Lucie Mannheim

Lucie Mannheim was born on 30 April 1899 in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin, then part of the German Empire, and she quickly became a distinguished stage actress after studying drama in her hometown. Her early repertoire featured iconic roles such as Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House, Marie in Büchner's Woyzeck, and Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, establishing her reputation in both classical and contemporary theatre. In 1923 she transitioned to the screen, appearing in silent films like The Stone Rider before achieving wider recognition with the 1929 production Atlantik, one of the first cinematic retellings of the Titanic tragedy, and the operetta Die göttliche Jette (1931), specially composed for her by Walter Goetze. The rise of the Nazi regime in 1933 abruptly halted her German career because of her Jewish heritage, prompting her to flee first to Czechoslovakia and then to the United Kingdom, where she continued to act in British cinema, most famously as the doomed spy Annabella Smith in Alfred Hitchcock's classic The 39 Steps (1935). During World War II she contributed to the Allied war effort by broadcasting anti‑Nazi propaganda for the Londoner Rundfunk, even recording a subversive version of Lili Marleen in 1943. In 1941 she married fellow actor Marius Goring, and after the war she returned to a divided Germany in 1948, resuming her prolific work on stage and in film. The 1950s saw her join the British television series The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel alongside her husband, and she made her final English‑language film appearance as a cook in Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965). Her last screen role was in a 1970 TV film, capping a career that spanned nearly five decades; she was honoured with the West German Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit in 1959 and appointed a State Actor for Berlin in 1963. Lucie Mannheim passed away on 17 July 1976 in Braunlage, Lower Saxony, leaving behind a legacy of resilience and artistic versatility that continues to inspire both stage and screen scholars.