Helen Troy (Who’s Who at MGM, 1937) 🇺🇸
Helen Troy got her first part in pictures because a director heard her voice on the radio and liked it. Though she is under contract to M-G-M, she is still appearing weekly on Eddie Cantor’s radio program.
Helen was born in San Francisco on December 22. She lived in the Bay City until she was eight, and then the family moved to Traverse City, Michigan. She was educated at the St. Francis Convent in Traverse City, and later attended a musical college.
Was Theatre Organist
She got a job as a theatre organist in Detroit, but with the advent of sound pictures she decided on a radio career. She became a studio accompanist in San Francisco. Later she played Sally on the Cecil and Sally program for six years. At the present time she is the telephone operator on the Eddie Cantor hour.
Her first picture was “Song and Dance Man,” followed by “Human Cargo” and Born to Dance. She has always played switchboard operators and wants a chance to do other types of roles.
Her favorite form of exercise is badminton or ping-pong, and she also enjoys dancing. Her hobby is collecting miniature penguins, of which she has more than 300. She reads all the new books, especially autobiographies. On her vacations she goes to the mountains and “roughs it.”
Fond of Chinese Food
She is married to Dr. Alton E. Horton and has two children — a boy, Troy, aged 13, and Jane, aged 10. Her greatest fear is not to be independent in her old age. She has always had a secret ambition to operate a beauty parlor. Her favorite pets are Cocker spaniels. She goes to bed early, but doesn’t sleep well, which may be caused by the fact that she is very fond of Chinese food. Although her friends are not in the acting profession, she likes people who admire her for what she is, rather than because she is in the public eye. She believes that sincerity is the most desirable quality in a friend.
Helen is five feet three and one-half inches tall, weighs 115 pounds, has blonde hair and blue eyes.
Born to Dance brought contracts to three players who had “sixty second” roles. Helen was one of these, Reginald Gardiner and Barnett Parker being the other two to be signed by M-G-M.
Came from Radio
A radio program caused her to become a screen player. Allan Dwan caught her Cecil and Sally act from San Francisco and signed her for a role in “Song and Dance Man.” Since then she has divided her time between radio, stage and screen.
She usually writes her own dialogue and gets ideas by mingling among the types of people she is portraying. Once she worked for a week as a telephone operator to get some new ideas for a radio program. Claims that the funniest things in life are truth, not fiction.
She has at least a dozen changes of voice and takes great pleasure in kidding her friends when they call her on the telephone. Most of them are wise to the trick, so now they write or telegraph. Most of her fan mail comes from telephone girls.
Since signing her contract as a result of Born to Dance, Miss Troy has appeared in “Between Two Women,” Broadway Melody of 1938, and “Big City.”
Miss Troy is known aptly as Say More Say more, on the Cantor radio program.
Collection: Who’s Who at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1937)