"CHIEFLY O'HARAS" - HELEN II

"CHIEFLY O'HARAS"
[EPISODE SIX]
"A MODEL LIFE"

Helen agreed with Kate's idea to make some money by modeling, and left the details in arranging it to her cousin (thinking that Kate's scant knowledge of the law would make her a good choice to be her agent.) With a little research, Kate found a photographer to take Helen's pictures for submission to the local branch of the Winfred-Louder department store chain.

Henry Strand - "Portraits A Specialty" - gave them a very good deal on the session. But then, that's because he had something else in mind.....

Kate put together a sampling of the pictures and, wanting to make sure that Helen was seriously considered out of all the applicants, sent the pictures straight to the store's manager. 

As it happened, the assistant manager had just come back from a visit with her twin sister Laura Ford and Laura's incredibly child-like husband, toy designer Horace Ford, when the envelope of pictures arrived. The assistant manager (At this point in the timeline, we only know her first name as "Dorothy", but she preferred to be called "Dottie".) intercepted the package and recognized immediately that Helen would be the perfect choice to be the model for their store's advertising in the Daily Planet. Without getting approval from her boss, Dottie put the ad campaign into motion.

Luckily for Dottie, her hunch was right. The ads in the Daily Planet proved to be so popular that circulation for the paper began to rise.

A young advertising copywriter from New York City was on a business trip to Metropolis soon after the ads started running. He happened to see Helen's picture in the paper and saw the chance to parlay her talents as a model into an opportunity to become a junior partner at his ad agency.

So Darrin Stephens mailed the clippings of every Winfred-Louder ad he could find which featured Helen to Eric Forrester, who had only recently begun his own fashion house in Los Angeles. In the accompanying note, he suggested that Miss O'Hara would make the perfect model to represent Forrester Fashions. (If Forrester agreed, Durwood suggested that he should hire the McMann & Tate Agency to make it happen.)

Meanwhile, Dottie's unauthorized advertising campaign for the Metropolis store came to the attention of the powers that be at the Winfred-Louder headquarters. She was instructed to come to the main store in Cleveland, Ohio, where she fully expected to be fired. Instead, she was given a promotion to work at the Cleveland headquarters, with an eye towards signing Helen J. O'Hara to be the national face (and body) for Winfred-Louder. There she soon met the elderly founder of the firm and not long after that, she married him.

Others were starting to take interest in the... talents of Helen O'Hara. That photographer, Henry Strand, saw his chance to capitalize on those photos as well. He knew that it was about time for him to abandon his life as "Henry Strand" and begin somewhere else for a whole new lifespan, his fourth. 

(He began life in 1849 as L.H. Rice and then when he no longer could explain why he never aged, he began again as Louis Brady in Connecticut.) His plan was to go back to New York City, this time as "Alfred Fellig", and perhaps get a job as a crime photographer like Mike Kovac, a young man with a camera just making a name for himself in the Big Apple.

But in order to do that, Strand needed money. So he contacted Drew Patton, the founder and publisher of the racy gentleman's magazine "Emperor" and showed him some of the pictures of Helen, but without revealing her identity. Patton was so impressed that he paid more than Strand's asking price in a finder's fee and then he flew out to Metropolis. He was hoping to sign Helen to grace his magazine's centerfold as "Miss Metropolis".

Meanwhile, in the deserts outside of the Metropolis environs, up-and-coming movie producer Bob Evans was overseeing the production of a Western called "Standing Cow, Daughter Of Sitting Bull" (which starred Joyce Whitman and Rance McGrew) when he saw Helen's picture in the paper. He immediately called his partner Ben Flicker back in Hollywood.

Producer Bob Evans
making his entrance on 'The Stevie Parsons Show'

As Flicker remembered it in his autobiography (published by Whitestone Press), "Bob called me at our offices at Mammoth Studio and said 'What if I told you I had the next big blonde bombshell, a complete unknown who will cost us practically nothing to sign, but who could potentially bring in millions at the box office? Is that something you might be interested in?'"

According to Ben Flicker, Evans' plan was to drop negotiations with the too-demanding Nora Chandler to play the lead in "The Cowgirl And Pistol Pete" (opposite Sam Harris) and hire instead this young beauty. Maybe even cast her in "Duel in Dry Bones Gulch", the sequel to "Ambush At Dry Gulch".

Ben Flicker wrote that he was so fired up by Bob Evans' enthusiasm, that if she proved to be half as good as Bob said, they'd cut off negotiations with the too-expensive star Grace Wheeler and cast this new girl in their upcoming sci-fi film "Attack Of The 50 Foot Anteater".

"But apparently, the deal fell through," wrote Flicker, "I don't know what happened; maybe Bob vermasselt the hondling. He never told me. And I never did find out her name. Always wondered what became of her.  But I don't think she ever made it into the movies.  Or television, for that matter."

Ben Flicker
being interviewed by Corky Sherwood for 'FYI'

What happened was that Helen, despite the cajoling from Kate, turned down the offers made by Bob Evans, Drew Patton, Darrin Stephens and the future Mrs. Louder. This time she was following the advice of her criminology professor, Dr. Carl Hyatt.

Sensing that her heart was still set on a career in law enforcement, Dr. Hyatt reminded Helen that these offers to appear in movies, magazines, and fashion shows would gain her so much pubicity that she would never be able to work effectively as an undercover detective should the need arise.

So Helen contented herself with modeling on a local level, which still brought in enough money to cover her college tuition and living expenses. And when she graduated from UMetro after four years, she applied for admission into the Metropolis Police Academy.

SHOWS CITED:

• 'Adventures Of Superman'
• 'The Betty White Show'
• 'The Beverly Hillbillies'
• 'Bewitched'
• 'The Bold & The Beautiful'
• 'Checkmate'
• 'Columbo'
• 'Dream On'
• 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'
• 'The Drew Carey Show'
• 'Entourage'
• 'Gilligan's Island'
• 'The Hero'
• 'It Ain't Half Hot, Mum'
• 'Kate McShane'
• 'L.A. Law'
• 'Murphy Brown'
• 'Man With A Camera'
• 'The Odd Couple'
• 'The Twilight Zone'
• 'The X-Files'

Coming up next: "The Girl With Something Extra"

BCnU!