Helen Vinson

Vinson was born in Beaumont, Texas, the daughter of oil man Edward Rulfs. She developed a passion for horses during her youth. She studied at the University of Texas at Austin. Vinson's pre-Code screen roles often featured her as the 'other' woman with an active romantic life. Her first film role was Jewel Robbery (1932), which starred William Powell and Kay Francis. She appeared as Doris Delafield in The Kennel Murder Case, starring Powell as Philo Vance. One of her memorable roles was in The Wedding Night (1935), when she played the wife of Gary Cooper's character and the rival of Anna Sten, in a story about the Connecticut tobacco fields. In the RKO film In Name Only (1939), she was cast as the treacherous friend of Carole Lombard, Kay Francis and Cary Grant's characters. She played an undercover federal agent posing as a femme fatale opposite Richard Cromwell in the anti-Nazi drama Enemy Agent (1940). She followed that role with that of Helen Draque in The Thin Man Goes Home. Vinson's film career ended in 1945. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street.