When John Ford
needed a dignified female passenger on a stagecoach who was to be accosted
by Lee Marvin in the opening on 1962's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,
he immediately called Anna Lee. The English actress was happy to oblige
Pappy and play the small role, once stating, "I would rather be a member of
the John Ford stock company than the biggest star in the world."
But Anna Lee was a star in films and television, and a
remarkably strong person who overcame major obstacles in her life with grace
and good humor. Born Joan Bonafice Winnifrith in 1913, Anna Lee was a
creature of the theater at an early age, appearing in a number of plays
before breaking into English films in the 1930s. She acted in a number of
what were known as "quota quickies," low-budget films that were made to
fulfill distribution and studio labor contracts. One of these was the Boris
Karloff vehicle, The Man Who Changed his Mind, directed by Anna's
first husband, Robert Stevenson (Mary Poppins).
In 1939, David Selznick brought both Stevenson and Alfred
Hitchcock to the States to direct for him. Stevenson went to work on Jane
Eyre and wife Anna starred in her first film with John Wayne, Seven
Sinners. Anna was then cast as Brownwyn in John Ford's Oscar-winning
How Green Was My Valley (1941). Like Roddy McDowall's Hugh, Ford fell in
love with Anna's spirit and made her one of his stock players, casting her
in a total of 10 films over the next 25 years.
Anna was reunited with Wayne in the war flick Flying
Tigers and worked in a variety of films over the next four years
including another Karloff vehicle, Bedlam, produced by the legendary
Val Lewton. Her next film for John Ford was also her first Western, Fort
Apache (1948). Loosely based on George Custer, the film examines Ford's
classic theme of "legend v. reality." In this case, it's John Wayne's choice
of eulogizing Henry Fonda's character as a hero or showing him up as a
megalomaniac who led himself and his men into a massacre. Wayne decides the
army is better served if Fonda died a hero. Apache is a landmark film
that features great work from its stars and a sterling performance from Anna
Lee. After this film, she divorced Robert Stevenson and remarried, ending
her sojourn in Hollywood for a number of years.........
..........Anna never considered herself a star, but she was in the truest
sense of the word. |
