Carla Lehmann (26 February 1917 – 1 December 1990) was a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

-born

stage Stage or stages may refer to: Acting * Stage (theatre), a space for the performance of theatrical productions * Theatre, a branch of the performing arts, often referred to as "the stage" * ''The Stage'', a weekly British theatre newspaper * Sta ...

, film and

television actress An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), ...

Career

Born in

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749, ...

Manitoba , image_map = Manitoba in Canada 2.svg , map_alt = Map showing Manitoba's location in the centre of Southern Canada , Label_map = yes , coordinates = , capital = Winn ...

in Canada, Lehmann was the youngest of the five children of Dr Julius Lehmann and Elsa Hillerns. She was educated at Riverbend School (now Balmoral Hall), where she edited the school newspaper, and from the age of fifteen appeared at the Little Theatre, Winnipeg. Gaining a place to train for an acting career at

RADA The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA; ) is a drama school in London, England, that provides vocational conservatoire training for theatre, film, television, and radio. It is based in the Bloomsbury area of Central London, close to the Se ...

in London, she then joined the Croydon Repertory Company for a year before first appearing in the West End. Her stage work included appearances in several

Aldwych farces The Aldwych farces were a series of twelve stage farces presented at the Aldwych Theatre, London, nearly continuously from 1923 to 1933. All but three of them were written by Ben Travers. They incorporate and develop British low comedy styles, ...

. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

she starred in war films opposite Stewart Granger and James Mason. She also played in

Cottage to Let ''Cottage to Let'' is a 1941 British spy thriller film directed by Anthony Asquith starring Leslie Banks, Alastair Sim and John Mills. Filmed during the Second World War and set in Scotland during the war, its plot concerns Nazi spies trying t ...

opposite

John Mills Sir John Mills (born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills; 22 February 190823 April 2005) was an English actor who appeared in more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades. He excelled on camera as an appealing British everyman who often portra ...

and Alistair Sim in 1941. Lehmann notably played Susan Foster in the film '' Candlelight in Algeria'' (1944) and Lady Mary Hannay in the BBC television series ''

The Three Hostages ''The Three Hostages'' is the fourth of five Richard Hannay novels by the Scottish author John Buchan, first published in 1924 by Hodder & Stoughton, London. Hannay had previously appeared in '' The Thirty Nine Steps'' (1915), his most famous ...

'' (1952).

Private life

Lehmann spent most of her adult life living in England. In 1941 she married George Anderson McDowell Elliot, a former Royal Marine officer recently commissioned into the Royal Army Service Corps, but they later divorced. In 1947 she married her second husband, John R. Townsend, an insurance broker, in

Westminster Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster. The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, B ...

, and they had three sons, John Anthony (born 1948), Nicholas (born 1949),Carla Lehmann: From Winnipeg Little Theatre to London's Stage UPDATE
accessed 3 October 2016 and Alain (1954).Register of Births for Ealing registration district: Jan-Mar 1948, volume 5e, p. 201; July-Sept 1949, volume 5e, p. 152; April–June 1954, volume 5e, p. 151 She died in Berkshire in 1990.

Filmography

References

External links

* 1917 births 1990 deaths 20th-century Canadian actresses Actresses from Winnipeg Canadian stage actresses Canadian film actresses Canadian television actresses Alumni of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art {{Canada-actor-stub