In the StoryThe Seven Husbands of Helena Vance
Officially, Helena Vance had one husband. She loved seven. When the time comes to tell her life story, the screen legend does not give the expected confession. Helena remembers seven marriages, seven stories whose years overlap instead of following one another. For Mara Solis, entrusted with receiving her account, the archives can no longer distinguish experience, memory, and legend.
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Helena Vance, born Helen Vassallo in San Pedro in 1940. First credited role at nineteen. Two Oscars, four iconic on-screen marriages, a career that had survived three upheavals in the studio system and several attempts to declare it over. Married once, in 1965, to director Peter Lorne. Widowed since 2009. No children. No remarriage. No publicly acknowledged partner after Lorne’s death.Read the excerpt ↗