--- name: "Helen Westley" canonical: "https://film.one/person/helen-westley" roles: ["Actor"] born: "27 March 1875" died: "12 December 1942" reviewed_on_fi1m: 3 average_fi1m_score: 68 average_as: "actor" average_over: 3 updated: "2026-09-20T00:05:08.082664+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Helen Westley Actor. Born 27 March 1875 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. Died 12 December 1942. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 27 March 1875, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA - **Died:** 12 December 1942 - **Active:** 1934–1940 - **Also known as:** Henrietta Remsen Meserole Manney - **Average Fi1m score:** 68, as actor, over 3 titles - **Fi1m score by decade:** 1930s 70 (2), 1940s 64 (1) - **Score spread:** 0 at 80+, 3 at 60–79, 0 under 60 - **Lead roles:** 0 of 3 acting credits billed first or second - **Genres:** Drama 3, Romance 3, History 1, Music 1 - **Screen time:** 6 hours of reviewed films - **Box office:** $4m across 1 films with figures - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Westley, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q276100, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0922818/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/108986 ## Fi1m on Helen Westley > A stage lifer who came to Hollywood at 59 and was handed the same stern old woman nearly thirty times. She played her with more voice and more spite than the parts deserved, and in *The House of Rothschild* she is the one thing the casting got right. In *The House of Rothschild* (1934), George Arliss hides the family's coins under the floor and Helen Westley, as his wife Gudula, hurries the children into their places. It is a small piece of business and she does it as if she has done it a hundred times, because Gudula has. The rest of the Rothschilds are played as English gentry from the moment they leave Frankfurt; Westley keeps the ghetto in her voice for the whole picture, and we found ourselves watching her at the edge of the frame rather than the men in the middle of it, with something like relief. She was the only person on screen who seemed to remember who these people were supposed to be. She was 59 when she made it, and it was more or less her first film. Behind her lay four decades of theatre: stock, vaudeville, a New York debut in 1897, and then the Washington Square Players and the Theatre Guild, which she helped found and sat on the board of for fifteen years while appearing in more than forty of its productions, Shaw and O'Neill and Chekhov among them. Hollywood took one look and saw a dowager. Over the next eight years, until her death in 1942, she made nearly thirty films, and in most of them she is somebody's aunt, mother-in-law or landlady, disapproving of the young. The parts were mostly the same part. Parthy Hawkes in *Show Boat* (1936), the title role in *Roberta* (1935), Blind Anna in *Heidi* (1937) and three more films with Shirley Temple, Aunt Sophie in *Alexander's Ragtime Band* (1938): matriarchs and meddlers, with a softer centre permitted for the children's pictures. Our own review of *Alexander's Ragtime Band* does not mention her, which is fair to the film, since Alice Faye and Ethel Merman carry it and Berlin's songs carry them, and a little hard on Westley, whose job there was to be the stern aunt and keep out of the songs' way. What she brought to these women was force, and a stage actor's refusal to be quiet at the back of the shot. The complaint about her, on stage and then on screen, was that she played hags and harridans, and the complaint is not wrong. But a harridan played with full conviction is worth more than a sweet old thing played with none, and the 1930s studio picture needed somebody in the corner who plainly did not approve of the plot. That is what she was for. If you want to see what the theatre lost when the studios found her, *The House of Rothschild* is the place, for the Frankfurt scenes before the family goes respectable. After that she is mostly somebody's aunt. She is a good aunt. ## Biography Helen Westley (born Henrietta Remsen Meserole Manney) was an American character actress of stage and screen. She trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and began her career in stock theatre and vaudeville before becoming one of the founders of the Theatre Guild, serving on its board for many years. Westley appeared in original Broadway productions including *Green Grow the Lilacs* (1931) and Eugene O'Neill's *Strange Interlude*. She moved to film in 1934 and played supporting roles in *The House of Rothschild* (1934) as Gudula Rothschild, *Death Takes a Holiday* (1934), *Roberta* (1935), *Show Boat* (1936) as Parthenia Hawkes, *Heidi* (1937), and *All This, and Heaven Too* (1940). She retired in 1942 and died later that year. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, reference.org, nytimes.com.* ## On Fi1m (3) - *All This, and Heaven Too* (1940), Fi1m 64, as Madame LeMaire — [page](https://film.one/film/all-this-and-heaven-too.md) - *Alexander's Ragtime Band* (1938), Fi1m 70, as Aunt Sophie — [page](https://film.one/film/alexanders-ragtime-band.md) - *The House of Rothschild* (1934), Fi1m 70, as Gudula Rothschild — [page](https://film.one/film/the-house-of-rothschild.md) ## Complete filmography (38) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *My Favorite Spy* (1942), as Aunt Jessie - *Bedtime Story* (1941), as Emma Harper - *The Smiling Ghost* (1941), as Grandmother Bentley - *Million Dollar Baby* (1941), as Mrs. Galloway - *Sunny* (1941), as Aunt Barbara - *Lady from Louisiana* (1941), as Blanche Brunot - *Adam Had Four Sons* (1941), as Cousin Philippa - *Lady with Red Hair* (1940), as Mrs. 'Ma' Frazier - *All This, and Heaven Too* (1940), as Madame LeMaire — Fi1m 64, [page](https://film.one/film/all-this-and-heaven-too.md) - *The Captain is a Lady* (1940), as Abigail Morrow - *Lillian Russell* (1940), as Grandma Leonard - *Wife, Husband and Friend* (1939), as Mrs. Blair - *Zaza* (1939), as Anais - *Keep Smiling* (1938), as Mrs. Willoughby - *Alexander's Ragtime Band* (1938), as Aunt Sophie — Fi1m 70, [page](https://film.one/film/alexanders-ragtime-band.md) - *Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm* (1938), as Miranda Wilkins - *The Baroness and the Butler* (1938), as Countess Sandor - *She Married an Artist* (1937), as Martha Moriarty - *I'll Take Romance* (1937), as Madame Della aka Madella - *Heidi* (1937), as Blind Anna - *Sing and Be Happy* (1937), as Mrs. Henty - *Café Metropole* (1937), as Margaret Ridgeway - *Stowaway* (1936), as Mrs. Hope - *Banjo on My Knee* (1936), as Grandma - *Dimples* (1936), as Caroline Drew - *Half Angel* (1936), as Mrs. Hargraves - *Show Boat* (1936), as Parthenia "Parthy" Hawkes - *Splendor* (1935), as Mrs. Emmeline Lorrimore - *The Melody Lingers on* (1935), as Franceska Manzoni - *Chasing Yesterday* (1935), as Therese - *Roberta* (1935), as Roberta - *Captain Hurricane* (1935), as Abbie Howland - *Anne of Green Gables* (1934), as Marilla Cuthbert - *The Age of Innocence* (1934), as Granny Manson Mingott - *The House of Rothschild* (1934), as Gudula Rothschild — Fi1m 70, [page](https://film.one/film/the-house-of-rothschild.md) - *Death Takes a Holiday* (1934), as Stephanie - *Looking for Trouble* (1934), as Landlady - *Moulin Rouge* (1934), as Mrs. Morris ## Gallery - ![Helen Westley](https://film.one/media/person/1227355/gallery-52022ee7c281.jpg) Helen Westley — Apeda Studio, New York, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Helen_Westley.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Promotional photograph for the Broadway production of Green Grow the Lilacs Caption reads as follows:Miss June Walker, Miss Helen Westley, and Mr. Franchot Tone (1931)](https://film.one/media/person/1227355/gallery-edecb9d8dd3d.jpg) Promotional photograph for the Broadway production of Green Grow the Lilacs Caption reads as follows:Miss June Walker, Miss Helen Westley, and Mr. Franchot Tone (1931) — Theatre Magazine Company; Vandamm Studio, photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c4/Green-Grow-the-Lilacs-1931.jpg/1280px-Green-Grow-the-Lilacs-1931.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![L. to R.: Queenie Smith, Sammy White & Helen Westley in Show Boat - publicity still (cropped) (1936)](https://film.one/media/person/1227355/gallery-b561e69be16a.jpg) L. to R.: Queenie Smith, Sammy White & Helen Westley in Show Boat - publicity still (cropped) (1936) — unknown (Universal Pictures), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Show_Boat_%281936%29_still_1.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Promotional photograph for the Broadway production of He Who Gets Slapped Subjects of the photograph are Margalo Gillmore (centre, seated) as Consuelo, Helen We (1922)](https://film.one/media/person/1227355/gallery-713fac518e90.jpg) Promotional photograph for the Broadway production of He Who Gets Slapped Subjects of the photograph are Margalo Gillmore (centre, seated) as Consuelo, Helen We (1922) — Current Literature Publishing Company, photograph by Vandamm Studio, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/He-Who-Gets-Slapped-1922-4.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![(Standing) Grace Morse, Geoffrey Stein, Beatrice Prentice, Theodore Doucet; (seated) Noel Tearle and Helen Westley, in Act I of "Hobohemia," a farce-comedy of G (1919)](https://film.one/media/person/1227355/gallery-f98e38a78755.jpg) (Standing) Grace Morse, Geoffrey Stein, Beatrice Prentice, Theodore Doucet; (seated) Noel Tearle and Helen Westley, in Act I of "Hobohemia," a farce-comedy of G (1919) — White Studio, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Scene_from_%22Hobohemia%22%2C_1919.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Photograph of a scene from the Theatre Guild production of A. A. Milne's Mr. Pim Passes By (1921) with (left to right) Helen Westley (Lady Marden), Dudley Digge](https://film.one/media/person/1227355/gallery-6b2a4528d56d.jpg) Photograph of a scene from the Theatre Guild production of A. A. Milne's Mr. Pim Passes By (1921) with (left to right) Helen Westley (Lady Marden), Dudley Digge — Theatre Magazine Company; Ira D. Schwarz, photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Mr-Pim-1921-2.jpg/1280px-Mr-Pim-1921-2.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/helen-westley