Lucie Mannheim

Lucie Mannheim was a German actress and singer who trained in drama in Berlin and became a busy stage performer, appearing in roles such as Nora in A Doll's House and Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. She entered films in 1923, in silent and sound pictures including Atlantik (1929). In 1931 Walter Goetze composed the operetta Die göttliche Jette for her. After her State Theatre contract ended in 1933, she left Germany for Czechoslovakia and then Britain, where Hitchcock cast her as the doomed spy Annabella Smith in The 39 Steps (1935). During the war she acted in films and broadcast for the Londoner Rundfunk. She moved back to Germany in 1948 and resumed stage and screen work, later joining The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel on television and appearing in Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965). She received West Germany's Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit and was named a Staatsschauspieler for Berlin.