Helen Gertrude Barnes (July 5, 1895 – June 1, 1925) was an American musical comedy actress and Ziegfeld Follies Girl.

Not long after Ruth’s arrival the Barnes family relocated to Washington D.C.[1][2] She began her career at the age of nineteen as a member of the chorus line in the 1914/15 Broadway musical Watch Your Step at the New Amsterdam Theatre.

(1918/19); Rhy Mac Donald in The Five Million (1919); Myrtilla Marne in An Innocent Idea (1920); and Tillie in Ladies' Night (1920/21).

[7][8] Helen Barnes died in the early morning hours of June 1, 1925, in an automobile accident not far from Woodmont, Connecticut.

She and her boyfriend, John Griffin, a junior at Sheffield Scientific School and son of a well-to-do manufacturer from Indiana, were traveling at a high speed when their car struck a slow moving vehicle, careened into another and then rolled over a number of times killing the two almost instantly.