Daily News from New York, New York • 459

BIG TOWN BIOGRAPHY By JAY MAEDER Daily News Staff Writer I Jl HIS IS A small story I 1 about a long-Li forgotten young woman who was briefly on Broadway once upon a time, a rising star of the Ziegfeld Follies, and who perhaps might have gone on to become a Hollywood queen, as did some of the other Ziegfeld girls, or who on the other hand might just have unextraordinarily labored on in workaday show business, as did some of the others. Helen Walsh died too young ever to know which way things were likely to break for her, which is what they said about her at the funeral that hers was a journey interrupted at its very start that it was not granted to her even to understand what the limitless possibilities might have been. II Vf Hor At 23, she was just beginning to enjoy minor notices as the 1931 Follies' most beautiful girl. That is all that Helen Walsh ever got to be before a merry summer's holiday suddenly turned into a terrifying wall of fire that took her short life away from her. Hundreds of saddened show folk gathered at her bier to see her off.

"Hark, I Hear The Angels Calling," they sang. SHE WAS THE daughter of a New York City police lieutenant, and she lived with her sister and widowed mother in a modest frame home at Riverdale Ave. and 260th St in the Bronx, supporting the household with her wages as a Filth Ave. department store IrS Frm Burn's 1 model. It was at the store in 1927 that a scout spotted her and broke her into chorus-line work.

Since then, she had appeared in "Rosalie" and "Simple Simon" and "Whoopee" their way through "the llames to reach her. It was Richman who rest of this story is told by Whitney Bolton, the theatrical critic for The Telegraph: "Tliere is no more impressive testimonial to the diameter and persoruility of Helen Walsh than tfie unanimous decision by the union stageliands and musicians of tfie Ziegfeld Tlteater to contribute their services. It to be counted as a remarkable gesture, since the code in such instances has been directly opposed to gifls of work. All of us liave commented on unum tabor in Die past and the comments have not been gentle or kindly. Benefits have never before this enjoyed union cooperation without pay.

It is therefore remarkable and compelling and ultogetlier fine that without persuasion, without even hint, the stagehands and musicians responded unanimously and without pay. "It is no less a remarkable testimony to the esteem in which Miss Walsh was held. I can think of a dozen stars, two dozen featured players and a idlderness of showgirls whose death would not affect the stagehands. "It would be banal and somewhat silly to dust off that quaint old cliche that Broadway has a heart after all. I don't think this has anything to do with Broadway.

Broadway, whatever that may be, has nothing whatever to do with the fact that more than 60 unionized men agreed without quibble or dissenting vote to show their affection for a girl of the show world." EFT UNSAID by superstitious show people I I were the terrible words: The Follies Curse. UB1 Misfortune and woe had been rained down upon so many of Florenz Ziegfeld's Glorified Girls; not even counting lives merely ruined by drink and drugs and dubious taste in men, the list of victims was considerable. Olive Thomas, who accidentally drank poison in 1920. Martha Mansfield, burned to death when a spark from a match set her dress aflame in 1923. Kay Laurell, dead of childbirth in 1927.

Myrna Darby, dead of sunburn in 1929. Bobbie Storey and Allyn King, both of them suicides in 1930. The Follies Curse would go on claiming Ziegfeld girls for years yet This year it had chosen Helen Walsh, of Riverdale dead at 23, before her life had barely even begun. and other shows, and now, in 1931, Florenz Ziegfeld had put her in the current edition of his famous Follies. The season's show was headlined by singing star Harry Richman, and it also featured the sensational Gladys Glad, showgirl wife of the Daily Mirror's high-rolling Broadway columnist Mark Hellinger, and by and by did Helen Walsh of Riverdale Ave.

become chums with all three of these very glamorous people. In early July, Harry Richman bought himself a 36-foot motor yacht, a broad-beamed, twin-screw cruiser called Chevalier II, which he docked at Greenport, L.I., and on Sunday the 26th he took on 140 gallons of gasoline, hired a pilot and welcomed aboard a small party of friends for a sunny day of fishing off Green Hill. The group included his lady friend of the moment a Follies chorine named Virginia Biddle, Mr. and Mrs. Mark Hellinger and Helen Walsh.

They were all making themselves comfortable as the pilot a Capt Samuel White, stepped aboard. Later, at the inquest, neither White nor Richman could remember which one of them had pressed the starter button. That was when the boat exploded. THE BLAST was heard for miles. White was blown overboard.

Virginia Biddle and Gladys Glad, who were fortunate enough to have been near the hatch, scrambled through it to safety. Helen Walsh was less lucky. Deep in the smoke-filled cabin, she lay trapped beneath burning rubble, shrieking. Hellinger and Richman, their suits afire, fought swooped her up in his arms, got her out of the inferno, threw her into the water and leaped in after her to hold her afloat Hellinger pulled them both to the pier as Greenport firemen arrived and bystanders mobilized their automobiles to rush the victims to Eastern Long Island Hospital. "My face, my face," screamed the most beautiful girl of the 1931 Follies.

INITIALLY, IT WAS felt by physicians that there was a good chance of recovery. But then the poisonous toxins that accompany burns quickly ravaged her body, and she died early Monday evening. Richman was not immediately informed, and that night he returned in bandages to his Follies role and the show went on, as shows do. Virginia Biddle, seriously burned, remained hospitalized. Gladys Glad, who had escaped the flames largely unscathed, stayed at Virginia's bedside and didn't make the show either.

"Hark, I Hear the Angels Calling," sang the mourners at St Margaret's Catholic Church in Riverdale on July 30, some of Broadway's biggest names, people far more famous than dead Helen Walsh, somber stars who had turned out to grieve for one of their own: Helen Morgan, Ruth Etting, Jack Pearl, Hal LeRoy, Bobby Connolly, Gene Buck. Richman and Hellinger and Ziegfeld were among the pallbearers. "She was the finest of American womanhood," said Ziegfeld. For the benefit of the dead woman's mother, Ziegfeld scheduled a special memorial matinee performance of the Follies on Aug. 11, and the ro ID ID (D.