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

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 The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

. She soon began appearing in Broadway plays like ''Roar China'' and ''The Gilded Princess''.

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. 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 Hollywood Regency, sometimes called Regency Moderne, is a design style that describes both interior design and landscape architecture characterized by the bold use of color and contrast often with metallic and glass accents meant to signify both op ...

craze of the 1940s and 1950s.

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.

Selected Broadway credits

* ''Roar China'' * ''The Gilded Princess'' * ''The Shanghai Gesture''

References

American film actresses 1907 births 1937 deaths Actresses from Baltimore American stage actresses American people of Korean descent 1937 suicides Suicides by gas Suicides in New York City {{US-stage-actor-stub