1. Romana Barrack, better known as Carla Lane, was an English screenwriter who became known for creating or co-creating successful British sitcoms such as The Liver Birds, Butterflies, and Bread.
20 Facts About Carla Lane
1. 2.
Carla Lane was born Romana Barrack in the West Derby area of Liverpool on 5 August 1928, the daughter of Ivy Amelia and Gordon De Vince Barrack.
3.
Carla Lane's father, who was of Italian and Welsh descent, was a steward in the Merchant Navy.
4.
Carla Lane had a younger brother named Ramon and a sister named Marna.
5.
Carla Lane grew up in West Derby and Heswall, Cheshire.
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Carla Lane attended a convent school, where she won a school poetry prize at the age of seven.
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Carla Lane left school at the age of 14 and worked in nursing.
8.
Carla Lane began using the stage name "Carla Lane" because of her modesty about revealing that she was a writer.
9.
Carla Lane encouraged them to write a half-hour script, which was broadcast as a pilot episode of The Liver Birds in April 1969.
10.
Mills left his position as the BBC's head of comedy in 1972, leaving Carla Lane to take sole responsibility for writing the show's scripts the following year.
11.
In Butterflies, described as "undoubtedly her finest work", Carla Lane addressed the lead character's desires for freedom from her "decent but dull" husband.
12.
Carla Lane married Eric Arthur Hollins on 27 March 1948, and they had two sons together before divorcing in 1981.
13.
Carla Lane later claimed in her 2006 autobiography Someday I'll Find Me that she was 17 years old when she married Hollins, despite official records showing that she was 19.
14.
Carla Lane lived for many years in Broadhurst Manor, her mansion in Horsted Keynes.
15.
Carla Lane became a vegetarian and began dedicating much of her time to the care and welfare of animals in 1965.
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Carla Lane established the Animal Line trust with her friends, English actress Rita Tushingham and American photographer Linda McCartney, in 1990.
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Carla Lane converted the grounds of her mansion into a 25-acre animal sanctuary in 1993, and operated the sanctuary for 15 years before closing it due to financial constraints.
18.
Carla Lane received an OBE for services to writing in 1989, but returned it to Prime Minister Tony Blair in protest against animal cruelty in 2002.
19.
Carla Lane moved back to her native Liverpool in 2009.
20.
On 31 May 2016, at the age of 87, Carla Lane died at Stapley Nursing Home in the Mossley Hill suburb of Liverpool.