She was born Helen Wortham on January 31, 1895 in Louisville, Kentucky. Sadly her mom died when she was a toddler and her father moved the household to Massachusetts. Throughout World Battle I she volunteered with the Crimson Cross. Helen married Charles McDonald, a businessman, in 1917. On the age of twenty-four she entered a magnificence pageant and was named “probably the most lovely girl in America”. Quickly after she moved to New York and appeared in The Greenwhich Village Follies. She joined the forged of the Ziegfeld Follies in 1921. The next yr her marriage ended and he or she tried suicide. Helen made her movie debut within the 1923 drama Enemies of Girls. Then she had supporting roles in The Different Girl’s Story and Watch Your Spouse. Her performances acquired good critiques and her future appeared vivid. In April 1927 she was brutally attacked in her residence. Whereas she was recovering she fell in love along with her African American physician Dr. Eugene Nelson. There was a scandal when the general public came upon that the couple had secretly married. She was shunned by the movie neighborhood and needed to file for chapter.
