Helen M. Jesmer was the mother of the original Cat Woman, Julie Newmar. She also the daughter of Nelson Adulphus Jesmer’s cousin, Hiram Bert Jesmer, the son of Nelson E. Jesmer and Sarah Goulding Jesmer, Nelson A. Jesmer’s uncle and aunt.

Link to Jesmer family history page

Link to Julie Newmar, The original Cat woman.

Link to Jesmer Mysteries Explained

Helen (aka Helene) Jesmer was Hiram Burt Jesmer & Julia Nyquist’s daughter. Hiram was Nelson E Jesmer & Sarah Goulding’s son.  These photos are from, “Jazz Age Beauties: the Lost Collection of Ziegfeld Photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston” (2006) by Robert Hudovernik.  Helen was a Ziegfeld girl until a car accident cut her career short. Here is her entry in the Internet Broadway Database: www.ibdb.com/person.php?id=394811

Helen’s daughter, Julie, was Helen & Don Newmeyer’s daughter. Julie says that her mother “was a girl with glorious Swedish-French genes”. Helen’s Swedish comes from her mother, Julia Nyquist. Julia & Hiram married in 1898, Mille Lacs Co, MN. In an interview with “Broadway Blogspot” Julie says that her mother was “a beautiful Swedish descendant from Minnesota”. Redheaded Helen Jesmer, was a star of the Follies of 1920. Her father, six-foot-four Donald Newmeyer, was a professor at Los Angeles City College and at one time a Chicago Bears football player. (http://home.earthlink.net/~stooges/id5.html) Born on August 16, 1933, in Los Angeles, their daughter, Julie Newmar was a ballerina for the Los Angeles opera and is a Tony award winning actress. She is also well-known for her portrayal of the (first) Catwoman in the 1960s Batman television series.

In the forward to “Jazz Age Beauties” , Julie said, “My mother had a foreshortened career because of an automobile accident.”

Here is a summary of the accident:

query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F70A15FC355411… from the New York Times Archives that mentions her father, H.B. Jesmer, in Seattle.

From Papaskino… wanted to share this with you. From other articles it sounds like she sued for $250K. This article suggests she was granted $75K. repository.library.nd.edu/view/120/756628.pdf

After the accident, Helen could not remain in New York and she opened up a clothing store, under the name “Chalene”,  in Los Angeles, where she designed 1930’s fashions, worn by the stars of Hollywood.

http://julienewmar.com/videos/fashions-from-the-30s/

Helen M. Jesmer

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mercierhedlund/pafn322.htm#5819

Sheridan Enterprise no. 115 January 03, 1922, page 1, Sheridan, WY
New York, Jan 2, Behind the suit for $250, 000 brought by pretty Miss Helene Jesmer, formerly of the “Greenwich Village Follies,” against Philip M Plant, nineteen- year-old heir to the millions of Morton F. Plant, dead shipping magnate, is believed to be a romance which in the eyes of the novelist violates every rule of the game.
On the evening of November 1, 1920, Miss Jesmer was riding with young Plant, in the latter’s automobile, from New Haven to New York, when the car struck a tree on Pelham Bay Parkway. In the car also were four of Plant’s school chums. All were injured. Miss Jesmer, however, was the only one seriously hurt. Her skull was fractured, something which caused her physicians for many days to hold out no promise of recovery. Her jaw was broken. Her luxuriant hair was partly scalped from her head. Many of her teeth were shattered. Philip Plant escaped with a broken leg, which soon healed.

She Denies Romance.

Several days after the accident it was known that the young actress would live, but would never regain the lovable beauty that had made her, at nineteen, one of the most popular and promising of the younger stage women. In social circles rumor spread of the forthcoming marriage of Miss Jesmer and Plant. It had been known that the couple, friends from childhood days in Seattle, had been seen frequently together at social functions in the preceding months. Whether the romance had progressed beyond the budding stage or not at the time of the automobile catastrophe, what more fitting as a closing chapter than proposal of marriage from the hero who was the unintentional cause of her injuries?

But the closing chapter was not shaped according to the rules of the popular novelist. Sometimes – a great many times – a hero in real life has little in common with the hero in fiction.  At any rate, on the day she left the New York hospital, in January of last year, Miss Jesmer denied that she and young Plant were engaged or had any intention of becoming so.

Philip Sent To Europe

This announcement caused much gossip in view of the fact that the day previous had seen the sudden departure for Europe of Philip Plant, under the watchful eye of his mother, Mrs. William Hayward, wife of the present United States district attorney.
Interviews with Miss Jesmer quoted her as saying that she would find her way back to the state at an early date. Just when she became aware of the brutal reality that this was barred to her is not known.
She went to Seattle and spent the ensuing Spring and Summer convalescing at the home of her father, Mr. H.B. Jesmer, who for years has been, incidentally, a close friend of the boy’s family. The case at this point dropped from public view to spring in life again last Tuesday, when the filing of the damage suit became known.
At the same time it transpired that Miss Jesmer, far from having recovered from her injuries, is just beginning to experience their terrible effects. She has become almost blind in one eye. Efforts of skilled surgeons have thus far failed to rebuild the cheek crushed in by the accident. The question of whether young Plant, wished to marry Miss Jesmer before her disfigurement is one that will figure prominently in the coming hearing on the bill for damages.

It is known that on the very day of the accident Miss Jesmer’s father, in Seattle, received a letter from her in which she wrote:  “He is the finest man I ever knew, but, daddy, somehow I don’t love him any more. I don’t know why.” Did young Plant propose marriage to the girl who suffered so disastrously in the automobile he drove into a smash-up? And was this proposal refused by the girl, whose pride forbade, possibly, accepting what she might have otherwise considered? These questions point to another twist which the romance may have taken in the closing chapter that will remain hidden until the court proceedings.

Miss Jesmer came to New York three years ago. After posing as a model, she appeared in the Hotel des Artistes as a dancer. A short engagement with Lubovska was followed by a contract with “The Greenwich Village Follies.”  Plant’s father was Selden B Manwaring. His mother obtained a divorce and was married to Morton F. Plant, millionaire shipping man, whose name the boy adopted. Following Plant’s death, Philips mother married Colonel Hayward, in June, 1919.