Helen Arnold

Helen Louise Prettyman Arnold was born on August 17, 1890, to Thomas Jefferson Prettyman and Mary A. Graves. She had three siblings: Mabel, Lewis Alfred, and Thomas Jefferson Jr. On April 2, 1910, she married Richard M. Arnold Jr. in Clark, Indiana.

Arnold's performing career began early. She was a member of the cast of the 1891 production of Nerves at the Lyceum Theatre in New York City, a production that ran from January through April of that year. Decades later, she returned to Broadway, appearing in the 1932 revue George White's Music Hall Varieties.

Between those stage appearances, Arnold pursued a career in silent film from 1916 to 1918. Her first screen credit was the role of Viola Campbell in the 1916 film The Witching Hour, shot in Flushing, New York. The production starred C. Aubrey Smith and Marie Shotwell and was adapted from a play by Augustus Thomas. In June 1916, Arnold was among the winners of a Beauty and Brains contest conducted by Photoplay magazine.

The following year she appeared in Three films: Two Men and a Woman, produced by Ivan Film Productions and directed by William J. Humphrey alongside Christine Mayo and Rubye De Remer; One Law For Both; and The Call of Her People, which starred Ethel Barrymore. Her final film credit was a role in the Italian production Il Doppio volto in 1918.

The 1920 census recorded Arnold living in the household of Edward Firkon under the name Helen Firkon. She died on February 19, 1976, in Los Angeles.