Trivia for
"Murder, She Wrote" (1984) More at IMDbPro »

• Angela Lansbury was the fourth choice to play Jessica Fletcher. Jean Stapleton was offered the part but turned it down, as did Doris Day.
  
  
• Jessica's maiden name was McGill, taken from Angela Lansbury's real-life mother, Moyna McGill.
  
  
• Angela Lansbury also played Jessica's look-alike cousin Emma, who was a performer on the London stage.
  
  
• On several episodes, Angela Lansbury, as Jessica, would just appear briefly at the beginning to introduce that week's episode and many of those episodes would feature Keith Michell as Jessica's friend Dennis Stanton.
  
  
• Besides Dennis Stanton, other recurring characters that helped Jessica solve the various murders she encountered were private investigators Harry McGraw and Charlie Garrett (played by Jerry Orbach and Wayne Rogers, respectively), British intelligence agent Michael Haggerty (played by Len Cariou) and N.Y.P.D detective Lt. Artie Gelber (played by Herb Edelman). However, the only one of these characters to be spun off onto his own series was Harry McGraw in the short lived series titled, appropriately enough, "The Law and Harry McGraw" (1987).
  
  
• Jessica Fletcher lived at 698 Candelwood, Cabot Cove, Maine.
  
  
• Jessica's late husband Frank was a bomber pilot in Korea.
  
  
• Jessica's middle name is Beatrice, a link to Angela Lansbury's best friend (and Mame co-star) Beatrice Arthur. Her late husband was named "Frank", another reference to Bea, who's birth name was "Bernice Frankel".
  
  
• Before she met and married her late husband, Frank, Jessica was studying to become a journalist.
  
  
• Another recurring character was Michael Hagarty (as played by Len Cariou), who was an undercover agent, who met up with Jessica at many different locales all over the world. Len Cariou also starred with Angela Lansbury on Broadway as part of the original cast in "Sweeney Todd".
  
  
• There are many in-jokes in "The Committee" (episode 8.9). The last names of characters Edward Dunsany, Gerald Innsmouth, and Philip Arkham all refer to works by H.P. Lovecraft. The name of Harcourt Fenton is an obvious reference to "Star Trek" (1966) rogue Harcourt Fenton Mudd, and the names of Lieutenant Tartarus and the Avernus Club both refer to mythological hells. This is no surprise, given that prolific SF author J. Michael Straczynski wrote this episode.
  
  
• In "Incident in Lot 7" (episode 8.13), the novel of Jessica's being made into a movie is called "Messengers of Midnight." Jessica says that it's based on a true story, a car going over a cliff is mentioned, and a particular character is named as the killer. All of this means that the "true story" Jessica wrote into the novel was her investigation in the episode "The Committee," another episode written by J. Michael Straczynski.
  
  
• The name of Jessica's first novel was "The Corpse Danced at Midnight".
  
  
• The show's title is a reference to the Miss Marple mystery Murder She Said (1961), which was based on a novel by Agatha Christie.
  
  
• {Jack and Bill (#6.5)}_ and {Murder -- According to Maggie (#6.17)}_ are apparently pilots for other shows that were broadcast as "Murder She Wrote" episodes, apparently in an attempt to create a spin-off. The only successful spin off of this series was "The Law and Harry McGraw" (1987).
  
  
• Jessica never drove a car. She always rode her bicycle or took a cab.
  
  
• When Tom Bosley left the series, his absence was explained by having Sheriff Tupper retire from the position and move to Kentucky to live near his family.
  
  
• The harbor of Jessica's home town, Cabot Cove, is actually the Jaw's lake on the Universal Studios tram tour.
  
  
• Sheriff Metzger's wife Adelle was often talked about but was never seen.
  
  
• Jessica had four brothers and sisters. However, the only one that was seen was her brother Marshall, who was a doctor. Another brother, Martin, was also mentioned but never seen.
  
  
• Grady moved in with Jessica and her husband Frank after Grady's parents, Frank's brother and his wife, were killed in an automobile accident.
  
  
• The episode "Mr. Penroy's Vacation" shares several plot points with "Arsenic and Old Lace." At one point, Helen says to Lillian "Not my best lace tablecloth!"
  
  
• Jessica's Manhattan phone number is 212-191-1498.
  
  
• Series star Angela Lansbury and co-creator/producer Peter S. Fischer weren't particularly fond of one another, with numerous magazine articles documenting how overworked Lansbury was and how she would insist on numerous revisions to her character. In fact, Lansbury was rumored ready to quit after her contract expired at the end of the fifth season, and the season-ending two-parter was supposed to be the series finale. When Lansbury decided at the last moment to come back after all (with much prodding from CBS, which desperately needed the hit show to stay on), Fischer had to rewrite the entire script. For the final episode of the seventh season, Fischer (on his way out the door; Lansbury had been promised the job of executive producer after a transition year under David Moessinger, whom she also didn't like) had two versions of the last scene filmed: one where Jessica nods in agreement to Harry McGraw's "And that's all she wrote" and one where she winks at the audience, saying she'll come back.
  
  
• Many viewers (and Angela Lansbury herself) believed that the move of the venerable show from Sunday to Thursday for the twelfth season was a deliberate plan by CBS programming chief Leslie Moonves to kill it. After all, it was going up against "Friends," which was about to get super-show status. But everything Moonves tried in the Sunday slot failed so badly that he wound up double-running "Murder, She Wrote" on Thursdays and Sundays for the last few weeks of the regular season and then for a summer of reruns. He had to place "Touched by an Angel" in the time slot the following fall to get a decent audience. The final season alludes to this with episodes tellingly titled "Murder Among Friends" (featuring the ensemble cast of hit TV series "Buds") and "Death By Demographics" - the final regular edition before the show switched to TV Movies.
  
  
• Angela Lansbury received an Emmy nomination for Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series for the each of the show's twelve seasons. She did not win for any of the nominations.
  
  

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