Anna Lee

At 91 years old, Anna Lee has this physical status:

Anna Lee, MBE (born Joan Boniface Winnifrith; 2 January 1913 – May 14, 2004) was a British-born American actress, nicknamed "The British Bombshell" by studios.

Early life

Anna Lee was born in Ightham (pronounced "Item"), Kent, the niece of Bertram Thomas Winnifrith, a headmaster and Anglican rector, and his second wife, Edith Maude Digby-Roper, who died in 2001. In her attempt to become a director, her father supported his daughter. Reverend Alfred Winnifrith, Lee's grandfather, was Rector of Mariansleigh. During WWI, he cared for Belgian refugees and was given the Medaille du Roi Albert. Sir John Winnifrith, Lee's brother, was a senior British civil servant who served as a permanent secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture. Dame Jean Conan Doyle, a lifelong friend of his daughter's uncle, was the goddaughter of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and a lifelong admirer of his daughter.

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Career

Lee studied at the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art in the Royal Albert Hall and made her debut in His Lordship (1932), when she was 19 years old. During the early 1930s, she appeared in a number of minor, often uncredited roles in films. Lee began to play more prominent characters in films to satisfy the 1927 Cinematograph Films Act (17 & 18 Geo). V) was an act of the United Kingdom Parliament and was designed to stimulate the British film industry's declining. She was known for her appearances in films set among the wealthy, especially in Chelsea Live (1933), in which she starred with Louis Hayward.

Lee began working with Gainsborough Pictures, the country's largest production firm of the period. At Gainsborough, she appeared in a variety of genres, including the comedy-thriller The Camels Are Coming, the drama The Man Who Changed His Mind, and the war film OHMS. Princess Miranoff, an aristocratic playgirl and other woman, appeared in Jessie Matthews' film First a Girl Beginning in 1935 as both the aristocratic playgirl and other woman. King Solomon's Mines, one of the studio's big-budget films, starred in 1937.

When shooting The Camels are Coming is a Film In 1933, Lee met director Robert Stevenson, who became her first husband, while shooting the Camels are Arriving on location in Egypt. She appeared in Gaumont's film Non-Stop New York in 1937. During 1938, she went from acting to giving birth to her first child. In 1939, Lee and her husband were moved to Ealing Studios operated by Michael Balcon, the former mayor of Gainsborough. In the comedy Young Man's Fancy (1939), she appeared in The Four Just Men (1939), an Irish music hall performer who falls in love with an aristocrat.

Return to Yesterday, a film about a teenage repertory theatre actress who falls in love with a Hollywood actor she meets while touring in a small seaside town, was her last film in Britain. Lee and Stevenson immigrated to the United States, her husband having signed a deal with David O. Selznick. She remained sympathetic of the British war effort during World War II, and in 1943 she appeared alongside other British actors in Forever and a Day, a film directed to raise funds for British charities.

She became a fan of John Ford after she moved to Hollywood, appearing in many of his films, including How Green Was My Valley, Two Rode Together, and Fort Apache. In Flying Tigers (1942), she co-starred John Wayne and John Carroll.

She appeared in the horror/thriller Bedlam (1946) and had a lead role opposite Brian Donlevy and Walter Brennan in Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die! (1943) A wartime drama relating to Reinhard Heydrich's assassination. Lee appeared on television anthology shows in the 1940s and 1950s, including Robert Montgomery Presents, The Ford Theatre Hour, Kraft Television Theatre, Armstrong Circle Theatre, and Wagon Train. In "The Case of the Unsuitable Uncle" (1962), Crystal Durham appeared on Perry Mason as Crystal Durham. In the 1963 episode "Last Seen Wearing Blue Jeans," she appeared on Alfred Hitchcock Presents (S1E28).

She returned to England in 1958 to appear in John Ford's Gideon's Day, in which she played the detective's wife. Sister Margaretta of The Sound of Music, one of the two nuns who defeated the Nazis by removing car engine parts allowed the Von Trapps to flee. In What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Lee appeared in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Mrs. Bates, a neighbor of the sisters played by Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, appeared in a small role (1962) as Mrs. Bates. Lee appeared in the feature film What Can I Do?, directed by Wheeler Winston Dixon in 1994.

Lila Quartermaine, a matriarch of GM and Port Charles, became known as matriarch Lila Quartermaine in later years. Lila was a contract worker until 2003, when Lee was fired from service and moved to recurring status by Jill Farren-Phelps, a move that was widely opposed in the soap world. Lee was promised by former General Hospital executive producer Wendy Riche to work for life, according to fellow General Hospital actress Leslie Charleson. "The lady was in her 90s," Charleson said when interviewed in 2007. And then, when the new powers-that-be took over, they fired her, and it broke her heart. It was not necessary."

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