Helen of Troy, N.Y. - Act II

By Don Rittner

Last week you learned that “Helen of Troy, N.Y.” was the larger-than-life mural at the inside entrance of Troy’s Proctor’s Theater, the center of a novel, a diamond-robbing moll of the Roaring Twenties, and the center of a Kaufman-Connelly Broadway play in 1923.

Shortly after the successful Broadway play, Harry Charles Witwer (1880-1929), a writer and screenwriter of the first half of the 20th century, apparently suggested a movie version of “Helen.” An advertisement (lantern slide) I found for the movie was presented by the British-owned Film Booking Offices of America, Inc. (FBO) as, “Helene of Troy, N.Y.,” not “Helen,” and billed as “Another One of the Beauty Parlor Series Suggested by the Famous H.C. Witwer, Cosmopolitan Magazine Stories.” It starred Al Cooke and Kit Guard and had a supporting cast of Lorraine Easton, Thelma Hill, and Danny O’Shea. It was directed by Arvid Gilstrom. The ad boasts “More Laughs Than an Ant Hill Has Ants!” I believe it was a silent movie, not a talkie.

Witwer wrote for many of the leading magazines of the day and also penned a number of screenplays himself. I could not find any article written about Helen by him, nor could I find anything about the movie other than the lantern slide, so how he “suggested” it is puzzling. Film Booking Offices released 444 films between 1926 and 1929 and "Helene of Troy, N.Y." is not listed anywhere.

This British movie distributor became the centerpiece of Joe Kennedy’s (President Kennedy’s father) entrance into Hollywood. Using insider information he received, Kennedy bought the FBO, and then used the profits from FBO to purchase the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). He then turned around and purchased KAO (Keith-Albee-Orpheum Theaters Corp.), a movie chain with 700 theaters in the US and Canada, with more than two million daily viewers. Kennedy then merged FBO with his chain of theaters (KAO) to form the famous RKO, and then had RCA trade its FBO stock for stock in the new company. He made a nice $2 million from the deal. Whether “Helene of Troy, N.Y.” was ever distributed or survives from this company is still a mystery.

Helen appeared again during the 1950s-60s when poet Peter Viereck, one of the leading poets of the time, penned the following:

To Helen of Troy (N.Y.)

I sit here with the wind is in my hair;

I huddle like the sun is in my eyes,

I am (I wished you’d contact me) alone.

A fat lot you’d wear crape if I was dead.

It figures, who I heard there when I phoned you;

It figures, when I came there, who has went.

Dogs laugh at me, folks bark at me since then;

“She is,” they say, “no better than she ought to;”

I love you irregardless how they talk.

You should of done it (which it is no crime)

With me you should of done it, what they say.

I sit here with the wind is in my hair.

Ungrammatical perhaps, but hey, he's a poet. Helen appears again as recently as 1996. Carol Buck’s book Love Goddesses (St. Martin’s Press) contains three romances with each heroine having a name based on a historical figure. One of the short stories is titled “Myth and Magic: Helen of Troy, New York” and is written by Paula Detmer Riggs. This story is based on Helen Delorio from our city and her dealings with ex-husband and son.

The latest incarnation of Helen is from Greg Olear, a writer from Astoria who has penned a movie script entitled “Helen of Troy, N.Y.” Greg and “Helen” were semifinalists in the Scriptapalooza Screenwriting Contest in 2001.

I asked Greg what his version of “Helen” was about and he replied: “It's basically a modernization of the Helen of Troy story, set in Troy, N.Y., as a teen comic flick. She attends the private girls school there -- the name escapes me -- and is a conspiracy theorist. Paris, the hero, is on the photography team and goes to the public high school.”

Finally, I can report that I have actually found an off-Broadway troupe that performed the Kaufman-Connelly “Helen of Troy, N.Y.” in 1986. I am now negotiating with them to bring the troupe to the Troy Music Hall in the fall of 2005. It will be the first time “Helen” is played in her hometown, and I can’t think of a more appropriate thing to do than to bring a historic musical about our historic city to one of the most historic music halls in the country.

So stay tuned. Exit, stage left.