Helen Broderick

Helen Broderick (August 11, 1891 – September 25, 1959) was an American film and stage actress known for her comic roles, especially as a wisecracking sidekick.

Broderick began on Broadway as a chorus girl in the Follies of 1907, the first of Florenz Ziegfeld's annual revues. She went on to perform in the vaudeville duo "Broderick & Crawford" (with her husband) until the entertainment form went out of style, moving to a solo career in her first play Nifties of 23. By the late 1920s, she was playing leads and featured roles, most notably in Fifty Million Frenchmen. In the early 1930s, she starred in the revues The Band Wagon and As Thousands Cheer. Her move to Hollywood came when her stage successes such as Fifty Million Frenchmen were made into movies, and an image as the quick-quipping friend soon followed in support roles for the Astaire-Rogers movies Top Hat and Swing Time. She had leading roles in a few B movies, such as amateur sleuth Hildy Withers in Murder on a Bridle Path. The wife of actor Lester (Pendergast) Crawford (they appear together in the 1930 eight-minute Nile Green, and two 1931 seven-minute comedy shorts: The Spirits of 76th Street and Court Plastered), they were the parents of Academy Award-winning actor Broderick Crawford (1911–1986). Broderick's last appearance on film was with Deanna Durbin in the comedy Because of Him (1946).