Helen Vinson was the well-bred blonde the hero should not have wanted: the selfish wife, the treacherous friend, the other woman in forty-odd films. She played them with enough intelligence that audiences sometimes sided with her, and the studios never let her be anything else.
Fi1m perspective
Helen Vinson was tall, fair and composed, and Hollywood looked at her once and decided what she was for. From her first film, Jewel Robbery (1932), opposite William Powell and Kay Francis, she was the elegant woman at the edge of somebody else's romance. Over roughly forty films between 1932 and 1945 she played the cool blonde with a busy private life, the selfish wife, the friend who could not be trusted with a secret. Warner Bros had brought her west from Broadway, where she had worked since 1927, and the studio knew exactly which chair to sit her in.
The odd thing is that the one film of hers we have reviewed is the exception. In I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) she is Helen, the woman Paul Muni's fugitive would rather be with, and for once she is on the side of the angels. The part gives her almost nothing. Glenda Farrell, as the landlady who works out who he is, gets the lines and the sneer; Vinson gets a good coat and a kind voice. We found ourselves watching her scenes with a small, growing irritation, not at her but at the script, because Mervyn LeRoy's film is in such a hurry to get back on the road that it never lets its one decent woman say anything worth remembering.
Elsewhere she had more to do. She was the cold upper-crust wife in Frank Capra's Broadway Bill (1934), the jealous wife opposite Gary Cooper in The Wedding Night (1935), the treacherous friend among Carole Lombard, Kay Francis and Cary Grant in In Name Only (1939). Critics at the time noticed that she played these women with a clear head rather than a hiss, and that she could make an audience feel for a character the plot had written off. That is a rarer gift than it sounds. Most actors given the other woman play her as a warning; the record suggests Vinson played her as someone who had made her choices and saw no reason to apologise.
It did not get her the leading parts, and she knew it. She later said she regretted leaving Broadway as early as she did, and by The Thin Man Goes Home (1944), one of her last films, she was still a supporting player in somebody else's series. She retired after 1945.
Watch Fugitive for Muni, and keep an eye on the edge of the frame, where a good actor stands in a good coat waiting for a line that never comes. Then look for the films where she was allowed to be unkind, which is where she was given something to do.
Biography
Helen Vinson (born Helen Rulfs) was an American actress who appeared in around 40 films between 1932 and 1945. Born in Beaumont, Texas, on 17 September 1907, she made her screen debut in Jewel Robbery (1932) and played Helen in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932).
Her roles frequently cast her as the 'other woman' in pre-Code productions. She appeared in The Kennel Murder Case (1933), In Name Only (1939), Beyond Tomorrow (1940) and The Thin Man Goes Home (1944). Vinson received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street. She retired from film after 1945 and died in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on 7 October 1999.
