Helen Mack

Helen Mack, born Helen McDougall on November 13, 1913, in Rock Island, Illinois, was an American actress, writer, director, and producer whose career extended from silent film through the Golden Age of Radio and into television. The daughter of William George McDougall, a barber, and Regina McDougall, née Lenzer, she trained at the Professional Children's School of New York City, where actress Vera Gordon assisted her early development. Mack died on August 13, 1986, from cancer at the Beverly Hills home of her friend and collaborator Aleen Leslie.

Mack entered professional performance as a child, working simultaneously in stage and film. Her theatrical debut came in The Idle Inn alongside Jacob Benami, and she subsequently appeared with Roland Young in Pomeroy's Past. She also toured the United States with William Hodge in Straight Through the Door and worked the vaudeville circuit. Her Broadway career ran from 1923 to 1934 and included the revue Calling All Stars, the plays Subway Express and Yellow, and Neighbors.

Her film career began under the billing Helen Macks when she appeared at age ten in the 1923 silent film Success, which featured Brandon Tynan, Naomi Childers, and Mary Astor. She subsequently worked with Gloria Swanson in Zaza and had a small part in D.W. Griffith's final film, The Struggle, in 1931. A Fox Film screen test in March 1931 led to a studio contract within three weeks, and she made her leading-lady debut opposite Victor McLaglen in While Paris Sleeps in 1932. That same period brought her a role alongside John Boles in Scotch Valley, his first Fox Film production. Early in the 1930s she appeared in several westerns, including Fargo Express with Ken Maynard and The California Trail with Buck Jones. After a three-year decline in which three productions failed — partly because studios cast her as an ingenue despite her strengths as a character performer — RKO offered her a second opportunity as Mamie Donahue in Sweepings in 1933. Among her most recognized film roles are the 1933 sequel The Son of Kong, the part of Harold Lloyd's sister in The Milky Way in 1936, the role of Tanya in Merian C. Cooper's production of She in 1935, a bank-robbing ingenue opposite Richard Cromwell and Lionel Atwill in The Wrong Road in 1937, and the suicidal Molly Malloy in the screwball crime comedy His Girl Friday in 1940, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.

In the early 1940s Mack transitioned into radio, taking over the role of Marge in the series Myrt and Marge after actress Donna Damerel died suddenly in childbirth. She was selected from more than two hundred applicants for the part. She went on to produce and direct multiple radio series, among them Richard Diamond, Private Detective, The Saint, and Meet Corliss Archer. With Aleen Leslie she co-wrote A Date with Judy, serving as its producer and director — a rare position for a woman in network radio at the time. The series launched in 1941; Leslie had originally envisioned Mack in the title role, but both concluded she was too old for the high-school-girl character. In 1949, Mack collaborated with Roger Price on the children's record Gossamer Wump, narrated by Frank Morgan and released by Capitol Records. As television supplanted radio, she continued writing plays and television episodes until her death. Mack married lawyer Charles Irwin in San Francisco in February 1935.