Hroine of the Month: Helen Bennett
It is amazing how some people cannot parlay their public recognition into lasting film careers. But a canny person can still use it to have a viable career, like Helen Bennett did. Miss Missouri of 1937, Bennett took acting classes and then went to New York and began a career on Broadway, appearing in the hit show Dream Girl, and was named one of the top five women in America with Best Dressed Hair of 1940 along with Claudette Colbert and Norma Shearer.
Her Broadway success did not garner her a lucrative film contract. Most of her work was done for Universal in their serials. Starting with The Royal Mounted Rides Again (1945), Bennett played a fortune teller who seemed to be villainous but turned out to be one of the good guys in the end. She had a similar role in Lost City of the Jungle (1946) as the ruler of a jungle kingdom who starts out in league with the villains but eventually changes side and joins the heroes in routing the villain’s schemes. Her final serial was playing the kidnapped wife of a Texas senator being used for leverage in a land grab scheme in The Scarlet Hoseman (1946).
Bennett turned her sights to radio and made a name for herself, becoming one of the founding members of the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters. She would only make two more film appearances during this time, On the Threshold of Space (1958) and Return to Peyton Place (1961), preferring to stay in radio for the rest of her career.
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