Helen Westcott

[Sam Spade]

Helen Westcott
Born: Myrthas Helen Hickman on January 1, 1928 in Los Angeles, California, USA
Died: March 17, 1998 (age 70) in Edmonds, Washington, USA

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0922505/


Studs Lonigan (1960)


[Mod Edit- removed dead link]

[johnbear]

found these

[The Wolf Man]

[johnbear]

[SanteeFats]

[Findcandor]

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I have completed a detailed post for the Joanna Moore thread, and one of the references was for a horror movie she appeared in. While going through the film to collect the frames, this very pretty woman appeared, and I wondered if I should highlight her for a VEF post. I was expecting to go to the appropriate "Lesser Known" thread, but was I shocked to see she had her own thread! (Granted, an extremely modest thread, but a thread nevertheless. She came across as a nobody. How does that work?)



As it turned out, Helen Westcott was far from a nobody. Her IMDb page informs that she got started as a kid actress in 1934 (when she was six, although all her kiddie roles went uncredited). Then she kept going, amassing a very impressive line-up of film and TV roles, especially after she turned twenty years of age in 1948. For example, she was Gregory Peck's wife in the well-known film, The Gunfighter (1950).



Another known film she appeared in was Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953), with Boris Karloff. (Where Dr. Jekyll was stupidly made to be happy over the crimes committed by his alter ego.)



Before getting to the horror movie, I see in the same year of 1958, Helen appeared in another horror enterprise, what has been described as a "TV movie" called Tales of Frankenstein. It sounds like a winner with the appealing Anton Diffring cast as Baron Von Frankenstein, and Don Megowan was the monster. Seems like Hammer Studios had a hand in this production, once-Universal Studios' Curt Siodmak directed, and the half-hour show was an unsold pilot for a TV series. Helen played the part of a desperate wife with a dying husband who begs Frankenstein for help with his life and death expertise, but it seems the baron may have had other ideas.





In 1958's Monster on the Campus, Helen played a nurse who seems to have a "thing" going on with a university professor played by Arthur Franz, even though he's engaged. Little does she know he got infected, and not feeling well, he asks her to drive him home (she's happy to play nursemaid). Then he is transformed to one violent Neanderthal, and the pretty lady is in for it.



When she is found hanging from a tree (her death takes place offscreen), her top is ripped a little (what kind of a monster wouldn't have ripped off her entire top, for God's sake?). I was fascinated by this review from a horror film aficionado, who must have reached a point where few scenes could faze him. (To make the link work, please combine "blog" and "spot" into one word and substitute for "INSERT" from the URL.) He wrote, "I've always found the reveal of the dead Molly Riordan to be one of the most disturbing images in American horror movie history."



Helen's pop was actor Gordon Westcott, seen below with James Cagney from 1933's Footlight Parade. In the second photo, he was recovering from an accident. The apparently accident-prone guy was killed while playing polo (much as how Christopher Reeve's life was turned upside-down after he fell from a horse, but at least Reeve had some life to live), and at the tender age of thirty-one.




Helen kept going until it was practically over by 1970 (aged forty-two), save for a 1977 detour on a TV show. She died of cancer in 1998 at seventy and (even though she had one child from her first marriage to Steve McQueen's buddy, actor Don Gordon; I suppose we are to presume the child was no longer alive) is said to have had no known survivors.

Here's a biography for the lady, and a brief obituary is below.



















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