Johnson, Celia (1908–1982)

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Johnson, Celia (1908–1982)

English actress who left behind an enduring reminder of her talent, the movie Brief Encounter, a classic of British cinema . Born Celia Elizabeth Johnson on December 18, 1908, in Richmond, Surrey, England; died in Nettlebed, England, on April 23, 1982; daughter of Robert Johnson (a doctor) and Ethel (Griffiths) Johnson; married Peter Fleming (a travel writer, essayist, and brother of Ian Fleming); children: Nicholas (b. January 3, 1939); Kate Fleming (b. Mary 24, 1946, who wrote her mother's biography); Lucy (b. May 15, 1947, an actress).

Made debut as Sarah Undershaft in Shaw's Major Barbara at Theatre Royal, Huddersfield, Yorkshire (July 23, 1928); replaced Angela Baddeley in A Hundred Years Old at the Lyric, Hammersmith (January 1929); performed in The Artist and the Shadow and Debonair in West End, and joined West End production of H.M. Harwood and R. Gore-Brown's Cynara (1929); played Elizabeth in Somerset Maugham's The Circle (1931); performed in Death Takes a Holiday, replaced Madeleine Carroll in After All, and played Ophelia to Raymond Massey's Hamlet in New York (1931); appeared in The Man I Killed by Maurice Rostand (with Emlyn Williams) at the Apollo, The Vinegar Tree by Paul Osborn (with Marie Tempest) at the St. James's, Tomorrow Will Be Friday at the Haymarket, and Ten Minute Alibi by Anthony Armstrong at the Embassy Theatre in Swiss Cottage (1932); appeared in Another Language by Rose Franken at the Lyric, Sometimes Even Now, The Key by Hardy and Gore-Browne, and Merton Hodge's The Wind and the Rain (1933); played Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice at the St. James's Theatre, adapted by Helen Jerome (February 1936); appeared in Old Music by Keith Winter (1937); performed in Sixth Floor (1939); replaced Peggy Ashcroft as Cecily Cardew in The Importance of Being Earnest (1940); played Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca, adapted by Daphne du Maurier (April 5, 1940) at the Queen's Theater; made short film, A Letter from Home, for director Carol Reed and Ministry of Information (1941); made first full-length film In Which We Serve (1942); filmed Dodie Smith's Dear Octopus (1943) and Noel Coward's This Happy Breed; began filming Brief Encounter (January 1945); joined the Old Vic, starting with Shaw's St. Joan with Alec Guinness as the dauphin; filmed The Astonished Heart (1950); filmed I Believe in You, The Holly and the Ivy, A Kid for Two Farthings, and J.B. Priestley's The Good Companions; replaced Ashcroft in Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea (1952); appeared in Never Too Late by Felicity Douglas at the Westminster (1954); played Sheila Broadbent in William Douglas-Home's comedy The Reluctant Debutante (1955); performed in Robert Bolt's The Flowering Cherry with Sir Ralph Richardson (1957); awarded the CBE (June 1958); appeared in The Grass is Greener by Hugh Williams (1958), The Tulip Tree by N.C. Hunter (1962), Out of the Crocodile by Giles Cooper (1963); replaced Diana Wynyard in Ibsen's The Master Builder at the National (1964); played Lady Nelson in "Bequest to the Nation" in Rattigan's teleplay (1964); replaced Edith Evans as Judith Bliss in Hay Fever at the National (1965); played Madame Ranevskaya at Chichester in Lindsay Anderson's production of The Cherry Orchard (1967); performed in Alan Ayckbourn's Relatively Speaking at the Duke of York (1967); played Miss Mackay in film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1968); played Gertrude to Alan Bates' Hamlet at Nottingham (1970); played Lady Boothroyde in Lloyd George Knew My Father (October 1972); on television, appeared in "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont" by Elizabeth Taylor, winning Best Actress at the BAFTA awards (1973); appeared in The Dame of Sark by Douglas-Home 1974 and on television in his "The Kingfisher" (1977); played the nurse in Romeo and Juliet for the BBC (1978); appeared in Staying On with Trevor Howard (March 1980) and nominated for another Best Actress by BAFTA; created a Dame Commander of the British Empire (1981).

"I won't write my autobiography because I never had an affair with Frank Sinatra," said Celia Johnson, "and if I had had, I wouldn't tell anyone." It was her daughter Kate Fleming who published a biography of her mother in 1991. Tall, slim, and easygoing, Celia Johnson was "never very smartly dressed," writes her daughter. "Usually devoid of make-up, and with thick glasses," she was rarely recognized in public. In a hotel in Switzerland, she overheard someone standing nearby say: "I hear Celia Johnson is staying in the hotel—I'm determined not to miss her." Throughout Johnson's 50-year career, says Fleming, "the creative and the conventional" were at "war within her."

Born in 1908, the daughter of Robert Johnson, a doctor, and Ethel Griffiths Johnson , Celia spent a happy childhood with her younger brother John (b. 1912) and older sister Pamela (b. 1906). Her forebears owned an outfitters' shop in Cambridge. After World War I, her father became physician to the duke and duchess of York (the future George VI and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon ). Her mother Ethel, generally nervous, ran a chaotic house. Her father could be teased, her mother could not.

As a child, Celia was all eyes, teeth, and gangly limbs. When she was nine, during the waning days of World War I, both she and her 11-year-old sister Pam had a serious attack of measles for which Celia always blamed her poor eyesight. Short-sighted, she had to wear glasses throughout her life.

In April 1919, Celia entered Miss Fraser's class (Form III) of the elite St. Paul's Girls' School which sent many of its students on to Oxford. Johnson excelled in French and played the oboe in the school orchestra led by Gustav Holst. Competitive, she was also athletic, had a flair for verse, and loved performing in plays. When the family moved to Marshgate House in Richmond, 15-year-old Celia began boarding near school until she left St. Paul's in July 1926 with her general school certificate.

I remember in Paris, being photographed shaking hands with the engine drivers at the Gare du Nord. I got the giggles and they must have thought me rather impolite but I wanted to tell them, as if they didn't know, that they were not shaking hands with a real film star but only with me, and that it was very nice of them to be so kind and pretend so well.
—Celia Johnson

Johnson had no great ambition, but she wanted to act. "I thought I'd rather like it," she said. "It was the only thing I was good at. And I thought it might be rather wicked." Accepted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 1927, she caught the attention of Alice Gachet , one of the leading teachers there. Following her final term in 1928, she signed with agent Aubrey Blackburn and spent her first season with Madge McIntosh 's Rep. Co. at Theatre Royal, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, debuting as Sarah Undershaft in Shaw's Major Barbara on July 23, 1928. Still, Johnson had no drive and absolutely no confidence.

Back in Richmond, in January 1929, she replaced Angela Baddeley as Currita in A Hundred Years Old at the Lyric, Hammersmith. The company also consisted of actors Rupert Hart-Davis and Peggy Ashcroft . Hart-Davis had taken a shine to Johnson, but his attentions soon turned to his future wife, Ashcroft; he broke the news to Celia following a matinee. When Celia showed some signs of stress, Rupert introduced her to his friend, the brother of Ian Fleming. Peter Fleming, the future author of Brazilian Adventure (1933), was at that time assistant literary editor of The Spectator.

Johnson then triumphed in two back-to-back flops. In the one-week run of George Dunning Gribble's The Artist and the Shadow in the West End, she had a small part in the last act. Critics were of the opinion that, though she could not save the play, she was a smashing success. The second failure was Debonair, despite raves for Johnson. Within days, she was joining the prestigious West End production of H.M. Harwood and R. Gore-Brown's Cynara, starring Gladys Cooper and Sir Gerald du Maurier. Johnson had gone from an unknown to someone so well known that one paper headed its review: "Celia Johnson Again." Wrote Kate Fleming:

These three undistinguished plays … all showed aspects of Celia's acting that were to characterise her work throughout her career—a freshness (almost overpowering then), a lack of sentimentality, an absence of technical trickiness, a feeling for comedy, intelligence, sensitivity, and a weakness in the voice; this last was always to be a limitation.

Never comfortable in period costume, Johnson rarely took on the classics during the 1930s, preferring the modern plays and light comedies of the West End. Work came steadily. She played Elizabeth in Somerset Maugham's The Circle with Nigel Playfair and Athene Seyler (1931), and replaced Madeleine Carroll in After All, which also featured Lilian Braithwaite . Then Johnson sailed for New York to play Ophelia to Raymond Massey's Hamlet (1931). The actors knew they were in trouble when they arrived in New York and producer Norman Bel Geddes met them at the ship with: "I've altered the script a bit." Bel Geddes, having decided that Hamlet was a play of action, had cut much of the hero's indecision. The critics were merciless, but Johnson escaped with more plaudits. Even so, that was her last appearance on Broadway.

Back in England, Johnson opened in Merton Hodge's The Wind and the Rain with Robert Harris as co-star on October 18, 1933. The play ran for two years. "This actress… has brilliantly mastered the art of being adorable on the lines of intelligent sensibility instead of by exploiting glucose charm," wrote Ivor Brown. "It is one of the chief and most commendable differences between the Edwardian theater and our own that the 'ingénue' parts now demand an aspect of intelligence instead of being vehicles for the Lack-wit Lovelies who 'dress' a part rather than acting it." In February 1936, Celia scored one of her greatest triumphs as Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen 's Pride and Prejudice at the St. James's Theatre, adapted by Helen Jerome . After a long run, she opened, along with Greer Garson , in Old Music by Keith Winter in 1937.

Though domestically inept, Johnson had married Peter Fleming on December 10, 1935. Both were happy, successful, and enjoyed their friends in their little flat in More's Gardens, overlooking the Thames, Chelsea. Earlier that year, as a journalist for the Times, Peter had joined up with travel writer Ella Maillart as they traveled through Tibet and had written the book News from Tartary about the experience.

In February 1938, he was sent by The Times as war correspondent to travel the Burma Road and report on the Sino-Japanese War. Celia went with him. By the time they returned to London at the end of July, she was pregnant. The couple built a spacious brick house, Merrimoles, on his inherited estate in Nettlebed, South Oxfordshire, five miles from Henley-on-Thames. Though Celia hated it, wrote Kate Fleming, "towards the end of her life, when the house in its isolated position was less than ideal for her, nothing would induce her to move from it." In 1940, with Britain at war with Germany, they moved into Merrimoles, along with the family of Peter's other brother, Michael Fleming, who was killed in France. Johnson was now in charge of "a largish, unfinished house… [and] a substantial household, as well as a sizeable agricultural estate, with farm workers, foresters, tenants and a gamekeeper," writes Fleming. "Organisation, administration and domestic responsibilities were not where her talents lay.… The next five years were for her, as they were for everybody in Britain, emotionally and physically hard."

In 1940, when Peggy Ashcroft took sick with measles, Johnson replaced her as Cecily Cardew in the celebrated production of The Importance of Being Earnest, with Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell, Margaret Rutherford as Miss Prism, and direction by Sir John Gielgud. Johnson then played Mrs. de Winter while Rutherford played the sinister housekeeper Mrs. Danvers in Daphne du Maurier 's adaption of her book Rebecca, which opened at the Queen's Theatre, April 5, 1940. The curtain went up early so that audiences could get home before the blackout. If an air-raid alert was still in effect when the curtain came down, the cast continued to entertain. A popular diversion from the war, Rebecca was closed by a bomb shortly after midnight on September 7, 1940—the theater would not reopen until 1959.

In the next five years, Johnson stayed close to home. Because of household responsibilities, she could not commit to the open-end run of a play; instead, she did radio and film with known schedules. In 1941, she made a short film, A Letter from Home, directed by Carol Reed, for the Ministry of Information. Peter was wounded while on a mission to organize resistance in Greece when a German bombed his boat. Soon after, he was sent off to India.

Next, Noel Coward cast Johnson as his wife in a film he was preparing about the navy. Based on the sinking of the HMS Kelly, it would later be titled In Which We Serve. There were firsts all round: it was the first full-length film for her and for actor Richard Attenborough, the first movie directed by Coward, and the first co-directed by David Lean. Johnson wrote to Peter:

My second day's filming consisted of being made up at 8:30 and being used at 6:30. It wasn't improved by seeing the rushes in which I looked like a soused herring and didn't register anything at all. I don't look nearly as human as I did in the M[inistry] of I[nformation] film and heavens knows I wasn't Lana Turner in that. I don't think I am going to be the V. Leigh of Nettlebed.

As usual, the critics disagreed.

Johnson joined the Henley branch of the Women's Auxiliary Police Corps (WAPC), delivering dispatches and working the switchboard, when available, in the Henley police station. She boasted that she could say, "'Henley Police and Hold the Line' with exactly the right air of boredom and slight malice that all telephone girls affect." The woman who became a film star as the typical English housewife finally learned to cook, dealt with gas rations, made camouflage nets, plowed the acreage on a tractor, and entertained visiting military. She wrote her husband on May 31, 1942: "Tish and I are rather exhausted as we have had a Czech officer for the weekend. He complained that the fault of our race was that of being too polite to our enemies but the strain of being polite to our Allies was so severe that I have none left for even an Italian."

In autumn 1942, In Which We Serve was released and took its place in the annals of movie making. Though meant to be a war-propaganda film to boost the morale of the British throughout the world, the movie worked as a story due to the inordinate amount of talent involved. Despite its jingoistic passages, it had a huge impact. One tank driver wrote Celia that he was naming his tank after her. She was thrilled and slightly amused. "I suspect though that he writes similar ones to all film stars and that his tank at the moment is called Greer." In 1943, she filmed Dodie Smith 's Dear Octopus and the generally praised This Happy Breed by Noel Coward. Johnson was rarely happy with what she saw on screen, especially her appearance. As usual, her reviews were upbeat.

The household at Merrimoles took on another family in 1944 when her sister Pam and children returned from India minus a husband who was missing in the war. There were now 15 people in the household. As for her career, Johnson was in great demand, especially by Coward, who sent her a sketch for a new film. Intrigued by it, she was eager to work with the same team: Lean, Coward, and Ronnie Neame behind the camera. Coward's sketch would expand into Brief Encounter, a film about a suburban housewife who continually crosses paths with a married doctor in a railway station—friendship turns to love, then loss. Newcomer Trevor Howard was signed to play the doctor. In January 1945, shooting began at a railway station at Carnforth in Lancashire, in northwest England, far enough away from London to avoid the bombs. Johnson enjoyed being on location and with the tight-knit group. Even so, she still had the jitters before each take, and the film's narration presented acting problems. "You need to be a star of the silent screen really," said Johnson, "because there's such a lot of stuff with commentary over it—it's terribly difficult to do." Celia thought she owed everything to her shortsightedness: "I take off my glasses to do a scene, and I don't see all those terrifying men in sweaters standing about with their hands in their pockets.… It's a great advantage."

On May 8, V-E (Victory in Europe) day, she saw a rough cut: "Some bits come off very well and some bits are not so good. But what I can't decide is whether the story itself is strong enough. I'm not bad in some bits, in some I'm rotten." That June, she warned her husband, home on leave and about to see an unfinished version of the film without a soundtrack, that he would be seeing it without Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #1 "swishing through it. Perhaps you can hum it to yourself while watching it."

When Brief Encounter premiered that October, no one involved with the film had any idea what to expect from the viewing public. Though it won the Critics' Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1946, it was the Americans who were bowled over; Johnson was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress, Lean for Best Director. "The British were the last to appreciate Brief Encounter," wrote Kate Fleming, "but over the years they have come to love it and it has become one of the classics of British cinema." David Lean has long given Johnson credit for the success of the film. Fleming continues:

There is a moment when she had to begin to tell lies… she looks at herself in the mirror, and it is clear from that look that she has never told a lie before in her life—a simple point but so difficult to express. On another occasion she decides, just as the train that she is on is pulling out of the station, to keep an assignation with Dr Harvey (Trevor Howard)…; she distractedly jumps from the train, runs down the platform, stops, collects herself, starts walking and then can't stop herself from breaking into a run.… David Lean thought it was marvellous; by rushing, trying to walk and starting to run again, she so clearly showed all her fears, hopes, excitement and worries. He congratulated her and asked, "Why did you do that?"… She just said, "Well, she would, wouldn't she?"

Meanwhile, Peter had returned home, and the families in the extended household began to move out. Kate was born on May 24, 1946. A year later, Celia was 40 when Lucy was born on May 15, 1947. Soon after, Johnson was invited to join the Old Vic, starting with G.B. Shaw's St. Joan with Alec Guinness as the dauphin. Most felt her performance "did not quite come off." Her voice did not have enough authority, and, though her performance had clarity, the soldier in Joan of Arc was missing.

Torn between work and home, filled with guilt when away from her children—as well as the labradors, cats, ponies, owls, fox cubs, and the gray squirrel, who had a predilection for hoarding chocolates—Johnson continued to avoid prolonged engagements. Her husband's life as a nomad had ended, and he was restlessly playing the role of the country gentleman. She and Peter led more separate lives then most. He was taciturn; she was stiff upper lip. There were strains on the marriage.

Johnson made another film for Coward in 1949, The Astonished Heart, a sizeable failure which also starred Margaret Leighton . Two more films followed: the unmemorable I Believe in You and, again with Leighton, The Holly and the Ivy, now a Christmas television staple. In order to remain home, Johnson was turning down many parts, especially for television, and, after shooting two more films in the 1950s, she would not do another for 11 years.

With her children in school, she began to be drawn back into theater. Major theatrical producer Binkie Beaumont despaired of her commitment: "Oh, Celia will only do it if she wants a pair of new curtains." In 1952, she replaced Ashcroft in Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea. The play and her performance were a succès d'estime. She next appeared in It's Never Too Late by Felicity Douglas at the Westminster in 1954 and took on the part of Sheila Broadbent in William Douglas-Home's comedy The Reluctant Debutante in 1955, playing actress Anna Massey 's mother. It was Celia who recommended Jack Merivale for the young man. "Is he a good actor," asked the producer. "I wouldn't know about that," she replied, "but he can drop me every night on Henley Bridge on his way home." She had a gift for comedy and in this vehicle could show it off; she stayed for nine months. During rehearsals, the inexperienced Anna Massey was having trouble with the part and was about to be dropped. Celia and character actress Ambrosine Philpotts championed the girl, and Massey went on to a distinguished career. In time, Johnson took many young actresses under her wing while performing with them.

With the coming of the British theatrical revolution in 1956, led by John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, the theatrical community was split between those who welcomed the changes and those who did not. Johnson was one who was uncomfortable with the new emphasis on working-class speech, attitudes, and anger. Often, she chose plays that belonged to the old guard. Even so, if the script and cast of a new play were good, she would bite. In June 1958, she was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire).

In 1964, Johnson took over for an ailing Diana Wynyard as Mrs. Solness in Ibsen's The Master Builder at the National, starring Sir Michael Redgrave as Solness and Maggie Smith as Hilde Wangel. Though Johnson was nervous, she was also honored. Redgrave, however, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and the opening did not go well; he was replaced six months later by Laurence Olivier, and the play found its rhythm. Of Johnson, Nicholas de Jongh wrote in the Guardian: "Her parched, wrenching performance of the woman was akin to an announcement of her unused powers. She had arrived again." In 1965, she successfully replaced Edith Evans as Judith Bliss in Noel Coward's Hay Fever at the National, with Coward directing. That year, Johnson also played Madame Ranevskaya at Chichester in Lindsay Anderson's acclaimed production of The Cherry Orchard. She had another comedic triumph in 1967 when she appeared in Alan Ayckbourn's Relatively Speaking at the Duke of York. In 1964, she played Lady Nelson in an adaptation of Bequest to the Nation by Rattigan for television. Then, in 1968, Maggie Smith requested Johnson for the headmistress Miss Mackay in the film version of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. So, after a long absence, Johnson returned to the screen.

In July 1971, returning with her sister from a trip to the Greek islands, Johnson was called to the front of the plane and handed a message from a brother-in-law: "Dear Celia, Bad news I fear. Poor Peter dropped dead out shooting today. Absolutely no pain. Making all arrangements." Peter had died of a heart attack at 64. They had been married for 35 years.

In October 1972, with her habit of replacing Ashcroft, Johnson stepped into the part of Lady Boothroyde in Lloyd George Knew My Father by William Douglas-Home, opposite Sir Ralph Richardson. It was a welcome diversion after the death of Peter. On television, in 1973, she appeared in Elizabeth Taylor 's "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont" for which she won Best Actress at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards. Johnson then took on two more by Douglas-Home, in theater, The Dame of Sark (1974), and on television, "The Kingfisher" (1977).

In September 1979, Celia Johnson was abruptly stricken with an odd illness, collapsing for ten days. Abruptly better, she flew to Simla, India, to film Paul Scott's Staying On with Trevor Howard in March 1980. That December, she was again nominated for BAFTA's Best Actress. In 1981, while on a promotional tour in America, she was informed she had been made the ninth theatrical Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire since World War II.

In 1982, during the Falkland War, Celia was set to open in Angela Huth 's The Understanding with Ralph Richardson at the Strand, Shaftsbury Ave, on April 27. On her Sunday off before opening, she had a stroke while playing bridge at Merrimoles with friends. Two hours later, she was dead. "We can get back the Falklands. We can never replace Celia Johnson," wrote Jean Rook in the Daily Express. Celia Johnson once told her son, after a couple of glasses of sherry and 52 years in the theater, "I think I've at last got the hang of it."