Ask actress Anna Lee if angels walk the earth, and you will hear the most amazing story.  "One evening two years ago I was in my bedroom, with my dog Hugo (a Great Dane) asleep on the floor, when suddenly there was a loud, pounding on the front door.  My housekeeper looked out and saw a big black man with a baseball cap on.  She though he was a burglar, so she called the police.  Then this wonderful man, Milo, an ex-Marine, broke the very heavy door down and yelled, "Get out quickly!  Your house is on fire. The fire was above the smoke alarms, so they hadn't gone off.

:"My housekeeper got me into my wheelchair and pushed me down the corridor, with Hugo running alongside, and we just got out when the whole roof caved in!  In a few seconds more and we would have been trapped inside."

"Milo liked Hugo so much that he kept him until I found a new residence.  Other people had been driving up and down my street that night, but he was the only one who stopped. Yes, I'm a great believer in angels." (Milo was publicly awarded a medal on a daytime television talk show.)

Lee has been wheelchair-bound since she underwent spinal surgery in 1982.  The disability has not hampered her career on the long-running soap "General Hospital," now in it's 37th year.  (The show has won three Emmys for OUtstanding Daytime Drama, and Lee has received three Soap Opera Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress since she joined the cast in 1978.)

"I was assured that my role as Lila Quartermaine would remain open," Lee says.  "The writers had already written the storyline that my character had been in a serious automobile accident.  Going back to work did more to speed my recovery than all the medication and treatment.  It was the best therapy."

She feels her appearance on "General Hospital" projects a positive message to the viewers.  "They see me wheeling around in a beautiful gown and they realize you can look elegant, and you can lead a happy life in a wheelchair.  I know I've helped handicapped people, because I've received many comments."

A petite, beautiful blonde, Anna Lee had been athletic all her life. She was a serious runner with Boston Marathon ambitions, had walked over the Austrian Alps with a backpack, and had ridden horseback all the way from Dublin to Killarney.  "It is merely a question of adjusting oneself to a different situation," she says. "The time I used to spend playing tennis I now use for reading or doing embroidery. There is an old saying, 'If you have a lemon, make lemonade!'"

Her charming, English-style home has been totally rebuilt, though she lost many treasures in the fire, including the manuscript for her autobiography and some videos of her films.  The three-bedroom plus den, which serves as her office, sits high on a lush, tree-lined street overlooking Beverly Hills, but it might as well be in the village of Ingtham, Kent, England, where she was born.  The blue and white kitchen, her cozy bedroom with its antique oak canopy bed and matching chairs and curtains in a Wedgwood blue country print, and the big overstuffed chintz chairs on either side of her livingroom fireplace are all typically English. But the swimming pool and huge redwood deck out back are very California.

This was the home of her third husband, the noted poet and novelist Robert Nathan (the films "Portrait of Jennie" with Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotton, and "The Bishop's Wife" with Cary Grant, Loretta Young and DAvid Niven were based on his novels), whom she married in 1970.  He was twenty years her senior, but they were coincidentally born on the same day, January 2nd.  "This was the only good marriage," says Lee.  "It was the last time for both of us.  I was his seventh wife!  He used to say his other six marriages were just rehearsals."  Still a celebrity-studded neighborhood, Lee recalls, "Our friend George Cukor lived up the hill here, and spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn had a house on the corner."

Anna Lee Nathan ws widowed in 1985, when Mr. Nathan died at age 91, and the following year she suffered another great loss.  Her first born son, John, one of five children from her two previous marriages, died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 38 in Scotland. She was sustained, she says, by her strong belief in God and a life hereafter.  "My father was an Episcopalian minister (REctor of St. Peter's Church in Ightham), and I've always been comforted by the power of prayer.  My father used to say, "Let go and let God.'"

Her four remaining children, daughters Venetia and Caroline, from her marriage to British director Robert Stevenson, and sons Stephen and Jeffrey Byron, from her second husband George Stafford, have all launched careers and lives of their own.  "Huge is my family now," says Lee. "I've always had Great Danes, but Hugo is the most loving dog I've ever had.  When my last Great Dane died I thought I would never get another.  I loved that dog so much. But my son Jeffrey found Hugo at a kennel that was overstocked; Hugo was almost two, just over being a puppy, Jeff said, 'If you don't like him, I'll take him back.'  The moment Hugo came in, he came right to me and put his head in my lap.  I didn't really want a Blue Dane. I had always had the buff or tawny. But I believe he was meant for me.  He was so lovely I couldn't resist him."  The 130-pound Hugo is now seven. "He's a wonderful guard dog, but he forgets how big he is and tries to get in my lap! Danes are so affectionate.

Anna Lee was born Joan Boniface Winnifrith. Too long for the marquee, her agent told her.  "He told me to choose the shortest name possible.  I took Anna from the Chinese actress Anna May Wong, and I always loved American history and Gen. Robert E. Lee."  Under her chosen name the 83-year-old actress had made nearly 60 films, starting in 1932.  She was a major star in England before coming to Hollywood in 1939 to co-star with Ronald Colman in "My Life with Carolyn," which was followed by the John For classic "How Green Was My Valley" with Maureen O'Hara.  "That was my favorite film, " she says, "but the best part I ever had was in "Bedlam" with Boris Karloff, a charming man who loved poetry.

Lee appeared in such films as "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir," "Fort Apache, "The Sound of Music," "The Last Hurrah," and "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" Of the latter she says, "This was quite an experience.  My dressing room ws in the middle between Bette Davis on the right and Joan Crawford on the left.  I got all the vibes that came across.  They didn't fight openly, but you could tell there was friction between them.  Joan was very gracious, but I never believed in her like I did Bette.  If Bette said something, you believed it."

In 1982, the year Lee had her back surgery, she went to Buckingham Palace to receive the M.B.E. (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) from Queen Elizabeth II.  "It was right after my surgery," Lee says, "but I did not want to meet my queen in a wheelchair.  I was on two canes, and I managed to follow the protocol, two steps back, curtsy, two steps forward, curtsy again.  The queen pinned the medal on and was concerned about how I was recovering.  It was a wonderful honor I will never forget."

Lee has been an American citizen for fifty years, but she still has dual citizenship. She so lives her homeland that in 1970 she founded the Royal Oak Foundation of California, which preserves historic and beautiful locations in her native United Kingdom. She raised enough money to buy twenty-one miles of the White Cliffs of Dover, protecting the land from developers. (The poem "The White Cliffs of Dover" was written by Robert Nathan in 1944.)  It was for such contributions that she was awarded an M.B.E.

She received a Hollywood honor in 1993, her star on the glittering Hollywood Walk of Fame. "I was a star in England, but I've never been a star in American," she says  "Now I am."

Anna Lee has lived an exceptionally rich life.  "I have been twice around the world. I have watched the sun rise over the Gizeh Pyramids in Egypt and the moon above the Taj Mahal.  I have flown across the entire continent of Africa entertaining troops during World War II  (Gen. Patton made her an honorary private in the Sixth Army.)  I have fox-hunted i England and rounded up cattle in Montana."  Her portrait by Sir William Russell-Flint once hung in the Royal Academy.  It was sold at Sotheby's for $38,000 in the 1950's.

She has outlived all but one of her famous leading men co-stars, Sir John Mills. As a survivor, she says, "Whenever I feel low in spirits or the Why me? thought creeps into my mind, I say that wonderful Serenity Prayer, 'God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.' And I always remember, "This too shall pass.' and I'm comforted."

©Angela Fox Dunn