Oscar Profile #257: Helen Hayes

Born October 10, 1900, Helen Hayes (Brown) was the daughter of actress Essie Hayes and her husband, Frank Brown, a clerk. She began acting in a school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the age of 5, quickly followed by her first professional stage performance in The Royal Family. She made her Broadway debut in Old Dutch at the age of 9. She became a star with 1916’s Pollyanna and a major star with 1918’s Dear Brutus. Other early stage triumphs included 1925’s The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, 1926’s What Every Woman Knows, 1927’s Coquette and 1931’s The Good Fairy. She married playwright Charles MacArthur, five years her senior, in 1928. Their daughter Mary was born in 1930.

Hayes followed MacArthur to Hollywood where his play The Front Page co-written with Ben Hecht was a major 1931 film. MacArthur and an uncredited Hecht worked on the screenplay for Hayes’ The Sin of Madelon Claudet which unexpectedly won her an Oscar for Best Actress. That film as well as 1931’s Arrowsmith and 1932’s A Farewell to Arms were major box-office hits. Her celebrated early screen career would continue through 1935 with with The Son-Daughter, The White Sister, Another Language, Night Flight, What Every Woman Knows and Vanessa: Her Love Story with time out for a return to Broadway in 1933’s Mary of Scotland. She would leave Hollywood presumably for good to star in her greatest Broadway triumph as Victoria Regina in late 1935.

Hayes’ adoptive son James MacArthur was born in December, 1937. In 1940 and 1941 the now First Lady of the American Theatre became the star of Radio’s Helen Hayes Theatre anthology show. From 1943 to 1945 she starred on Broadway as Harriet Beecher Stowe in Harriet. She won one of Broadway’s first Tonys for 1947’s The Birthday Party. She made her London stage debut in 1948 in The Glass Menagerie, directed by John Gielgud. Back in the U.S. she was touring the country in stage productions with her daughter when Mary suddenly developed polio and died at 19. Hayes buried her grief by working harder than ever, alternating stage and TV appearances, mostly in revivals of her former triumphs, even starring in a 1952 film, Leo McCarey’s notorious anti-Communist screed, My Son John. Broadway’s Fulton Theatre was re-named the Helen Hayes in honor of her fiftieth year in show business in 1955.

Charles MacArthur died in 1956 the year that Hayes gave perhaps her best screen performance as Ingrid Bergman’s grandmother in Anastasia. It proved to be a one-off as she immediately returned to the stage and won a second Tony for 1958’s Time Remembered. She did not return to the film world until doctors forced her to retire from the stage because of health problems in 1970. Hollywood welcomed her back with a second Oscar for Airport for which she became the first performer to win Oscars in both lead and supporting categories.

Hayes’ late career included the hit films Herbie Rides Again and Candleshoe as well as the TV series The Snoop Sisters and three appearances as Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple in Murder Is Easy, A Caribbean Mystery and Murder with Mirrors.

The beloved actress retired from acting in 1986 but continued to make personal appearances through 1992. Although she was fond of saying she came in with the century, she would go out the century, she didn’t quite make it. Helen Hayes died on March 17, 1993 at the age of 92.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE SIN OF MADELON CLAUDET (1931), directed by Edgar Selwyn

Already a stage legend, Hayes won her first Oscar for her first sound film, having made only one silent film thirteen years earlier. Husband Charles MacArthur and his unbilled writing partner, Ben Hecht, adapted Edward Knoblock’s 1923 Broadway play, The Lullaby more or less tongue-in-cheek although the irony was lost on contemporanious audiences who wallowed in the Madame X tear-jerking elements about a fallen woman helped by the son (Robert Young) who doesn’t know she’s his mother. Hayes is magnificent, going from young innocent to kept woman to prostitute to destitute old lady with aplomb.

A FAREWELL TO ARMS (1932), directed by Frank Borzage

Hayes’ most enduring early screen performance was as Catherine, a volunteer nurse with the British Red Cross in the Great War World War I nurse in love with American ambulance driver, Gary Cooper, a volunteer with the Italian Army.

The film, which was the first made from one of Ernest Hemingway’s novels, is far superior to its numerous remakes and rip-offs. Both Hayes and Cooper are terrific as the star-crossed lovers, buoyed by a masterful supporting performance from Adolphe Menjou as Cooper’s superior officer.

ANASTASIA (1956), directed by Anatole Litvak

Hayes, at this point in her career, was one of the most beloved women in the world. Her participation in the film eased the acceptance of Ingrid Bergman back into the Hollywood firmament after years of unreasoned condemnation, earning her a much deserved second Oscar. The film’s highlight is the confrontation scene between Bergman’s amnesiac who may or may not be the Russian princess Anastasia and her grandmother, the Dowager Empress, a meeting that never happened in real life. It is questionable if the Dowager Empress, who died in 1928, was even aware of Anastasia’s claim. No matter, it made great screen chemistry, allowing Hayes to give what was far and away her best screen performance.

AIRPORT (1970), directed by George Seaton

Having been denied a second Oscar for her supporting performance in Anastasia because her name above the title meant she had to be considered in lead, Hayes’ next film fourteen years later easily won her that distinction for her shameless, if often hilarious, over-acting as a little old lady stowaway. The film had been one of the year’s biggest hits, with Hayes easily stealing the film from the likes of Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jean Seberg, Jacquline Bisset and other stars of the day, leading to a resurgence of her popularity that lasted until her death.

MURDER WITH MIRRORS (1985), directed by Dick Lowry

Hayes had been a welcome guest star in many TV productions from the 1950s on, often in classic comedic roles in the likes of The Royal Family, Arsenic and Old Lace and Harvey. She combined comedy with drama in the successful 1970s series, The Snoop Sisters with Mildred Natwick. In the 1980s she was once again alternately funny and serious as Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple in three of the sleuth’s best loved stories, Murder Is Easy, A Caribbean Mystery and Murder with Mirrors after which she retired from acting.