Madame Helene — She Feeds the Stars (1924) 🇺🇸

“Meet me at Madame Helene’s for luncheon!” is one of Hollywood’s favorite expressions, for, among all the tea-rooms and cafés Madame Helene’s seems one of the most popular.

From table to table, greeting friends — more a hostess offering a charming hospitality than the manager of a restaurant — is a tall, dark-haired Frenchwoman.

A rather interesting history, Madame Helene’s. Her youth was spent on the Continent. She speaks quite casually of a nine-months trip up the Nile, of a sojourn along the Amazon, of meeting many illustrious personages.

Then came the lure of the stage. She came to America and for six years she appeared as Ruth Helene Langford [Ruth Helen Langford?] in plays with Conway Tearle, Milton Sills, Margaret Anglin, and William Faversham. Friends of her more glamorous yesterdays say that she was for a time the toast of New York.

But she quit the stage. She became engaged to a wealthy oil man whom she had met in Egypt. Together they had adopted ten war orphans and the future looked rosy. But her fiancé was killed in an accident and, shortly after, an unwise business investment made havoc of her fortune. Placing her war orphans in homes through the Red Cross, on one of those inexplicable impulses, she set out for China and adventure.

Reaching Los Angeles, there was some delay over passports and, equally on impulse, she decided to stay and open a tea room. So now her artistic place has become a mecca.

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Photo by: Woodbury

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, August 1924