Helen Mack

Helen Mack, born Helen McDougall on November 13, 1913, in Rock Island, Illinois, was an American actress whose career extended across silent film, Broadway, vaudeville, sound pictures, radio, and television. Her father, William George McDougall, worked as a barber, and her mother, Regina (née Lenzer) McDougall, harbored an unfulfilled ambition to perform. Mack attended the Professional Children's School of New York City, and her early development as a performer was aided by her friend, actress Vera Gordon.

Mack's stage work began in her childhood years. Her theatrical debut came in The Idle Inn alongside Jacob Benami, and she subsequently performed 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 circuits during this period. Her Broadway appearances in 1925 included the play The Dybbuk and the revue Grand Street Follies, which had originated in 1924.

Her film career began when she was billed as Helen Macks in the 1923 silent feature Success, which featured Brandon Tynan, Naomi Childers, and Mary Astor. She appeared alongside 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. She was also cast with John Boles in his first Fox Film production, Scotch Valley. 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 the role of Mamie Donahue in Sweepings in 1933, marking a professional resurgence.

Among her most recognized film roles, Mack appeared in the 1933 sequel The Son of Kong, played Harold Lloyd's sister in The Milky Way in 1936, and portrayed Tanya in Merian C. Cooper's production of She in 1935, based on H. Rider Haggard's novel. In 1937 she played a bank-robbing ingenue opposite Richard Cromwell and Lionel Atwill in The Wrong Road for RKO. She also appeared as the suicidal Molly Malloy in the 1940 screwball crime comedy His Girl Friday, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.

In the early 1940s, Mack transitioned to radio, joining the series Myrt and Marge after actress Donna Damerel died suddenly in childbirth. Mack was selected for the replacement role from a pool of more than 200 applicants. She went on to produce and direct several prominent radio series, among them Richard Diamond, Private Detective, The Saint, and Meet Corliss Archer. Together with her friend Aleen Leslie, she co-wrote A Date with Judy and served as its producer-director, a role held by few women in network radio at the time. The series launched in 1941; though Leslie had originally envisioned Mack in the title role, both concluded she was too old to play a high-school girl. 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. She died of cancer on August 13, 1986, at the Beverly Hills home of her friend and collaborator Aleen Leslie.