Background
Walker was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, and made her film debut in 1942.
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Helen Walker
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She earned a solid reputation playing leading roles in comedies - a "reactress" to comic leads, as she described lieutenant Walker"s film debut came in 1942"s Lucky Jordan, a comedy about a gangster (Alan Ladd) who ends up drafted in the Army, where Walker"s character reports him AWOL. In the farce Brewster"s Millions, her sweetheart inherits $8 million, but can"t keep it unless he can spend a million of it within a specified time. Walker also played the romantic interest of Fred MacMurray in the popular comedy Murder, He Says in 1945.
After a promising start in Hollywood, Walker was involved in a 1946 car wreck.
A hitchhiker was killed, and Helen and two others were seriously injured. She was charged with drunk and reckless driving.
She was subsequently acquitted and made a comeback, but her career never fully recovered. Her final big-screen appearance was in Philip Yordan"s film noir The Big Combo in 1955.
She retired from acting at the age of 35 and died in North Hollywood, California from cancer at the age of 47.
She had just finished making what would become her most well-known film, 1947"s Nightmare Alley, and was filming Heaven Only Knows when an auto accident drastically disrupted Walker"s career. On December 31, 1946, while driving the car of director Bruce "Lucky" Humberstone from Palm Springs to Hollywood, she gave a ride to three hitchiking soldiers named Robert East. Lee, Philip Mercado, and Joseph Montaldo. Near Redlands, California, the car hit a divider and flipped over, killing Lee and causing serious injuries to Walker and the other two passengers.
She was charged with drunk driving and reckless driving, and Mercado brought a civil suit for $150,000 against her.
Her criminal trial for manslaughter ended with a dismissal on the motion of San Bernardino County District Attorney Jerome B. Kavanaugh.
