Helen Twelvetrees
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| Helen Twelvetrees | |
|---|---|
| Born | Helen Marie Jurgens 25 December 1908 Brooklyn, New York |
| Died | 13 February 1958 (aged 49) Harrisburg, Pennsylvania |
| Spouse(s) | Frank Woody Clark Twelvetrees Conrad Payne |
Helen Twelvetrees (25 December 1908 - 13 February 1958) was an American stage and screen performer, considered a top female star in the early days of sound.
[edit] Life and career
Born Helen Marie Jurgens in Brooklyn, New York, a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Art, where she met her first husband, actor Clark Twelvetrees. With some stage experience, she went to Hollywood with a number of other actors to replace the silent stars that could not or would not make the transition to talkies. Her first job was with Fox and she appeared in 1929's The Ghost Talks.
Unfortunately, her career was as tumultuous as her personal life. After a mere three films with Fox, she was released from her contract. However, she was signed by Pathé shortly thereafter, and along with Constance Bennett and Ann Harding, Twelvetrees starred in several lachrymose dramas, not all of which were critically acclaimed. And when Pathé was absorbed by RKO, incrementally she found herself at various times miscast in mediocre films. With the arrival of Katharine Hepburn at RKO, Twelvetrees left the studio to freelance (Harding and Bennett would also subsequently depart).
1930's Her Man set the course of her screen career, and she would forever be asked to play suffering women fighting for the wrong men. Later she played opposite Spencer Tracy in the 1934's Now I'll Tell, (also known as When New York Sleeps) from a novel by 'Mrs. Arnold Robinson'; opposite Donald Cook in The Spanish Cape Mystery; and costarred in Paramount's A Bedtime Story with Maurice Chevalier.
She also starred in two MGM films, which induced a critic to note that she "had a gift for projecting emotional force with minimal visible effort." However, some other critics (including one from The New York Times) felt that she tended to overact in a few of her other appearances.
By 1936 to 1937, she was publicly feuding with her second husband, ex-stunt man Frank Woody, and appearing in B-Westerns and crime thrillers. In 1936 she travelled to Australia to star in the Cinesound Studios production "Thoroughbred" about the rise of a Melbourne Cup winning racehorse. The filming was done at the Cinesound Studios sound stages in Bondi Junction, Sydney. She left films in favor of summer stock in 1939 and made her Broadway debut in Jacques Deval's Boudoir in 1941. Unfortunately, the play folded after only 11 performances and she semi-retired to Harrisburg, PA, with her third husband, a military officer. Yet she occasionally continued to act and successfully essayed the role of Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire in summer stock in the early 1950s. A cast member of that production recalled that Twelvetrees "had the saddest eyes I'd ever seen" and that she seemed to be an "emotionally fragile woman."
Her sudden death in 1958 was pronounced a suicide.
[edit] Filmography
- Words and Music (1929)
- Blue Skies (1929)
- The Ghost Talks (1929)
- The Cat Creeps (1930)
- Her Man (1930)
- Swing High (1930)
- The Grand Parade (1930)
- Bad Company (1931)
- A Woman of Experience (1931)
- Millie (1931)
- The Painted Desert (1931)
- Unashamed (1932)
- Is My Face Red? (1932)
- State's Attorney (1932)
- Young Bride (1932)
- Panama Flo (1932)
- King for a Night (1933)
- My Woman (1933)
- Disgraced! (1933)
- A Bedtime Story (1933)
- Broken Hearts (1933)
- One Hour Late (1934)
- She Was a Lady (1934)
- Now I'll Tell (1934)
- All Men Are Enemies (1934)
- Frisco Waterfront (1935)
- The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935)
- She Gets Her Man (1935)
- Times Square Lady (1935)
- Thoroughbred (1936)
- Hollywood Round-Up (1937)
- Unmarried (1939)
- Persons in Hiding (1939)
