CELIA JOHNSON

I was very shocked to learn, after first putting this site on the net, that some of my friends did not know who Celia Johnson was. More shocking yet was the discovery that there is no Celia Johnson site on the web. Type in "Ingrid Bergman" or "Audrey Hepburn" to a search engine, and you'll get loads of hits. Typing "Celia Johnson" will get you next to nothing. Here, I do my bit to put this gross injustice right.

Celia is the lady who made more Englishmen go weak at the knees than any other lady of the 1940s. She worked more on the stage than in films. Though she appeared on the screen many times, she will always be remembered as Laura (interesting how often the unfaithful woman in fiction is called "Laura") in one of the greatest films of all time: Brief Encounter, playing opposite craggy Trevor Howard (see film reviews section). She was possessed of a charming accent, of a type which has now gone so out of fashion as to have disappeared altogether. She would add Y noises before certain vowels, such that "I went absolutely mad and bought a new hat" would come out as "I went eybsolutely myad and bought a new hyat". My knees weaken at the thought. She flashed her bright smile at Noel Coward in In Which We Serve, another classic; and danced pretty damned attractively in The Captain's Paradise with Alec Guinness.

Here are some more details I've found:

She was born Celia Elizabeth Johnson on 18 December 1908, at Ellerker Gate, Richmond, Surrey, England.

She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and made her first professional stage appearance in 1928. She would not appear in a film until 1942's In Which We Serve, and then only by special request of director Noel Coward; as the steadfast spouse of a British naval officer (Coward). Knighted in 1981 (according to one source, but this conflicts with the date below for Staying On), she was billed as "Dame Celia Johnson" for her last appearance in the British TV drama Staying On, where she was reunited with Trevor Howard.

She died Dame Celia Johnson, leaving the world poorer, of a stroke on 26 April 1982, at Nettlebed, England.

Screen credits, in reverse order:

All's Well That Ends Well (1980) (TV)	Countess of Rousillon
The Hostage Tower (1980) (TV)	Mrs. Wheeler
Staying On (1979) (TV)	Lucy Smalley
Les Miserables (1978) (TV)	Sister Simplice
Romeo and Juliet (1978) (TV)	Nurse
The Cherry Orchard (1971) (TV)	?
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)	Miss MacKay
The Good Companions (1957)	Miss Trant
A Kid for Two Farthings (1955)	Joanna
The Captain's Paradise (1953) (aka The Captain's Progress, aka Paradise)	Maud St. James
I Believe in You (1952)	Matty
The Holly and the Ivy (1952)	Jenny Gregory
The Astonished Heart (1949)	Barbara Faber
Brief Encounter (1946)	Laura Jesson
This Happy Breed (1944)	Ethel Gibbons
Dear Octopus (1943)(aka The Randolph Family)	Cynthia
In Which We Serve (1942)	Alix Kinross
A Letter from Home (1941)	English Mother

Okay, now for more pictures. You see here the most famous shot of her: Celia opposite Trevor, in the role of Laura, in the much-spoofed and much-copied tearful goodbye scene on a steam-covered railway platform. Next to this, is a shot of a rather younger Celia.

Laura Jesson: "It's awfully easy to lie when you know that you're trusted implicitly. So very easy, and so very degrading."

Awards

Academy Awards ("Oscars"), USA: 1947 Nominated Best Actress for Brief Encounter (1946).

British Academy Awards: 1970 Won BAFTA Film Award for best supporting actress, for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969).

Also nominated 1954 for BAFTA Film Award for best British actress for The Captain's Paradise(1953). 1953 nominated for BAFTA Film Award for best British actress for I Believe in You (1952).

National Board of Review, USA: 1947 she won NBR Award for best actress for This Happy Breed (1944).

New York Film Critics Circle Awards: 1946 Won NYFCC Award for best actress for Brief Encounter (1946).

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A fellow adorer of Our Celia, Peter Hunt, e-mailed me from Hong Kong with some more information:

Celia Johnson was married to Peter Fleming, the smarter elder brother of Ian Fleming of 007 fame. He wrote inspiring books about China. His first travel book, Brazilian Adventure is dedicated to "C". He was bonkers about her and vice versa. They had a son, called Nichol, and two daughters: Kate, who wrote Celia's biography, and Lucy, who became an actress (appearing in the popular TV series "Survivors" in the 1970s). Celia joined the police in the war. Her husband was with the Chindit 77 Brigade HQ (see Chindits section). His glider crashed on the fly-in and his party escaped overland and on a raft. He was also instrumental in getting Wavell's Other Men's Flowers published. Duff Hart-Davis's biography of Fleming was commissioned by Celia and naturally contains a lot about her.

Peter Fleming and Celia are buried next to each other in Nettlebed (he was squire of the village). His tombstone is black marble and has the following doggrel he wrote (nobody said he was a poet):

He travelled widely in far places:
  Wrote, and was widely read.
Soldiered, saw some of danger's faces.
  Came home to Nettlebed.

The squire lies here, his journeys ended.
  Dust, and a name on a stone.
Content, amid the lands he tended,
  To keep this rendezvous alone.

Celia's headstone is white granite and says simply:

Celia Elizabeth Johnson DBE.
A fine actress and beloved mother.
Wife of Peter Fleming.
Born 18 December 1908.
Died 25 [not 26th?] April 1982

There was a little bit more on the inscription below this but it was not clear because it is obscured by a pink English rose bush. How very fitting.

I have received a remarkable number of e-mails about this one page on my web-site. Bob Meade told me that he too had visited Celia's grave, and kindly sent me this photograph he took of it. Fleming's headstone is to the right of Celia's. The grave had just been tended, and the last words on the headstone can be seen. The are "at Merrimoles House, Nettlebed." Merrimoles is apparently rather grand.

Peter Hunt adds "Her toast [in the film In Which We Serve] to Michael Wilding's fiancee about the undefeated and constant competition of her husband's ship always gets my wife."

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By Crikey, what a lady.

Here's a pertinent link for you: Steve Clarke and Janet Hall's Personal Tribute to Brief Encounter