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| Helen Keener (pencil drawing after an early newspaper photo) |
Helen Keener grew up in Davenport, Iowa,
where she attended Lincoln School.
In
1921, at age 16, she won a national beauty contest sponsored by the Chicago
Tribune.
Within
a few years, she was in California, posing for publicity photographs. Trying to
turn a beauty contest into a living. Hollywood had plenty of pretty girls. The
trick was being one they remembered after the picture came down.
Keener
did all right.
Her
first feature was The Married Flapper in 1922, starring Marie
Prevost and Kenneth Harlan. Keener played Muriel Vane. The title tells you all
you need to know about what the studios were selling. Flappers were hot. So was
youth. Pretty young women photographed well and cost little.
Keener
fit the bill.
Early
on, she worked under the name Barbara Worth. As Worth, she appeared in An
Old Sweetheart of Mine in 1923. Other pictures followed,
including The Brass Bottle and Tea—with a Kick!
Hollywood started paying attention.
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| Helen holding the check she won in the Chicago Tribune beauty contest (Davenport Democrat & Leader. May 16, 1921) |
In 1923, she was named “Miss Hollywood.” A year later came something better. She was picked as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1924.
It’s
a ridiculous name now. It probably sounded a little ridiculous then, too.
The
Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers picked a handful of young
actresses each year, saying these were the girls to watch. Part prediction,
part beauty contest, part publicity racket. The studio got photographs.
Newspapers got copy. The actresses got their names splashed around the country.
Sometimes
it worked.
Clara
Bow had been a baby star. Joan Crawford would be one. So would Fay Wray and
Mary Astor.
Hazel
Keener joined the club in 1924.
She
made Westerns. Lots of them. She appeared with cowboy star Fred Thomson
in Galloping Gallagher and North of Nevada.
In North
of Nevada, Keener played Marion Ridgeway, an Eastern woman who inherits a
ranch and winds up in the usual mess of land, bad men, horses, and trouble.
(Des Moines Register. June 3, 1913)
Film Daily called it a “good average picture.” Not high praise, but the story wasn’t much, either. The stunts worked, and Western audiences weren’t buying tickets for long conversations about the human condition.
Another
review singled out a scene where she attended a prize fight disguised as a boy
and described her performance as “extremely comical.” So she could do more than
stand beside a horse and look worried.
More
Westerns followed: The Mask of Lopez, The Dangerous Coward, The
Fighting Sap and Hard Hittin’ Hamilton.
Keener
bounced around genres, too.
She
played Margot in Parisian Love with Clara Bow. She appeared
in Ports of Call and Ten Days. There were leads,
supporting parts, and pictures that came and went so fast hardly anybody
remembers them.
In
1925, she appeared in The Freshman as the College Belle. It
wasn’t a big role. Jobyna Ralston was the leading lady. But this was a Harold
Lloyd film, and Harold Lloyd was huge.
The
Freshman was
one of Lloyd’s biggest hits. He played a college kid desperate to become
popular and too clueless to realize everybody was laughing at him. Keener’s
College Belle was part of that world.
It
didn’t make her a star, but it survived. A lot of her movies didn’t.
That’s
one of the strange things about silent film careers. An actor could make forty
or fifty pictures and leave behind only a handful anybody can actually
watch.
Film
stock burned. Studios junked prints. Nobody thought much about preserving
yesterday’s entertainment when there was another picture opening Friday.
The
Freshman survived
and eventually became recognized as one of the important comedies of the silent
era. So Hazel Keener survived with it.
(Davenport Democrat & Leader. July 1, 1923)
She kept making pictures.
In
1926 came Vanishing Hoofs. In 1927 she appeared in One Hour
of Love, The First Night, Whispering Sage, The
Silent Partner and The Gingham Girl, where she played
Letty O’Day.
She
was busy.
Hollywood
had tagged her as a future star. The newspapers had photographs. She had the
Miss Hollywood title and the WAMPAS blessing. She worked with people who were
genuinely famous.
But
her big break never quite came.
A
1925 newspaper feature described her climb through the movie business as a long,
uphill struggle.
That’s
closer to the truth.
For
every Clara Bow, there were hundreds of Hazel Keeners—women who got through the
gate, got onto the set, got their names in the paper and then spent years
trying to move another inch.
And
then the movies started talking. Studios needed actors who could handle
dialogue. And Hazel didn’t fit the bill.
Years
later, she came back.
She
played Mrs. Wilkes in That Gang of Mine. In 1941. She had a
supporting part as Mary Denham in Murder by Invitation.
Then
came smaller roles. And smaller ones. Sometimes she wasn’t credited at all.
Keener
turned up in The Farmer’s Daughter and A Double Life in
1947, Joan of Arc in 1948, The Doctor and the Girl in
1949, and The Blue Veil in 1951.
In
the 1950s, she followed Hollywood onto television. She appeared in Hopalong
Cassidy in 1954 and Judge Roy Bean in 1956.
Later
in life came another turn. Keener reportedly became a minister in the Church of
Religious Science.
She
died in Pacific Grove, California, on August 7, 1979. She was 74.
She
never became the star Hollywood told everybody she might become in 1924.
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