Helen Mack

Helen Mack (born Helen McDougall; November 13, 1913 – August 13, 1986) was an American actress. She started her career as a child actress in silent films, moving to Broadway plays and touring one of the vaudeville circuits. Her greater success as an actress was as a leading lady in the 1930s. She made the transition to performing on radio and then into writing, directing, and producing shows during the Golden Age of Radio. She later wrote for Broadway, stage and television. Her career spanned the infancy of the motion picture industry, the beginnings of Broadway, the final days of vaudeville, the transition to sound movies, the Golden Age of Radio, and the rise of television.
Youth and stage
Mack was born in Rock Island, Illinois, the daughter of William George McDougall, a barber, and Regina (née Lenzer) McDougall, who had a repressed desire to become an actress. She attended the Professional Children's School of New York City. Her friend Vera Gordon helped her along as a child actress. She appeared on Broadway and in vaudeville and debuted in films at age 10 in 1925. Her stage debut was in The Idle Inn with Jacob Benami. She performed with Roland Young in The Idle Inn and toured America with William Hodge in Straight Through The Door.
Film actress
Mack began her film career, first billed as Helen Macks, at the age of 10 in the 1923 silent Success, featuring Brandon Tynan, Naomi Childers and Mary Astor. In Zaza, Mack worked with Gloria Swanson. She had a small role in D.W. Griffith's last film The Struggle (1931).
Her Fox Film screen test came in March 1931, and within three weeks she was on the studio lot. She made her debut as a leading lady opposite Victor McLaglen in While Paris Sleeps (1932) and was cast with John Boles in his initial Fox Film venture Scotch Valley. She played in several westerns in the early 1930s, including Fargo Express (1933) with Ken Maynard and The California Trail with Buck Jones.
Before the film Sweepings (1933), Mack's career had declined for three years. Three of her productions failed. One reason was that she was usually a character star, and her employers had used her as an ingenue. RKO Radio Pictures Inc. offered her a second chance as Mamie Donahue in Sweepings.
She may be best remembered for the 1933 movie sequel The Son of Kong, as Harold Lloyd's sister in The Milky Way (1936), and as suicidal Molly Malloy in the screwball crime comedy His Girl Friday (1940) with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. She also played an important role as Tanya in Merian C. Cooper's production of H. Rider Haggard's She (1935). Her other roles included the bank-robbing ingenue opposite Richard Cromwell and Lionel Atwill in 1937's The Wrong Road for RKO.
Later career
In the early 1940s, Mack performed in the radio series Myrt and Marge, replacing actress Donna Damerel after Damerel's sudden death in childbirth. She was chosen from more than 200 applicants for the role.
During that decade and the next, Mack also worked as a producer and director of radio programs, including such series as Richard Diamond, Private Detective; The Saint; and Meet Corliss Archer. She also co-wrote A Date with Judy with Aleen Leslie, and was its producer-director, one of the few women to fill that role in network radio. Her friend Leslie originally wanted Mack to play the title role, but they decided she was too old for the high-school-girl part when the series begain in 1941. As TV displaced radio, Mack continued to write plays and TV episodes until her death.
In 1949, she collaborated with Roger Price in writing the children's record Gossamer Wump, narrated by Frank Morgan and released by Capitol Records.
Private life
Mack married lawyer Charles Irwin in San Francisco in February 1935,
Mack died from cancer at the home of her friend Aleen Leslie in Beverly Hills on August 13, 1986.
Filmography
Success (1923) as Ruth
Zaza (1923) as Lucille Dufresne (uncredited)
Under the Red Robe (1923) (uncredited)
Grit (1924) (uncredited)
Pied Piper Malone (1924) as Child
The Struggle (1931) as A catty girl
The Silent Witness (1932) as Sylvia Pierce
While Paris Sleeps (1932) as Manon Cortaud
Sweepings (1933) as Mamie Donahue
The California Trail (1933) as Delores Ramirez
Melody Cruise (1933) as Laurie Marlowe
Blind Adventure (1933) as Rose Thorne
Christopher Bean (1933) as Susan Haggett
Fargo Express (1933) as Helen Clark
Son of Kong (1933) as Hilda Petersen
All of Me (1934) as Eve Haron
Kiss And Make Up (1934) as Anne
You Belong to Me (1934) as Florette Faxon
The Lemon Drop Kid (1934) as Alice Deering
College Rhythm (1934) as June Cort
Captain Hurricane (1935) as Susan "Matey" Ann
Four Hours to Kill! (1935) as Helen
She (1935) as Tanya Dugmore
The Return of Peter Grimm (1935) as Catherine
The Milky Way (1936) as Mae Sullivan
A Doctor's Diary (1937) as Nurse (uncredited)
I Promise to Pay (1937) as Mary Lang
You Can't Buy Luck (1937) as Betty McKay
The Last Train from Madrid (1937) as Lola
Fit for a King (1937) as Jane Hamilton / Princess Helen
The Wrong Road (1937) as Ruth Holden
King of the Newsboys (1938) as Mary Ellen Stephens
I Stand Accused (1938) as Alison Cooper
Secrets of a Nurse (1938) as Katherine MacDonald
Gambling Ship (1938) as Mollie Riley
Mystery of the White Room (1939) as Carole Dale
Mickey the Kid (1939) as Telephone Operator (uncredited)
Calling All Marines (1939) as Judy Fox
His Girl Friday (1940) as Mollie Malloy
Girls of the Road (1940) as Mickey
Power Dive (1941) as Betty Coles
And Now Tomorrow (1944) as Angelletta Gallo
Strange Holiday (1945) as Miss Sims, Secretary
Divorce (1945) as Martha Phillips
References
Sources
New York Times, "The Screen", July 10, 1923, Page 22.
Los Angeles Times, "New Move Marks War On WAMPAS", August 24, 1931, Page A1.
Los Angeles Times, "Helen Mack Wins Boles Lead", December 22, 1931, Page A7.
Los Angeles Times, "Actress Assigned", November 8, 1932, Page 11.
Los Angeles Times, "Newcomer, Helen Mack, Conspicuous", April 2, 1933, Page A3.
Los Angeles Times, "Films' Revolting Daughters Turn Out To Be Meek Lambs", April 30, 1933, Page A7.
Los Angeles Times, "Helen Mack Chimes Ring", February 14, 1935, Page 1.
Lowell, Massachusetts Sun, "Helen Mack Born Actress", January 18, 1934, Page 42.
Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Press, "Three Debutante Stars On Way To Stardom With Fox", September 11, 1931, Page 14.
Picture Show, "Helen Mack and Her Films", August 17, 1935, Page 18.
Syracuse Herald-Journal, "Hollywood", November 2, 1939, Page 21.
External links
The Unofficial Helen Mack Tribute Site
Another Helen Mack Tribute Site
Download His Girl Friday at the Internet Archive
1913 births
1986 deaths
American child actresses
American film actresses
American silent film actresses
Vaudeville performers
20th-century American actresses
Western (genre) film actresses
Deaths from cancer in California
People from Rock Island, Illinois
Actresses from Illinois
American radio directors
Women radio directors