Helen Parrish

Parrish was born in Columbus, Georgia. She started in movies at the age of 4, getting her first part playing Babe Ruth's daughter in the silent film Babe Comes Home in 1927. She was featured in the Our Gang comedy shorts and sometimes played the lead character as a child, co-starring with some of the great female stars of the day. In her teens she made herself known as a kid sister. During this time she also starred opposite Deanna Durbin in several of her films, playing a jealous, spiteful rival.

Their first film together, Mad About Music (1938), worked so well that they soon formed a sort of Shirley Temple/Jane Withers team in a couple of other movie confections for Universal. In their second film together, Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939), Parrish replaced Barbara Read as sister Kay Craig. Her films included X Marks the Spot (1931), When a Feller Needs a Friend (1932), A Dog of Flanders (1935), Little Tough Guy (1938), I'm Nobody's Sweetheart Now (1940), You'll Find Out (1940), Too Many Blondes (1941), X Marks the Spot (1942; a remake of her earlier film), Mystery of the 13th Guest (1943) and The Wolf Hunters (1949).

By her mid-twenties she had left motion pictures and turned to television, co-hosting Hour Glass, the first U.S. network variety show in 1946-47. In an era when "... it was a social 'taboo' for a pregnant woman to display herself in public," Parrish was forced to leave Hour Glass as a result of her pregnancy. In 1953, she was host of It's a Good Idea and This Is Your Music.

One notable TV role was that of Geraldine Rutherford in the first season of the American television situation comedy Leave It to Beaver.

Her last role on television was as women's editor of a morning program, Panorama Pacific, on the West Coast.

Parrish appeared in TV commercials for a variety of products throughout the 1950s, earning more income from them than from roles in shows. In 1955, she said that making commercials "turned out to be the next best thing to owning an oil well."