Scarcely remembered today, Helen Twelvetrees was one of the best known faces (and names) of early talking films. A graduate of New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Twelvetrees came to Hollywood at 19 to try her luck at films and wound up with contracts at Fox, Pathé, and eventually RKO Radio Pictures. She was the lisping heroine of the early sound film The Ghost Talks (1929) and took the lead as well in The Cat Creeps (1930), a remake of the silent old dark house thriller The Cat and the Canary (1927). Both John Wayne and Clark Gable enjoyed significant early roles opposite Twelvetrees, whose leading men included John Barrymore, Spencer Tracy, and Robert Taylor. With its then frank discussion of American sexual mores, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Unashamed (1932) is vintage Pre-Code cinema, telling the tale of an unmarried woman (Twelvetrees) whose lover attempts to blackmail her family in exchange for safeguarding her sexual history. When protective brother Robert Young kills the cad, the case goes to trial and Twelvetrees' character must decide whether to defend the only man she ever loved or the brother who committed murder to protect her honor. Jean Hersholt, Lewis Stone, and Louise Beavers also appear in this handsomely-mounted melodrama, which seems to have served as the blueprint for Paramount's Disgraced (1933), starring Twelvetrees as another compromised heroine whose private life becomes a matter of public record.

By Richard Harland Smith