Their daughter, Suzanne, graduated summa cum laude and became a reporter for NBC. In 1989, they moved to Harrisonburg, Virginia, to be near her and her son, Brian.In 1959 Richard Rodgers, who had been a lifelong friend, pleaded with Angelus to audition for the role of the Mother Superior in the Broadway production of The Sound of Music. The music by “Fats” Waller and lyrics by George Marion included a show-stopper for Angelus and three other females, “The Ladies Who Sing with a Band”, satirising vocalists of the day.The actress then phased out her career with an NBC radio programme entitled Presenting Muriel Angelus, and in 1946 she settled into marriage with Paul Lavalle, at the time the conductor at Radio City Music Hall. Entitled Early to Bed (1943), it called itself “a fairy tale for grown-ups” and, though not particularly admired by critics, it fulfilled the prediction of Howard Barnes, the Herald Tribune critic, who wrote, The performance is so much better than the basic material that it is certain to catch on as a bit of escapist hot-cha.Angelus played the owner of a bordello in Martinique who, when the island is visited by her former lover, pretends that her place is a girls’ finishing school.

The critic John Mason Brown recorded in the New York World Telegram, I hate it when musicals take themselves too seriously and go in for all the pretensions of grand opera with nothing but sentimentality as their motive and dullness as their means.Sunny River closed after 36 performances.Angelus’s final Broadway show was less pretentious and much more successful, running for 382 performances. Despite book, lyrics and direction by Oscar Hammerstein II and music by Sigmund Romberg, the period piece, set in New Orleans in the early 19th century, it was not a success. When casting the role, Sturges was allegedly offered an alphabetical list of players under contract to the studio and he chose the first name on the list – Angelus.When Paramount let her go (never, alas, having allowed her to sing in a Hollywood film), she returned to Broadway to star in the operetta Sunny River (1941). In this biting political satire in which a tramp rises to become Governor through guile and graft, Angelus shone, bringing refreshing humanity to the cynical proceedings as the gentle secretary, who offers to become McGinty’s wife “for the sake of the women’s vote”, then grows to love him and effects his reformation. But she ended her screen career with a film classic, the first film to be directed by Preston Sturges, The Great McGinty (retitled Down Went McGinty for the UK). Angelus then valiantly tries to conceal the fact from the now blind man.She had a less rewarding role in Safari (1940), which starred Douglas Fairbanks Jnr and Madeleine Carroll, and tempted audiences (who were scarce) with advertisements that stated, “Deep in the heart of Africa, her hungry heart beat to tomtom rhythm!”The Way of All Flesh (1940) was a torpid drama starring Akim Tamiroff as a bank messenger who deserts his family and is exploited by an adventuresss (Angelus).

In the film’s most memorable scene, the girl of the streets whom he has used as a model (Ida Lupino) deliberately ruins the artist’s last work, which he considers his masterpiece. Though The Boys from Syracuse did not get to London until a lacklustre production in 1963, its three hit songs (the third was “This Can’t Be Love”) were interpolated into a West End revue Up and Doing (1940), which also introduced No?Coward’s “London Pride”.While performing on Broadway, Angelus was offered a film contract by Paramount, and she made her US screen d?t in William Wellman’s version of Rudyard Kipling’s novel The Light That Failed, giving a touching performance as the girlfriend of an artist (Ronald Colman) who is slowly going blind. Joined by two other ladies (Marcy Westcott and Wyn Murray) she swung into a delightfully playful trio arrangement by Hugh Martin that is still often performed in concert presentations to enthusiastic response. It has been waiting for a score by Rodgers and Hart and direction by George Abbott.Besides “Falling in Love with Love”, the show also gave Angelus the chance to let her hair down in the evening’s big show-stopper “Sing for Your Supper”.