Helen Twelvetrees

Blonde American leading lady fairly popular in a series of mostly mediocre melodramas at RKO in the early 1930s. Sometimes wisecracking but more often delicate and wistful, Twelvetrees appeared in two landmark early talkies directed by Tay Garnett: the enjoyable waterfront melodrama "Her Man" (1930) and the cult gangster film, "Bad Company" (1931). Some of her other better or more typical credits include "Millie" (1931), "Panama Flo" (1932), "Is My Face Red?" (1932) and "Bedtime Story" (1933, opposite Maurice Chevalier). From 1933 on she worked for a variety of studios, but by the middle of the decade, with the passing of the vogue for "confession" tearjerkers which had been her specialty, her modest if genuine star status had almost completely vanished. Later in the decade her screen career did not regain momentum after a period away from the camera. Twelvetrees acted occasionally onstage thereafter, most notably as Blanche DuBois with a road company of "A Streetcar Named Desire," until her death by suicide in 1958.