Helen Marie Twelvetrees ( Jurgens; December 25, 1908 – February 13, 1958) was an American actress. She starred in Hollywood films in the sound film era from 1929 to 1939. Many of her roles were of "suffering women". She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Early life Helen Marie Jurgens was born in Brooklyn, where she attended Public School 119. Her family moved to Flatbush, where her younger brother was born. In the winter of 1919, the family's four-bedroom apartment caught fire and her brother perished. She attended Brooklyn Heights Seminary and then the Art Students League of New York, where she studied for a year before enrolling at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. While attending AADA, she met actor Clark Twelvetrees, whom she married at age 19 in 1927. She adopted her husband's surname and used it as her professional name. Career With some stage experience, Twelvetrees went to Hollywood with a number of other actors to replace the silent stars who could not or would not make the transition to talkies. Her first job was with Fox Film Corporation, and she appeared in The Ghost Talks (1929). After three films with Fox, she was released from her contract. However, she was signed by Pathé shortly thereafter, and along with Constance Bennett and Ann Harding, Twelvetrees starred in several lachrymose dramas, not all of which were critically acclaimed. When Pathé was absorbed by RKO Radio Pictures, she found herself at various times miscast in mediocre films. With the arrival of Katharine Hepburn at RKO, Twelvetrees left the studio to freelance (Harding and Bennett would also subsequently depart). The 1930 film Her Man set the course of Twelvetrees' screen career, and she was cast in a series of roles portraying suffering women fighting for the wrong men. Later she appeared with Spencer Tracy in Now I'll Tell (also known as When New York Sleeps); with Donald Cook in The Spanish Cape Mystery; and with Maurice Chevalier in Paramount's A Bedtime Story. She also starred in two Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films, which prompted author John Douglas Eames to note that she "had a gift for projecting emotional force with minimal visible effort." In 1936, Twelvetrees traveled to Australia to star in the Cinesound Studios production Thoroughbred, about the rise of a Melbourne Cup winning racehorse. The film was produced at Cinesound Studios in Bondi Junction. After filming completed, Twelvetrees