Helen Westley


Helen Westley was an American character actress.

Career

She was born Henrietta Remsen Meserole Manney in Brooklyn, New York on March 28, 1875, she later went onto become Helen Westley; she was a founding member of the original board of the Theatre Guild, and appeared in many of their productions, among them Peer Gynt, and some of their productions of plays by George Bernard Shaw— Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, Major Barbara, The Doctor's Dilemma and The Apple Cart. She appeared in the original Broadway productions of two plays which, after her death, turned into classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals: Green Grow the Lilacs, which became Oklahoma!, and Liliom, which became Carousel. Westley played Aunt Eller in the former and Mrs. Muskat in the latter. She appeared in the original Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude.
Westley played roles, both comic and dramatic, in many films. They included Death Takes a Holiday, All This and Heaven Too, four films opposite child star Shirley Temple, the 1934 surprise hit Anne of Green Gables, the 1935 film version of Roberta, and the 1936 film version of Show Boat, in which she replaced Edna May Oliver, when Oliver declined to repeat her stage role as Parthy Ann Hawks. She appeared in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm in 1938 with Shirley Temple and Randolph Scott as Aunt Miranda. In 1936, she played in Banjo on My Knee with Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Brennan and Buddy Ebsen.

Family life

Westley married John Westley, an actor on Broadway, on October 31, 1900. The couple separated in 1912. The marriage ended in divorce. The couple had one daughter, named Ethel.
After Westley retired from acting in 1942, she later moved into her daughter's home in Middlebush, New Jersey, where they both lived until her death on December 12, 1942 from an undisclosed illness. Upon her death, she was cremated at the Rose Hill Cemetery in Linden, New Jersey, and on December 17 of the same year, her daughter had her ashes buried at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York in Section 9, Lot 26.

Partial filmography