Helen Twelvetrees — A Lady in Luck (1932) 🇺🇸

May 24, 2023

To be born beautiful and lucky is a great deal, but add perseverance and hard work, and what have you? Well, look at Helen Twelvetrees.

by Alma Talley

Whoever started the legend that Helen Twelvetrees looks like Lillian Gish can go right out in the garden and eat words. He can, for all of me, be the word-eating champion.

This is all by way of saying that Helen Twelvetrees looks no more like Lillian Gish than a piano looks like a piccolo, or than spinach looks like spaghetti. And, speaking of vegetables, Helen does not nibble raw carrots. Nor does she twitter. And I saw no signs of a canary in her rooms at the Ritz in New York. All I saw were vases and vases of dark-red roses, and dozens of people popping in and out, and Helen herself in a dark-green suit trimmed with galyak, with a hat to match.

The very blond star of Her Man, "Millie," and "Panama Flo" has a cute little turned-up nose — or shall I be grand and call it retrousse to prove that I know some big words? She has a little round forehead, and oh, such a baby face. But a baby who knows where she's going!

She knows where she's going and has worked hard to get there. But at all the crucial moments, lucky accidents have come along and given her several shoves — in a nice way and in the right direction. Each time work has pushed her a step ahead, luck has pushed her three steps.

That's what I call the Twelvetrees luck. That, boys and girls, is what comes of being born beautiful, and don't let your old grandmother tell you that beauty doesn't count. It counts, in Helen's case, right up into a thousand or so a week.

As pretty little Helen Jurgens, she attended the Art Students' League in New York. She had rather a nice little flair for drawing — and still has, for that matter. Once a flair, always a flair. But at that time she rather expected to do something about it.

She also had stage ambitions, but so did I, and probably so did you, but where did it get us? Nowhere at all. We didn't have the Twelvetrees luck.

Helen's first lucky accident was being born in New York, where Broadway is Broadway and there are dramatic schools. There is one such school in fact, right across the street from the art school which Helen was attending. So Helen, on a snowy day and wearing galoshes, crossed the street to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and said, pretty please, could she come to their classes?

She studied there for all of two months, maybe three. If you or I had attended that school and merely waited for stage offers, we'd probably be there yet. But not Helen — not with that face and her luck.

For of course it would happen to Helen that before she had finished even one term, Stuart Walker should come to New York and the dramatic school at the very time when she was appearing in a school play. Mr. Walker, in case you don't know, conducts stock companies in Indianapolis and other inland cities. He is always looking for new talent, and, with the Twelvetrees luck, Helen just happened to be showing her new talent at the very moment he was looking.

He invited her to join his stock company and, needless to say, he didn't have to take "No" for an answer.

All this chatter about the Twelvetrees luck is not meant to disparage her skill as an actress. In Her Man and "Millie," her performances were nothing less than magnificent. She has depth, understanding, pathos, and vast emotional power. It was inevitable that, having once embarked on a histrionic career, she should succeed. But it was not inevitable that always, at the right time, the right person should see her work. Several times it was merely her face that brought her good fortune. That is what I mean by luck.

But to go on with the story, after a season in Stuart Walker's stock company, Helen returned to New York.

Her father is Brooklyn advertising manager for a New York newspaper, so, while Helen expected to struggle like any obscure young actress, she knew she wouldn't starve.

And she didn't even have to struggle. The Twelvetrees luck was with her!

She just happened to go with an actor friend who was looking for a job with Horace Liveright, then producing An American Tragedy on the stage. I repeat, she just happened to go. But the moment she reached the producer's office was just the moment when he was looking for a Sondra for the road company of the show.

She sat quietly in the waiting room, doing just that — waiting for her friend to finish his interview. They started downstairs after leaving the office. An office boy came panting after them.

"Hey, you!" he called to Helen, rudely perhaps, but she knew what he meant. "Mr. Liveright wants to see you."

Mr. Liveright had seen her as she was leaving the outer office, and one look led to another, as it would with Helen the lookee. He hadn't even seen her work. It was just Helen's luck that she was born beautiful.

In that interview with Mr. Liveright, Helen's one season of stock turned glibly into vast stage experience. She probably didn't fool the producer about that. But he needed a Sondra, and Helen looked like Sondra. So he handed her the script of An American Tragedy and told her to read it and come back in an hour.

Around the corner in a hotel, she read the lines to herself. Back in the producer's office, she read them to Mr. Liveright. He pulled out a contract and she put her name on it, and there she was. with no struggle at all, engaged for the second lead in an important road show.

After that tour was completed, she followed the usual Broadway routine in a series of unimportant parts, advancing step by step with the help of those old teammates, Perseverance and Hard Work. But they weren't half as much help to a struggling young gal as the old Twelvetrees luck.

She was to play a small part in Elmer Gantry. But in the midst of rehearsals a man from Fox walked in. There was Helen acting away for dear life, and at once he asked her to act for Fox.

So Elmer Gantry lost Helen's services and the Fox studio acquired them.

"I played in the first Fox talkie. 'The Ghost Talks,'" said Helen. "The director thought it would be a cute characterization if I lisped. It may have been cute to him, but it was an acute crisis for me. I found that out when the picture was released and the critics all said, in effect, 'Helen Twelvetrees is a nice girl. Too bad she lisps.'

"My next picture was a film called 'Blue Skies,' an unimportant one which was shown almost nowhere and got me the same place. Then in 'Words and Music,' I played the heavy to Lois Moran — I ask you, do I look like a heavy?"

Of course she doesn't, and the big wigs at Fox didn't think she did either, when they saw the film. By that time her Fox contract was up, and they failed to hop onto her option.

"Not that I blamed them," said Helen. "I'd had a pretty bad start in pictures. So I decided to give up and go back to New York and the stage. In fact, I was leaving Hollywood the next day when I went with a friend to the studio. She was looking for work, but I wasn't. I'd had my chance and evidently I wasn't any good."

But Old Man Luck came along to play another rôle and to see that Helen played one.

She sat in front of the Pathé studio in a car, waiting for her friend. Out came an office boy. Would she please come inside?

Edmund Goulding had seen her from the window and would like to give her a test for "The Grand Parade."

The rest is history. Luck was determined to push her ahead, with, I might add, great assistance from Helen. It was sheer luck that Edmund Goulding should see her — but sheer ability which later got her a Pathé contract.

Ability, luck, and looks — an unbeatable combination. That's what Helen has. For behind the old Twelvetrees luck is the well-known Twelvetrees beauty that makes you look at her twice.

Oh, yes, beauty may be only skin deep. But that, boys and girls, is quite deep enough to swim in — provided you know how to swim.