Helen Hayes

Helen Hayes MacArthur, born Helen Hayes Brown in Washington, D.C., on October 10, 1900, was an American actress whose career stretched across 82 years. Often called the “First Lady of American Theatre,” she became one of the great leading ladies of 20th-century theatre. Her life in performance began almost as soon as childhood did: at five, she was singing onstage at Washington’s Belasco Theatre, across from the White House. By ten, she had appeared in the short silent film Jean and the Calico Doll.

Hayes grew up close to the theatre. Her mother, Catherine Estelle “Essie” Hayes, was an aspiring actress who worked in touring companies, while her father, Francis van Arnum Brown, held several jobs, including clerk at the Washington Patent Office and manager and salesman for a wholesale butcher. Her Catholic maternal grandparents had emigrated from Ireland during the Great Famine. Hayes attended Dominican Academy on Manhattan’s Upper East Side from 1910 to 1912, appearing in school performances such as The Old Dutch and Little Lord Fauntleroy, and later attended the Academy of the Sacred Heart Convent in Washington, graduating in 1917.

Her film career brought major honors, beginning with her sound film debut, The Sin of Madelon Claudet, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She went on to star in Arrowsmith, A Farewell to Arms, The White Sister, Another Language, What Every Woman Knows, and Vanessa: Her Love Story. Yet Hayes did not prefer film to the stage. In 1935 she returned to Broadway and, for three years, played the title role in Gilbert Miller’s production of Victoria Regina, opposite Vincent Price as Prince Albert.

Later, Hayes continued to move between theatre and film. She was involved in the 1951 Broadway revival of J.M. Barrie’s Mary Rose, became the first recipient of the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre in 1953, and won it again in 1969. Her performance in Anastasia in 1956 was considered a comeback after she had suspended her career for several years because of her daughter Mary’s death and her husband’s failing health. In 1970 she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing an elderly stowaway in Airport, and she later appeared in Disney films including Herbie Rides Again, One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing, and Candleshoe.

Hayes was the second person, and the first woman, to win the EGOT: an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. She was also the first person to win the Triple Crown of Acting. President Ronald Reagan awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1986, and she received the National Medal of Arts in 1988. The Helen Hayes Awards, recognizing professional theatre in greater Washington, D.C., have carried her name since 1984, and theatres in New York were also renamed in her honor. Beyond performance, she took pride in a 49-year association with the Helen Hayes Hospital, a nonprofit rehabilitative center overlooking the Hudson River, and in 1982 she co-founded the National Wildflower Research Center with Lady Bird Johnson.

Her words still suit the working life she lived. “An expert in anything was once a beginner” has special force coming from an actress who started as a child singer, learned across silent film, sound film, Broadway, and television, and kept returning to the stage she loved most. Hayes’s career was decorated with rare awards, but its shape was also simple: practice, resilience, and a steady respect for the craft.