Helen Fairweather

A pretty small-town dancer, Helen Fairweather landed in Hollywood during the silents, tried to make a career, didn’t yell, then tried a few years later, during the sound period. Sadly, she had no luck and with little long term potential, she gave up performing to become a housewife. Let’s learn more about her!

EARLY LIFE

Helen Fern Fairweather was born on October 22, 1908, in Kansas City, Missouri, to John Fairweather and Jeanne Doner. She was their only child. Her father was an undertaker (making Helen the undertaker’s daughter!).

The family moved to Hollywood from Kansas city when Helen was about 14 years old. She started to attend Hollywood High school. Helen was a gifted child that loved dancing, and pretty soon it as clear that she could become a pro if she went down that road. However, Helen quietly went to high school and didn’t think too much of it, until one peculiar moment.

Here is how Helen ended up in the chorus line:

“I was still in Hollywood High when a girl friend obtained a job in the chorus of “Patsy.” Enviously I listened to her enthusiastic accounts of rehearsals and the thrill of being in a show. One day, when the comedy had been in rehearsal for a week she came rushing in and crabbed me out of my Latin class to tell me that one of the girls had dropped out and that there was a vacancy and that she had arranged a tryout for me. It took high-pressure salesmanship to convince my mother that it was the right thing to do, but she finally gave her consent, thinking of course I didn’t stand a chance. “My girl friend, having been in the chorus for fully a week, thought she was well up in the ways of the world and convinced me that I would have to look like a chorus girl to get the job, I was only 16 and then had never used rouge or lipstick. This was a disadvantage, my friend decided, and painted me up within an inch of my life. Timidly I appeared before Dave Bennett in my bathing suit, surrounded by fifty experienced dancers who watched me with an insolent ‘show us’ attitude. I went into my dance and seemingly pleased Dave Bennett, but on the side he advised me to ‘get rid of that mess on your face’ so he could see what I looked like!'”

A movie scout noticed Helen while she was in the chorus line, and thus her career started!

CAREER

Pretty slim pickings here sadly. Two silent and two sound movies, most of them not that remembered today, two even lost. it is very probable that Helen appeared in many more movies, but her participation was just not documented and the records are probably lost for prosperity.

Helen made her movie debut, with much publicity, in The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1927), a Trojan war romp, taken from the perspective of the alluring Helen and her licit love affair with Paris. This is a movie that survived only in fragments, and unless you know somebody who can screen it for you, it’s impossible to see. What a shame, it does seem like a over-the-top, Arc Deco acts as antiquity piece of work which one could find in the roaring twenties. Maria Corda plays Helen, and she seems like a good fit for the legendary seductress, and Paris is played by Ricardo Cortez, an actor I like very much and am sad is not better remembered today. Helen plays the goddess Athena. Her next silent movie was Vamping Venus, a wacky comedy set in ancient Greece again (plot: A present-day Irish American politician is vaulted into ancient Greece after receiving a bump on the head.).

Helen’s first documented sound movie was White Shoulders,a completely forgotten Mary Astor precode, again with the alluring Ricardo Cortez. The movie is considered lost, but it has plenty of precode sass, with bigamy, rape, gold digging and a plethora of other topics touched upon. Made from a Rex Beach story, it follows Mary Astor playing a young girl trying to make it in the city, who become a point of intense infatuation by a wacky millionaire, played by Tim Holt. She married him for the money, then falls for a gigolo, played by Cortez. And the drama starts! The movie was not a hit when first screened, and sadly fell into total obscurity.

Helen’s last movie was Stand Up and Cheer!, which is less of a movie and more of an excuse to put one variety act after another. Avoid if you don’t like your movies without a plausible plot. of course, as always with art, if depends if you like these sort of things – I prefer my films with more story and characterizations. But there are plenty of good actors (Warren Baxter, James Dunn, Madge Evans, Shirley Temple) and nice music to enjoy, and scantly clad ladies, oh my!

That’s it from Helen!

PRIVATE LIFE

At her peak, Helen was blond, 5 feet 3 inches high, weighed 113 pounds, and smiled easily. Helen got some minor publicity early in her career, mostly for being the undertaker’s daughter, and secondly since she claimed she did not have a dance lesson in her life. Here is a short excerpt:

Helen Fairweather is a fair example of the fact that dancing lessons are not essential to a dancer! She had never had a dancing lesson in her life when she landed her first job dancing in the chorus of “Patsy” and has never had one since. Nevertheless, she has appeared in countless musical shows and revues both here and in New York, always as a dancer. “Ever since I was a child I wanted to dance and practiced for hours by myself, imitating other dancers,” explains Miss Fairweather.

As for her married life, it was pretty low-key and stable, Helen met and married a New York accountant, Arthur Franklin, in 1933 in New Jersey. Franklin was born on March 18, 1897, in New York City, to George Franklin and Pauline Samuels, the third of four children. He grew up in New York, served in the US army during WW1, and worked as a time clerk after his discharge.

The couple lived in Los Angeles for a short time after their marriage, where Helen tried to revive her career, but without such success. Any plan for cinematic advancement was put on permanent hold after their daughter, Pauline Elsie, was born on 13 September 1935. The family moved to New York in about 1938. Franklin started to work as a logistics/financial part of the 1939 world fair, and continued working for them until the fair closed in 1940. Here is a short summary of the Fair:

The 1939–40 New York World’s Fair was a world’s fair held at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York, United States. It was the second-most expensive American world’s fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis’s Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Many countries around the world participated in it, and over 44 million people attended its exhibits in two seasons.^[2] It was the first exposition to be based on the future, with an opening slogan of “Dawn of a New Day”, and it allowed all visitors to take a look at “the world of tomorrow”.

The family returned to living in Los Angeles in the 1940s. Arthur started to work in the music department of Paramount studios as a supervisor. Helen was back in the Tinsel town milleau, and was socially active with her husband in the musical circles.

Arthur died on December 22, 1958 from heart disease. Helen remarried to Sidney R. Clare in 1960. Clare, born on August 15, 1891, in Kaunas, Lithuania, was a talented, multi-disciplinary man. He immigrated to the US in the 1900s, lived in New York, was educated in the School of Commerce, and worked in vaudeville as an director/writer/actor/singer/composer for several years before landing in Hollywood and working in movies as a composer. Some of his hit songs were  “On the Good Ship Lollipop”, “Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me”, “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone”, “Then I’ll Be Happy”. He was married once before, to Myrtle Hammerstad. Helen and Sidney met after she and her late husband returned to Los Angeles, and were friends for a long time before becoming a couple. They enjoyed their retirement in the vibrant California climate.

Clare died on August 29, 1972 in Los Angeles. Helen did not remarry, and moved to a lovely home in Carmichael at some point in the 1980s. Sadly, Helen’s daughter Pauline died in 1987.

Helen Franklin Clare died on February 9, 2000, in Carmichael, California.