Helen Gilbert

Helen Amelia Gilbert was one of those finds for whom everyone had high hopes, and who quickly made a splash in Hollywood, though not due to her acting, which was average at best. She appeared more in gossip columns than on the silver screen, and as her acting career waned, her notoriety grew because of her affairs, marriages, separations, and divorces. And then suddenly she vanished from the spotlight only to have her name appear just one last time in an obituary column. Helen is born into a musical family, her father, Vaughn Gilbert, owning a music store where she played a variety of instruments as a child. She's inspired by Pablo Casals and dives into studying the cello, winning a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. After graduating, Helen becomes a concert artist, playing at a variety of locations, but it's while performing at the Hollywood Bowl where she is discovered by Herbert Stothart and is given a seat in his MGM orchestra. In November of 1936, she marries the assistant musical director at Columbia, Mischa Bakaleinikoff, in Tijuana, Mexico. He's 46; she's 21. Two years later while her orchestra is recording for the upcoming musical Sweethearts (1938), director Fred M. Wilcox spots her and her acting career begins. Her first role is as Miss Rose Meredith, Andy Hardy's high school "crush" and drama teacher in Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever (1939). Not long after that she separates from her husband in October of 1939, declaring that she will soon file suit for divorce. When asked, she claims, "It was an amicable separation," and is next spotted around the town with Lew Ayres. She responds to gossip columnists that they are just "good pals who happen to be working on the same picture," The Secret of Dr. Kildare (1939). In November she wins an uncontested divorce from Bakeleinkoff on charges that he was rude to her and her friends. She's next spotted with Howard Hughes at the annual Motion Picture Guild Christmas charity party. Now Hughes was quite famous for his attraction to Hollywood beauties, and Helen Gilbert is most definitely a beauty, but it's her fling with Hughes that starts to quash her rise to stardom. Over the next two years she's seen everywhere by columnists, accompanied by a host of gentlemen friends: Victor M. Orsatti, William Marshall, Billy Blackewell, Richard Denning, Tom Harmon, and finally Seymour J. Chotiner, whom she marries in March of 42. All this time she's been receiving star treatment from MGM. She's touted as "the new personality" in the trailer for the upcoming Dr. Kildare film in which she plays a patient with psychosomatic blindness. She's also landed the lead in Florian (1940). But as film historian David J. Hogan writes, "In the eyes of MGM Chief Louis B. Mayer, a contract actress who associated with Hughes was foolish and probably not deserving of star treatment." Hogan also believes that it was because of Hughes that Gilbert lost the role of Glinda the good witch in the The Wizard of Oz (1939) to Billie Burke. In 1942 she plays the role of the femme fatale in The Falcon Takes Over (1942) and separates from Chotiner after five short months of marriage. This time it's Chotiner who gets the uncontested divorce, complaining that "during five months of marriage, I had only one meal at home," but she and Chotiner soon reconcile before the divorce decree becomes final. Less than two years later, they part again. Helen files for divorce, and this time while Chotiner tells columnists that "careers and marriages do not mix," she's charging him with extreme cruelty without provocation. It's during this roller coaster of a marriage that Helen is cast in the not very coveted role of "girl on a trolley" in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). She might not have had much to offer movie goers at that time, but the tabloids are quickly lit up again when, after a whirlwind romance with Victor Makzoume, the owner of Victor's Café on Sunset Strip and ex-husband of Claire Alexander, they marry. He is 12 years her senior. She lands a lead role in the 1946 film God's Country (1946), shot in Cinecolor, but the reviews are mixed and the next time we hear about her is again in the newspapers when she and her husband, Makzoume report that their Hollywood home had been burglarized of jewelry, clothing, and a number of bottles of expensive perfumes. The take is estimated at $15,000.00. After finishing up Death Valley (1946), lauded as "A Dramatic Screen Triumph in Gorgeous Color, Set Against the Background of Nature's Most Treacherous and Mysterious Land," moviegoers are not at all impressed, so Helen decides to take time off to escort her husband to Lebanon to visit his family. Unfortunately, Makzoume has a heart attack at the Grand Hotel in Rome, and Helen is at his bedside as he passes away at age 45. Helen had been preparing to make her movie comeback while in Europe with one film being shot in Paris and another in Rome, but in June of 1948, Dorothy Manners reports in her column that, "She is so shaken and grief stricken she called off both contracts to bring his body back to this country." The courts grant Helen an allowance of $650 (nearly $6,000 in today's money) pending distribution of Makzoume's estate, of which she'll eventually get half, with the rest going to his mother and sister. By September of that year, gossip columnists report her back "as pretty as ever" at the Band Box, a jazz and comedy club in Hollywood, accompanied by Jimmy Valentine, a famous one-legged dancer. But it's the following February when newspapers are deliciously abuzz with the story of her secret marriage to Johnny Stompanato, a bodyguard and money man for Mickey Cohen, head of the Cohen crime family. This time Helen is 33 and Stompanato is 23. In July of that same year, she testifies at her divorce hearing that, "Johnny had no means. I did what I could to support him." Johnny would eventually be killed by Lana Turner's daughter, who stabbed him to death in 1958. In court it came out that he'd been violent with Turner and his death was ruled justifiable homicide, because Cheryl had been defending her mother from a vicious beating. Just two months after divorcing Stompanato, Helen marries James E. Durant, the Flamingo Hotel casino manager. The ceremony is short and sweet, and performed by a Justice of the Peace, but the gossip columns get it wrong when they report this being her sixth marriage. Somehow in the count, they'd tossed in Bill Marshal, with whom she'd had a fling, but never married. Historians aren't quite sure why the Las Vegas marriage had to have a "do-over" but in February of 1950, they are again married, this time in Coolidge, Arizona. It would be just four short months' later when Helen files for divorce, charging him with cruelty. Not one to rest on her reputation, while awaiting her divorce she promises herself to Charles, A. Hubbard, heir to a fortune in the Bahamas. He gives her a $17, 000.00 ($180,000.00 in today's money) diamond ring on Christmas Day, 1949 with the understanding that they will soon be wed. However, in January, her love for Hubbard has cooled, and she refuses to return the ring, opting instead to reconcile with Durant. They will stay married for almost two years, and their divorce will make history as the courts cannot decide if they are married or not. She claims that he tried to throw her out of a window of an 11th floor apartment, and he claims they were already divorced back in Phoenix. So two months later she marries her seventh and final husband, H. O. Bryant, someone who apparently has no background, no history, but just a future with the lovely Helen Gilbert who is now 35. Now that she's happily married and the distribution of Makzoume's estate puts her late husband's restaurant in her control, she finally drops her divorce suit against Durant, no longer claiming their Arizona divorce to be invalid. Her sister, Mari Finley would soon move in with her and producer Alex Gordon starts seeing both of them on a professional basis. He's thinking of casting Helen in the title role of The She-Creature (1956), but the part eventually goes to Marla English. Helen has been out of films for six years and yearns to make a comeback. She lands a key role in the film Thief of Damascus (1952), which turns out to be a pot boiler made on a tight budget by recycling all the scenery from big budget epics of the forties such as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944) and Arabian Nights (1942). The color is spectacular and the scenery is offset by a beautiful female cast in flowing gowns, all spouting quotable lines written tongue in cheek. But the satire falls flat and it bombs at the box office. Her next three appearances are in TV series, but it's Girls in Prison (1956) where she expects finally to make her comeback. She lands a rather racy role as Joan Taylor's lesbian cellmate, but is overshadowed by the tough-talking, plump-cheeked, peroxide blonde Adele Jergens whose performance steals the show. Helen's sister lands a bit part in the film, but other than another bit part in The She-Creature, her film career goes nowhere. Helen would do two more episodes in TV series and then, because she is happily married, the gossip columns go silent. She quietly walks away from Hollywood never to be heard from again until her death. Her husband, H. O. Bryant will die of a heart attack in 1987, and she follows him 8 years later having also succumbed to cardiac arrest. Her body is cremated; her ashes scattered at sea.