Helen Broderick August 11 1891 September 25 1959 was a wonderfully funny character comedienne with vaudeville and stage experience a close friend of Jeanne Eagels The story goes that at the age of 14 she ran away from home because her mother who appeared in operatic comedy was totally obsessed by the theatre Paradoxically all the people she met turned out to be performers and Helen who needed to make a living after all ended up where she hadnt wanted to end up on the stage She started out as a chorus girl in the first Ziegfeld Follies in 1907 Her talent for comedy was discovered quite by accident In 1911 she was understudy to the actress Ina Claire in the Broadway play Jumping Jupiter One night Claire was unable to perform and Helen Broderick stood in as the romantic lead She soon had the audience in stitches trampling about the stage like an elephant rolling her big saucer eyes and attempting to croon Cuddle Near Me All Day Long in her rather unique voice The romance was no more and instead turned into a popular farce with Helen now permanently installed in the lead role For a while Helen partnered her husband Lester Crawford in vaudeville In the 1920s she enjoyed success on Broadway most notably in Fifty Million Frenchmen a role she took to Hollywood in 1931 Her best parts in the movies were as the perennial friend or chaperone of the heroine an earlier Eve Arden delivering acidic wisecracks in her inimitable deadpan manner She was particularly amusing in Top Hat 1935 and Swing Time 1936 with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and in The Rage of Paris 1938 with Danielle Darrieux
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