Helen Parrish started in movies at the age of five, getting her first part playing Babe Ruth’s daughter in the silent film Babe Comes Home in 1927. She was featured in the Our Gang comedy shorts and sometimes played the lead character as a child, co-starring with some of the great female stars of the day. In her teens she made herself known as a kid sister. But during this time she was probably most notable as an irritant of Deanna Durbin in several of her vehicles, playing a jealous, spiteful rival. Their first film together, Mad About Music (1938), worked so well that they soon formed a sort of Shirley Temple/Jane Withers team in a couple of other movie confections for Universal. In their second film together, Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939), Parrish replaced Barbara Read as sister Kay Craig. Her films included X Marks the Spot (1931), When a Feller Needs a Friend (1932), A Dog of Flanders (1935), Little Tough Guy (1938), I’m Nobody’s Sweetheart Now (1940), Too Many Blondes (1941), X Marks the Spot (1942; a remake of her earlier film), and The Wolf Hunters (1949). By her mid-twenties Helen Parrish had left motion pictures and turned to television, co-hosting Hour Glass, the first U.S. network variety show in 1946-47. One notable TV role was that of Geraldine Rutherford in the first season of the American television situation comedy Leave It to Beaver. Helen Parrish died from cancer in Hollywood in 1959, several weeks before her 35th birthday.