatives since 2004, and was Leader of the Opposition and parliamentary leader of the Liberal Party from 16 September 2008 to 1 December 2009.Turnbull has represented the Division...

. He wrote in his regular column in The Bulletin

The Bulletin

The Bulletin was an Australian weekly magazine that was published in Sydney from 1880 until January 2008. It was influential in Australian culture and politics from about 1890 until World War I, the period when it was identified with the "Bulletin school" of Australian literature. Its influence...

magazine in 1981: "It is refreshing, if not surprising, to find someone who maintains that that most pellucid of novelists, Anthony Trollope, owed his literary style to the law....The book provides a fresh insight into the novels of Trollope and to an explanation for his style."

Death

Lansbury died of cancer in the United States on 3 April 1991, aged 61, at her home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

. A professor of English, she was the Dean of Women at Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

at the time of her death.