Helen Mowery(1922-2008)

This blonde Columbia starlet was born Helen Emily Inkster and began as a model ("Miss Wyoming" of 1939). She cut her acting teeth at the Pasadena Playhouse and made her screen debut in 1946, appearing primarily in second features as leads or second leads opposite the likes of Richard Dix, Bruce Cabot and (on three occasions) Charles Starrett. Despite her cool patrician beauty and occasional glimpses of talent, her Hollywood career lasted a mere five years. Following the death of her first husband in 1953, Helen toiled for the remainder of the decade as a supporting actress in early TV anthologies and action series like Perry Mason (1957) and Sea Hunt (1958) before quitting the cameras in 1961. She is perhaps best remembered for her role in Mysterious Intruder (1946) (the fifth of eight Columbia instalments of the "Whistler" series, based on a popular CBS radio mystery drama) and as the saloon girl Dixie King in The Fighting Frontiersman (1946).