Profile of Helen Hayes on Famous Like Me

Helen Hayes (October 10, 1900 - March 17, 1993) was an American actress whose successful and award-winning career spanned almost 70 years. She was eventually to garner the nickname "First Lady of the American Theater", and was one of the few people who has won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award.

Born Helen Hayes Brown in Washington, DC, she began a stage career at an early age. By 10, she had made a short film called Jean and the Calico Doll, but she only moved to Hollywood when her husband, playwright Charles MacArthur, signed a Hollywood deal. Her sound film debut was The Sin of Madelon Claudet, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She followed that with starring roles in Arrowsmith (with Myrna Loy), A Farewell to Arms (with actor Gary Cooper whom Hayes admitted to finding extremely attractive), The White Sister, What Every Woman Knows (a reprise from her Broadway hit), and Vanessa: Her Love Story. However, she never became a fan favorite.

Hayes and MacArthur eventually returned to Broadway, and she starred for three years in Victoria Regina. Eventually, a theater was named in her honor. In 1953 she was the first-ever recipient of the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre, repeating as the winner in 1969. She returned to Hollywood in the 1950s, and her film star began to rise. She starred in My Son John and Anastasia, and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1970 for Airport. She followed that up with several roles in Disney films such as Herbie Rides Again, One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing and Candleshoe.

Hayes wrote three memoirs: A Gift of Joy, On Reflection and My Life in Three Acts. Some of the themes in these books include her return to Roman Catholicism after having been denied communion from the Church for the length of her marriage to MacArthur, who was a Protestant and a divorcé, and the death of her only daughter, Mary, who was an aspiring actress, from polio. Hayes's son, James MacArthur, went on to a career in acting also, starring in Hawaii Five-O on television.

Hayes was a pro-business Republican, who attended the last Republican National Convention before her death, which was held in Colorado, but she was not as far-right as certain others (e.g. Adolphe Menjou, Ginger Rogers, John Wayne, etc) in the Hollywood community of that time.

She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6220 Hollywood Blvd.

The Helen Hayes Award for theater in the Washington D.C. area is named in her honor.

Helen Hayes died on (St. Patrick's Day) March 17, 1993 of natural causes, not long after the death of her friend Lillian Gish, who had made Hayes the beneficiary of her estate. Hayes was interred in the Oak Hill Cemetery, Nyack, New York.

Stage Appearances

• Miss Hawke's May Ball (1905)
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (1905)
• Babe in the Woods (1908)
• Jack the Giant Killer (1909)
• A Royal Family (1909)
• Children's Dancing Kerrness (1909)
• The Prince Chap (1909)
• A Poor Relation (1909)
• Old Dutch (1909)
• The Summer Widowers (1910)
• The Barrier (1911)
• Little Lord Fauntleroy (1911)
• The Never Homes (1911)
• The Seven Sisters (1911)
• Mary Jane's Pa (1911)
• The June Bride (1912)
• The Girl with Green Eyes (1913)
• His House in Order (1913)
• A Royal Family (1913)
• The Prince Chap (1913)
• The Prince and the Pauper (1913)
• The Prodigal Husband (1914)
• The Dummy (1916)
• On Trial (1916)
• It Pays to Advertise (1917)
• Romance (1917)
• Just a Woman (1917)
• Mile-a-Minute Kendall (1917)
• Rich Man, Poor Man (1917)
• Alma, Where Do You Live? (1917)
• Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1917)
• Within the Law (1917)
• Pollyanna (1917)
• Penrod (1918)
• Dear Brutus (1918)
• On the Hiring Line (1919)
• Clarence (1919)
• The Golden Age (1919)
• Bab (1920)
• The Wren (1921)
• The Golden Days (1921)
• To the Ladies (1922)
• No Siree!: An Anonymous Entertaiment by the Vicious Circus of the Hotel Algonquin (1922)
• Lonely Lee (1923)
• We Moderns (1924)
• The Dragon (1924)
• She Stoops to Conquer (1924)
• Dancing Mothers (1924)
• Quarantine (1924)
• Caesar and Cleopatra (1925)
• The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1925)
• Young Blood (1925)
• What Every Woman Knows (1926)
• Coquette (1927)
• Coquette (1928) (London version)
• Mr. Gilhooley (1930)
• Petticoat Influence (1930)
• The Good Fairy (1931)
• Mary of Scotland (1933)
• Caesar and Cleopatra (1935)
• Victoria Regina (1935)
• Victoria Regina (1936) (revival)
• The Merchant of Venice (1938)
• What Every Woman Knows (1938)
• Victoria Regina (1938) (revival)
• Ladies and Gentleman (1939)
• Twelfth Night (1940)
• Candle in the Wind (1941)
• Harriet (1943)
• Alice-Sit-By-The-Fire (1946)
• Happy Birthday (1946)
• The Glass Menagerie (1948)
• Good Housekeeping (1949)
• The Wisteria Trees (1950)
• Mrs. McThing (1952)
• Gentleman, The Queens (1955)
• The Skin of Our Teeth (1955)
• Lovers, Villans and Fools (1956)
• The Glass Menagerie (1956)
• Time Remembered (1957)
• A Adventure (1958)
• Mid-Summer (1958)
• A Touch of the Poet (1958)
• The Cherry Orchard (1960)
• The Chalk Garden (1960)
• Shakespeare Revisited: A Program for Two Players (1962)*Good Morning, Miss Dove (1964)
• The White House (1964)
• The Circle (1966)
• The School for Scandal (1966)
• Right You Are If You Think You Are (1966)
• We Comrades Three (1966)
• You Can't Take It With You (1966)
• The Show-Off (1967)
• The Show-Off (1968) (return engagement)
• The Front Page (1969)
• Harvey (1970)
• Long Day's Journey Into Night (1971)

Filmography

• The Weavers of Life (1917)
• Babs (1920)
• The Dancing Town (1928) (short subject)
• The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931)
• Arrowsmith (1931)
• A Farewell to Arms (1932)
• The Son-Daughter (1932)
• The White Sister (1933)
• Another Language (1933)
• Night Flight (1933)
• Crime Without Passion (1934)
• What Every Woman Knows (1934)
• Vanessa: Her Love Story (1935)
• Hollywood Goes to Town (1938) (short subject)
• Stage Door Canteen (1943)
• My Son John (1952)
• Main Street to Broadway (1953)
• Anastasia (1956)
• Third Man on the Mountain (1959)
• The Challenge of Ideas (1961) (short subject) (narrator)
• Airport (1970)
• Herbie Rides Again (1974)
• One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing (1975)
• Candleshoe (1977)

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