Helen Westcott Profile

Helen Westcott

	(Myrth / Helene Hickman)
1 January 28	is born in Los Angeles, California, the first baby of the year, the daughter of singer Hazel Beth McArthur
c. 32	is on stage at age 4 singing with her mother
c. 35	is noted on the Los Angeles stage in The Drunkard at age 7. The play runs for nine years.
20 March 35	her mother names Myrthus Hickman, a.k.a. actor Gordon Westcott, as her father in Los Angeles in a $307,315 damage suit. Hazel Beth McArthur claims she met him in 1926 when he was a tent show actor and lived with him under the impression she was his wife. After an asserted fraud marriage, when he found she was an expectant mother, she says, he fled to New York and there married another woman. He's 31; she's 25. Westcott denies the charges.
28 October 35	her father suffers a concussion at the base of the skull and a brain hemorrhage when his polo pony falls on him during a game
31 October 35	Gordon Westcott dies at age 31 in Los Angeles after three days in an oxygen tent at Cedars of Lebanon hospital
?	goes to New York to attempt Broadway
?	is fired after only two days as a clerk at Macy’s
October 47	columnist Dorothy Kilgallen writes: “Helen Westcott, five weeks ago a hat check girl at Old Nick’s Music Hall, has just been signed to play opposite Errol Flynn in Don Juan...”
December 47	she and UCLA’s Bill Steerwalt are reportedly an “eye-to-eyetem...”
October 48	is dropped by Warner Brothers
?	is a femme foil for actors tested for Henry King’s Three Came Home
?	marries Don Gordon, New York stage actor
August 49	columnist Louella Parson tells: “The most surprised girl in Hollywood is Helen Westcott, pretty 20th Century-Fox starlet, cast only in bits who has just been handed the lead opposite Gregory Peck in The Gun Fighter! Flabbergasted with delight is a better description of her condition.”
October 49	is heralded getting the star build-up at 20th Century-Fox
7 April 50	her daughter, Jennifer Kaye, is born in Los Angeles
August 51	columnist Dorothy Manners tells about the upcoming Phone Calls from a Stranger that producer “Nunnally Johnson is casting the picture fast with Helen Westcott definite for the other top woman role.”
July 52	is on the panel of "Opinion Please"
October 52	is reported back from filming The Battles of Chief Pontiac in Rapid City, South Dakota
May 53	divorces Gordon
August 53	is busy between pictures directing little theater shows
January 54	is a guest columnist for Johnny Fidler’s “Fidler in Hollywood”
August 55	will play opposite Cornel Wilde and Jane Russell in Tambourine
April 59	she and actress Pat Crowley join Jack Rourke on the guest list of “Let’s Dance”
July 59	she and Jim Morris announce marriage while dining at Phil Ahn’s Moongate in Panorama City
?	becomes a founding member of the Stage Society
January 74	will conduct a new class in drama speech for the East Valley YWCA Center at 5703 Laurel Canyon Boulevard, North Hollywood
?	resides in Lynwood, Washington
17 March 98	as Helen Westcott, she dies at age 70 in an Edmonds, Washington, hospital from cancer

Sources: Nevada State Journal, The Post-Standard, The Portsmouth Times, Syracuse Herald-Journal, The Fresno Bee, Olean Times Herald, Pottstown Mercury, Long Beach Press-Telegram, The Galveston News, The Lowell Sun, The Charleston Gazette, The Lima News, Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram, Van Nuys News, www.Ancestry.com
Recommended Books:
Links: Filmography