Helen Kim (actress)

Helen Kim (1907-1937) was an American actress who worked on Broadway and in radio in the 1920s and 1930s.[1]

Helen Kim
Born1907
Baltimore, Maryland, US
DiedApril 24, 1937
Manhattan, New York, US
OccupationActress
Spouses
  • James Mont
Randolph J. Thomson
​
(divorced)​

Beginnings and career

Kim was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to William June Kim and Lillian Turner. Her father was Korean, and her mother was Euro-American. After being raised in New York City with her two siblings, Kim attended the University of California at Berkeley. She soon began appearing in Broadway plays like Roar China and The Gilded Princess.[2]

Personal life

Kim made headlines in 1930 when a poet she had been dating, Robert Carroll Pew, committed suicide in front of her by drinking poison.[2] She later married Randolph J. Thomson, who represented himself as a wealthy British theatrical producer, but he ended up being a fraud. The same day she secured a divorce from Thomson, she married her second husband, interior designer James Mont, who is associated with the Hollywood Regency craze of the 1940s and 1950s.[3]

Death

Twenty-nine days after marrying Mont, Kim committed suicide in her Manhattan apartment's kitchen by inhaling gas. At the time, partygoers had gathered in her building for a murder mystery party thrown by another tenant, and journalists mistakenly reported that Helen had planned the affair.[4]

Selected Broadway credits
  • Roar China
  • The Gilded Princess
  • The Shanghai Gesture

References
  1. "Actress and Joke Party Linked by Odd Quirk of Fate". The Los Angeles Times. 26 Apr 1937. Retrieved 2021-05-07.
  2. "Police Say Bride Suicide, Party Hoax a Coincidence". The Oakland Tribune. 26 Apr 1937. Retrieved 2021-05-07.
  3. "James Mont, swanky decorator, who was unmasked yesterday as James..." Getty Images. Retrieved 2021-05-07.
  4. McQueen, Keven (2018-09-15). New England Nightmares: True Tales of the Strange and Gothic. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-03473-1.
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