In an effort to escape the ongoing terror of the war, the Lansbury family soon made a plan to flee the country. They safely arrived in New York in 1940, but chillingly, Lansbury and her family almost didn’t make it out of England alive. The very same day they arrived in Liverpool to board the boat for America, the city was bombed by the Germans (via PBS).
“The day we sailed from Liverpool, it was bombed,” Lansbury later told the Radio Times. “But we escaped! On a Canadian Pacific Line steamship called the Duchess of Atholl. And y’know, it’s curious, we didn’t really understand how crucial that journey was, or how imminent our demise might have been, if we had not been lucky enough to have an escort of destroyers, weaving around us, all the way.” The fortuitous timing of their escape may very well have saved Lansbury’s life, and had she not managed to flee England when she did, the world may have missed out on a great and talented actress.
