East Side Story : WHY ANGELA LANSBURY GOT INVOLVED IN A CBS MUSICAL THAT TAKES HER FROM THE NORTH POLE TO NEW YORK

Angela Lansbury has returned to her musical roots for her first post-”Murder, She Wrote” project. And she’s back on CBS in her old time slot: Sunday at 8 p.m.

The four-time Tony Award-winner stars in “Mrs. Santa Claus,” a big, old-fashioned musical--the first original musical CBS has produced since Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” in 1957.

The two-hour tune fest reunites Lansbury with composer Jerry Herman, who wrote the music and lyrics for “Mame” and “Dear World,” for which Lansbury won performance Tonys.

Charles Durning stars as Santa and Michael Jeter plays his head elf. Terry Hughes, who directed Lansbury in the TV version of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd,” directed the film, which was shot over six weeks this past summer in Valencia and on the Universal Studios’ back lot.

Set in 1910, the musical finds Mrs. Santa Claus devising a new ‘round-the-world route she’s convinced will save her husband time on his Christmas Eve outing. Because he’s too busy reading children’s letters, Mrs. Claus decides to try out the route herself. Taking the reindeer and sleigh, she sets out on her trip but becomes stranded on Manhattan’s Lower East Side--Cupid has twisted his leg and needs rest. Soon, Mrs. Santa Claus becomes involved in the lives of the ethnically diverse neighborhood.

“This is my gift to families this Christmas,” says Lansbury, relaxing this sunny morning in the living room of her airy Brentwood home. “It really is. I hope they will accept it and enjoy it in the spirit with which it is given because it has lovely moments for everybody.”

Herman, the Tony Award-winning composer of “La Cage aux Folles” and “Hello, Dolly!,” was first approached by writer Mark Saltzman about the project. After the meeting, Herman called Lansbury about playing Mrs. Claus. “When I told her the idea, she simply said, ‘If you do it, I’ll do it,’ ” he recalls.

Initially, Lansbury had concerns with the way the script portrayed her character. “I didn’t feel she was strong enough,” she explains. “I insisted working on that, making her a very strong, real woman. I didn’t want it to come out just after ‘Murder, She Wrote’ as a kind of wishy-washy, what I call a ‘pin cushion’ of the lady--which is that visual you usually associate with Mrs. Santa Claus. She’s a good little woman, but I wanted her to be more than that.”

Lansbury, 71, wanted Mrs. Claus to represent all the women who are wives of successful men. “Those ladies are very seldom sitting around on couches, sipping tea,” she reports. “They are in there helping, pushing and very responsible in many instances for their husband’s success. That’s what we went for and that’s what they gave me.”

Doing a musical for television is a dream come true for Lansbury. “I think you can imagine, coming out of 12 years of ‘Murder, She Wrote,” to have the opportunity to bring to television all the knowledge and training and experience that I have had in the musical theater and to bring it to ‘Mrs. Santa Claus’ was a tremendous gift.”

Lansbury also is thrilled to be singing and dancing to Jerry Herman’s tunes again. “I think he has a way with a tune and a lyric that’s very much his own style,” Lansbury says. “I think he’s a modern-day Irving Berlin, don’t you?”

Herman says the two have a strong respect for each other. “I love the woman and love working with her because I know I am going to get 120%,” Herman explains.

“This is the third time I have written for her, so there’s a sense of comfort that happens between two people that is so beautiful and so rare. She knew instinctively I would protect her and make her sound good and use her best notes, and I knew instinctively that she would make me sound better because she is such a fine actress and such an emotional singer and such an intelligent singer. It’s a great team for that reason. We know we’re going to bring out the best in each other.”

The cast rehearsed for five weeks before production began and Lansbury worked four months on her singing technique.

“I don’t keep my voice up to concert pitch, like an old piano,” Lansbury says, laughing. “But I sing in my talking register, so it’s not very difficult for me to pick it up. What I found I had to work on was my breath and stamina and to hold notes and really be able to sing and not just hum along like I do every day of my life.”

In early January, Lansbury hopes to start filming a two-hour “Murder, She Wrote” movie for CBS. Though the network moved the series in its last season to Thursdays opposite “Friends” in hopes of attracting younger demographics on Sundays, Lansbury feels that, “unquestionably, time has proven that the network was totally mistaken about their attitude toward our kind of programming, and they will be the first person to agree with you. I am not kidding when I say I am stopped by 14-year-olds and 12-year-olds and 55-year-olds and 75-year-olds. They loved Jessica Fletcher.”

Lansbury says she’ll do “Murder, She Wrote” movies “as long as I can keep walking. Contractually, we are obliged to do two a year for two years and we will see how it goes. If I can handle more and they want more, then we will do it.”

But after doing a one-hour series for 12 years, Lansbury is clearly enjoying being free from the weekly grind.

“You know, I am also not an idiot,” she says. “I know that I need to keep some time for myself, which I have never done. I really do need to keep some time now for [her husband] Peter and the family, and also be able to spend a month or so in places and not always be rushing back to start shooting.”

“Mrs. Santa Claus” airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on CBS.