Helen Curry

Helen Curry (October 22, 1896 – November 15, 1931) was an American stage actress born in Chester, Pennsylvania to Thomas A. Curry and Sarah Jefferis, both of whom were playwrights. She had one brother, pulp fiction writer Tom Curry (1900–1976). In 1916 she married author F. R. Buckley, and the couple had a daughter in 1922.

Curry's family background was deeply rooted in the theatrical world. Her father, beyond his work as a playwright, served as personal secretary to theatrical impresario David Belasco beginning in 1914 and held that position until Belasco's death in 1931, after which he assumed the same role for Morris Gest. Curry trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which was housed at the time in the Lyceum Theatre, an institution to which Belasco had notable ties as both an acting instructor and stage manager for several of its productions. As a child, Curry had already participated in amateur theatricals alongside her parents.

Her professional career began in 1913 at the age of seventeen, when she toured with Doris Keane in Edward Sheldon's play Romance. She subsequently appeared in Cleves Kinkead's Common Clay alongside Jane Cowl, and played Miss Carpenter in Ethel Watts Mumford's Good Night, Nurse!, later retitled Sick-A-Bed, at the Tremont Theatre in Boston. She also took on the title role in Mary Broome at the Neighborhood Playhouse, part of the early twentieth-century Little Theatre Movement. O. W. Firkins of The Weekly Review wrote of her performance that "Miss Helen Curry as Mary Broome was perfect."

Curry's Broadway career spanned 1919 to 1920 and included two productions: Mary Broome and The Blue Flame. The latter, a four-act play written by George V. Hobart and John Willard, featured silent film star Theda Bara and opened in 1920.

Curry died on November 15, 1931, at the age of 35 at her home in Norwalk, Connecticut, in an apparent suicide. She was interred at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut. Her former home in Norwalk is listed on the Connecticut State Register of Historic Places.