Frances Helm (October 14, 1923 - December 30, 2006)[1] was an American stage, film, and television actress whose performing career spanned nearly fifty years.
[1] Her father started as a bookkeeper for the railroad industry then became an accountant for the state of Virginia, moving the family to Richmond when Helm was very young.
Helm was a member of RPI's Theater Associates, which mounted productions at the school using students and the occasional visiting professional actor.
[6] A Radioman 2/C in the USN, Thomas W. Helm had kept firing an antiaircraft gun during the attack despite being severely wounded; the Navy credited him with bringing down a Japanese aircraft.
[9][6] Frances Helm also joined other volunteer actors to perform a parody of an old-fashioned melodrama, Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, at military bases in Virginia and Maryland.
[10] After graduating from RPI, Helm moved to New York City, where she took additional drama training at Columbia University while modeling in fashion shows for the Powers Agency.
[12] During late 1945 Helm signed up for a theatrical trial by fire, a six-month stint with one of the Clare Tree Major Touring Companies.
[14] Cast as "Mary Skinner", the primary love interest, Helm had a lot of publicity during the tour of the Eastern United States.
[11][15][16] The tour traveled by a large private bus with an attached trailer for sets and props, enabling it to play small towns without train service.
[fn 3][21] From June 1948 Helm appeared in summer stock on Long Island in Parlor Story, which had a short run on Broadway the year before.
From Chicago the touring company for Mister Roberts moved to Pittsburgh's Nixon Theater in September 1949, with John Forsythe taking over the titular role and Jackie Cooper playing "Ensign Pulver".
[38] Her 1952 performing year having been front-loaded with TV work during the first quarter, Helm did four weekly summer stock plays in Bangor, Maine during June, then one more Television Playhouse episode in November.
Discovering in December 1954 that she had been secretly divorced by her husband five months earlier, Helm was forced to take whatever performing work she could find.
Credited with 246 episodes during calendar year 1955, the only reliable reference date is a newspaper photo from July 17, 1955, showing her, Sue Randall, and Flora Campbell wearing shorts in Central Park while being rehearsed by director Herb Kenwith.
[46] It was certainly over by early November 1955, when Helm did a series of plays at the Paper Mill Playhouse for producer Frank Carrington and an episode of Robert Montgomery Presents.
[47][48][49] Whatever the dates were, it was Helm's longest recurring television role, and a measure of her determination to remain on the East Coast so long as it was professionally possible.
She made an episode of Matinee Theater in April 1956 that producer Aubrey Schenck saw; he cast her in the film Revolt at Fort Laramie as a result.
[50] After two more episodes of Matinee Theater, she returned to New York to take over Bethel Leslie's role of "Rachel Brown" in the original Broadway production of Inherit the Wind.
[45] She spent late spring and summer of 1959 in a center staged road company production of Look Homeward, Angel, playing engagements in Miami, Philadelphia, and San Diego.
[63] As a contrast, a columnist mentioned that while performing the play at nights, Helm went to the Warner Brothers Studio to make an episode of 77 Sunset Strip during the day.
Later that year, Helm temporarily took over the role of "Nancy Pollock" on The Edge of Night when actress Ann Flood took three months maternity leave.
During 1976 Helm did an episode of Kojak then she and Danny Aiello starred in a Broadway flop called Wheelbarrow Closers, which lasted for only 7 previews and 8 performances.
[77] As her stage career wound down, Helm continued doing screen work, making an episode of an obscure TV series and the film A Little Sex in 1982.