She was born in 1915 as Helen Claire** Lewis in Fernley, Nevada daughter of Charles Clyde Lewis (Nov 2. 1886 - ), a miner, and Helen Cordelia Hammond (Apr 25. 1885 - Oct 1975). Her mother Helen was a former well known Denver girl, shortly before her wedding a resident of Washington D.C. where attended the Corcoran Art School and was winner of the gold medal there, afterward going to New York to study at the Art League. Her parents were married ca. October 1912 in Fernley and had a son John Hammond Lewis earlier. They would divorce in March 1918.

Helen spent part of her youth on an Indian Reservation. Her mother Helen, art instructor at the university remarried about May 1920. Her (step)father Samuel Lees Joslin* (New Hampshire, Mar 21. 1879 - Reno, Oct 5. 1933) was a doctor. He was attending physician at the Pyramid Lake Indian reservation. As Harvard Medical School student he started his practice in New England, but answered the call of the West and came to Nevada. In January 1932 he was seriously injured in a auto-train crash where he suffered severe bruises and an eye gash when his automobile collided with a boxcar. Believed to have been despond, because of ill health, on October 5. 1933 he fatally shot himself* at his home on South Virginia street, Reno.

While in high school, Helen was judged the foremost actress, playing "Kate" in The Twelve Pound Look, in the annual High School Forensic Tournament (April 1932) held at the university's campus. She also appeared in several campus productions, among others in The Boy Comes Home (1932). After graduating Reno high school she was a Junior at the University of Nevada where Helen followed language and geology studies, but also enjoying extra-curricular activities -  she was prominent in Kappa Alpha Theta sorority and the Dramatic Club.

She played in several one-act plays and three Wolves' Frolic, which were the annual campus vaudeville productions. In 1933's edition of Wolves' Frolic Helen was seen in The Frolickers, a chorus of 16 co-eds and in Kleptonambulism, just two of the 25 acts.

Her first major dramatic role came in Mrs. Bumpstead Leigh (Feb 27. - Mar 1. 1934) at the University of Nevada's educational building. After roles in The Queen's Husband, The Perfect Alibi, and As You Like It Helen Lewis also played the vicaress when the Reno High School Alumni and students performed The Servant in the House (Grenada Theatre, May 18. 1934; University Auditorium, May 22-23. 1934).

The Wolves' Frolic of October 1934 had Helen Lewis in Desire Under the Maples and "a Charleston rhythm" act called Ah! Wilderness!

Late 1934, after one such performance of Wolves' Frolic, Max Reinhardt came up to her and asked her to read a part of Midsummer Night’s Dream and subsequently to play Hermia in his traveling production. "After a night spent convincing my mother that I didn't want to finish college and be prepared for a teaching career, I departed the next day to join the show. To say I have never for one moment regretted the move is a strong understatement. I know that it's sound judgment to prepare yourself so that you have something to fall back on. In my case, however, I think it might have been disastrous, for had I finished college and obtained my teaching license, I'm sure there would have been a number of occasions in my struggles in the theatre when I would have felt forced to give up and 'fall back.' But since I had no secondary means of earning a living, when the sledding got tough, I merely gritted my teeth, ate less and hung on. For which I thank my lucky stars!"
 
Accompanied by her mother, she traveled to Los Angeles, where after a tryout she was awarded the role and immediately left for Chicago. She was in her third year when she joined the Warner Brother stock company, which Reinhardt was directing. She was cast as understudy for Olivia De Havilland in the Shakespearean fantasy. After only four performances (two weeks) De Havilland left the company and Helen Lewis took over. Leading parts on stages in Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis soon followed and "she even turned down three Hollywood contracts".

After 30 appearances in a 6 weeks tour, halfway January 1935, she returned to Los Angeles where she would study for two months under Reinhardt's guidance. She studied French and Chinese, took vocal lessons, and learned dance routines. She even auditioned for a role in The Miracle, another show produced by Reinhardt. The cast for the New York production of A Midsummer Night's Dream was to be announced March 15. Apparently neither proved a success. She had withdrawn from the university for the remainder of that semester but planned to continue the following term. So she returned to Reno and worked for a while with the Reno Little Theater.

When The Little Theater started out the sets were built in a rented house on Winter Street—leased for $20 a month—and carted to the University of Nevada auditorium, the Reno High School auditorium, or the Civic Auditorium. After each performance, everything was hauled back to the small studio where men, women, boys, and girls rehearsed and prepared so that, for two nights a month during five or six months of the year, they could entertain Reno's citizens.

On October 15. 1935, a Reno audience witnessed the first performance of the Little Theater group: Three Cornered Moon, played for two nights at the University of Nevada auditorium. Edwin Semenza directed that inaugural play and the cast included Blythe Bulmer, Randall Ross, and Evelyn Brussard. In November, for various reasons, the Reno Little Theater players moved their second production Goodbye Again (Nov 25.- 26. 1935) to the Reno High School auditorium and this marked the debut of Helen Lewis (as Bixby's secretary Anne Rogers). In Reno's Little Theater she played the lead in Goodbye Again (November, 1935).

"She was an excellent actress," Edwin S. Semenza recalls, "There was a cat that lived on the Reno High School stage, and it was very much interested in our production, and insisted on wandering out on the stage. We were all trying to keep that cat from getting onto the stage (this was the opening night performance). And nothing would do. When somebody’s back was turned, it just went trotting out onto the stage. She put the cat outside the door a number of times. One time, in a very dramatic scene, the cat came onstage again. So she picked him up, went over to the window and put the cat out. Now, this was supposed to be twenty-three stories above the street! It just brought down the most tremendous house!"

She also got a  leading role in the Pasadena Community Playhouse production of Sounding Brass (Feb 1936). With the Reno Little Theater she would end that season in the Civic Auditorium as the star in The Trial of Mary Dugan (May 28-29. 1936), a melodrama that had been a Broadway hit. It was a difficult production to stage, but it quickly won acclaim for Helen.

Newspapers in Reno reported that Helen had left for New York in August 1936 to "continue her studies". She arrived in New York with less than 25 dollars. "I had saved a little money and I lived at the Rehearsal Club which is endowed by rich women for young women stage hopefuls. I remember I barely managed to pay the rent and I was always hungry." One of her early roommates was Marion Shockley.

She applied for an audition at an advertising agency, was successful and in one day was appearing before the microphone. So her first paycheck there was for a one-and-a-half-minute "commercial". She went from theatrical agent to agent but didn't have much luck. "I remember one producer looked at me and told me one of my eyes was smaller than the other. Then I thought, 'Now I've heard everything." She managed to exist by posing for fashion artists, handing out campaign leaflets on street corners and by working at Spaldling's.

On TV she was seen in a light romantic comedy The Noble Lord is about a young girl (Helen Lewis) who pretends to be drowning so that she can attract the attention of a nobleman (Harold De Becker). He saves her and learns of her deception. Pretending to be his own valet, he tests her motives (also starred Robert Lynn) (April 1938) (Picture below left).

Together with Marion Shockley, her New York roommate, she tried out for the role of Nikki Porter in The Adventures of Ellery Queen which went to Marion (1939).

Then she found a satisfactory niche in radio and later in television. She did Ma Perkins (as Gladys Pendleton) for 15 years on radio. As "Ma Perkins" she frequently was seen in TV commercials. A pretty woman with tawny hair, bright brown eyes and a trim figure and she is a delightful person.

In 1939 the drama series Kate Hopkins, Angel of Mercy, starring Helen Lewis, Peggy Allenby, Constance Collier, and Clayton "Bud" Collyer began a 2½-year run on CBS Radio (Clayton later married Marion Shockley).

She also played the part of the dew fairy in performances of Humperdinck's opera Hansel and Gretel (1939), had the leading role in The Pirates of Penzance, and has been soloist with the Schenectady Choral Club and took the lead in a production of the Light Opera Company, My American Cousin.

In 1940 she shared an apartment in New York with Alice Smart, a secretary in advertising. She also befriended Florence Lake, with whom she drove to the coast for a vacation from June 14. to July 3. 1941.

When Helen started rehearsing for an Office of War Information show she met J. David Penn. A whirlwind courtship — met in August, 1942, and married seven months later on March 12. 1943 in New York.  The ceremony was performed at a Fifth Avenue church in New York, where four years ago her brother, John Lewis, and Miss Jess Roy of Reno were married. The simple ceremony was attended by a few close friends and the attendants were Miss Alice Smart and Mr. Marty Elaine, who have been associated with the bride in radio work in New York.

When Fashion Frocks Inc., Cincinnati, presented their first television program on WABD New York, the DuMont station, in September 1944, Helen Lewis served as announcer for the models who displayed 15 dresses.

David spent two-and-a-half years in the Army. Then at the close of the war he entered the State Department as a Special Press Advisor to the International Conference Division, a position he has held ever since. "It's a wonderful and really exciting job, but it is the reason we're so much and so often apart." Helen confided in a 1952 interview.

There's a human interest story of friendship, loyalty - and special talent - When Marion Shockley was seriously ill for nine weeks, her role of Nikki Porter went right on, with few listeners realizing that Marion wasn't at her usual place behind the mike. So in the fall of 1944, she played Nikki Porter in Ellery Queen (Picture right). Helen took over the difficult job of impersonating - not only Nikki Porter - but Marion Shockley playing Nikki! Helen is a gifted mimic who has imitated Queen Elizabeth, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ginger Rogers and many others on The March of Time. In this case she had the special benefit of long, close friendship with the subject of her impersonation.

Her involvement in radio continued with roles in series as The Shadow (Mutual, Oct 14.1945 in "The Murdering Ghost"), This Is Your FBI (ABC, 1945 - 1947), Adventures of the Falcon (Mutual, 1946), Matinee At Meadowbrook (CBS, 1946), Dick Tracy (as Tess Trueheart) (Blue Network/ ABC, 1947), Mystery of the Week (CBS, 1947), The Ford Theater (NBC, 3 episodes 1947-48) and Road of Life (NBC/ CBS, 1949-1952) (as Maggie Lowell Dana). Helen Lewis was one of the actresses who was voice of Nurse Nora Drake in "This is Nora Drake" (CBS, 1951), and was also heard in Backstage Wife (NBC, prior to Sep 1951).

Roland Winters (famous for Charlie Chan) had already met Helen when both were in radio, he saw her first with Agnes Moorehead sitting on top of a grand piano playing jacks. Even before Roland's wife Ada Howe died in 1959, they already started a relationship. They were married on June 22. 1960 in Edgartown, Dukes, Massachusetts.

When she and Winters travelled to Durban, South Africa in 1964 they played together (a rare event) in Never too Late a comedy presented in several South African cities at the invitation of Theatre International of Johannesburg. A 1964 newspaper article describes them as married four years ago. They had hoped to spend some time in their summer house in Martha's Vineyard before the busy winter started. Interviewed on the journey back Helen says: "But when we arrive home my husband may be playing in California and I may be in New York. That's show business. Meanwhile it's wonderful just to relax at sea. We really were very busy in South Africa."

When Roland died in 1989 only his first wife is mentioned in the obituary. Not much is known of Helen since 1964.  Ada Howe's family describes Helen as "sweet" and that she "drank herself to death" in the second half of the 60s.