Helen Westley

Helen Westley was born Henrietta Remsen Meserole Manney on March 28, 1875 in Brooklyn, New York. She attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where she honed the craft that would define a three‑decade career on stage and screen. Her early work took her through stock theater and vaudeville circuits across the United States, giving her a versatile foundation that later allowed her to slip seamlessly between comedy and drama. Westley's New York debut arrived on September 13, 1897, when she played Angelina McKeagey in The Captain of the Nonesuch, a role that announced her arrival in the city’s theatrical world. A few years later she helped organize the Washington Square Players, appearing as the Oyster in Another Interior on February 19, 1915, and she soon became a founding board member of the influential Theatre Guild. Through the Guild she took part in groundbreaking productions of George Bernard Shaw such as Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, and Major Barbara, as well as the original Broadway runs of Green Grow the Lilacs and Liliom, roles that would later be immortalized in the Rodgers and Hammerstein classics Oklahoma! and Carousel.