THE WAUPACA COUNTY POST

April 4, 1991

 

WHEN THEN WAS NOW

By Wayne A. Guyant.

 

            Dorothy Graham Mills was a daughter of Charles E. and Sara (Strong) Mills, born July 19, 1897, in Montevideo, Minn.

            She was raised and attended school there, and always had the love for the stage even from her childhood.  Dorothy graduated from the Phail School of Music and Dramatic Arts in Minneapolis, Minn.

            Dorothy started out first as the city editor on her father’s newspaper, the “Montevideoan Daily American.”  Four of her five brothers also owned their own newspapers.  It was while she was with her father’s newspaper, that she met the man she would eventually marry.

            Her stage debut was quite by accident, and brief; it all happened one night in 1922, when an actress with the Acme Chautauqua Company became ill and was hospitalized for two weeks. Dorothy’s chance was just long enough for her to get the trouping bug in her blood.

            After the two-week engagement she returned to work for her father in the newspaper business until the following year, when she joined the Boyd Clark Stock Company in Carroll, Iowa, and the dramatic career of Dorothy Mills shifted into high gear.

            Like so many theatrical people she had to make many changes in jobs to secure advancement in her profession.

            At the age of 26, she joined the Neil Schaffner troupe in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and then traveled with the Frank Norton Company from Oklahoma City, during the late 1920s.

            Dorothy Mills’ stage name had now become Diana Mills.  She stayed with the Norton Company for three years, which included a full month’s engagement in Houston, Texas.  There were nights when she and others from the cast would take in the final acts of he up-and-coming actor, Clark Gable.  Ginger Rogers and Guy Kibbee were among other celebrities she met in the theaters.

            The “new” Diana Mills went to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, playing summer stock in Iowa and Wyoming with the Boyd Truesdale unit for four seasons.  In the beginning of the Depression years she joined the troupe of Leo Truesdale, a nephew of Boyd Truesdale, in South Dakota.

            Along with many others in the entertainment world, salary cuts were the order of the day and only a little summer stock work was available.  Diana Mills folded with the Truesdale players in Leeds, SD.  It was on a Saturday night that they played to a meager crowd of 12; the next day they didn’t eat and things were nip and tuck.

            She returned to Iowa for a few months before going back to the theater.  There was a four-month stand in Montgomery, AL, with Walter Amber, followed by another series of summer stock engagements with Harry Hugo in Nebraska, from 1931 through 1934, and with the Christy Obrecht Troupe. The Depression was still taking its toll.

            In 1935 Diana Mills joined a troupe in Aberdeen, Iowa and two years later on September 17,1937, she married the man she had first met in her father’s newspaper office.  They were married at Milbank, SD.  He was an actor in his own right and a veteran of World War I.  This man was Melvin (Blondic) Helgerson who was born August 8, 1893, in Soldier’s Grove, WI, a son of Martin and Susan (Nelson) Helgerson.  He was the director of his own company, so now the stage names changed to Dick and Dorothy Dickson, and from 1938 through 1946 they played on radio shows in the Dakotas, traveling through many adverse conditions.  There was one night when a blinding blizzard forced them to seek shelter in a schoolhouse.  They said that this was mild compared to the night they had to sleep on pool tables in Stanley, ND.

            After their tour through Wisconsin and Illinois, doing summer stock work, they decided to settle down.  In 1948 they made arrangements with J. P. Adler of Marshfield to manage his Waupaca Theatres.  For months there was the desire to return to the stage, but as time passed they met many people and the desire faded away.

            Melvin (Blondic) Helgerson loved to be in the lobby talking to old friends and making new ones.

            Melvin Helgerson passed away at his home in Waupaca on March 1, 1952, and was buried in the Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Park, at King.  On March 5, 1952, Dorothy, his wife, took over his duties as manager and carried on as he had, meeting the people.

            Her beautiful, smiling face will always be remembered by the patrons who attended the Rosa Theatre.  Dorothy Helgerson was the person who counted the last night’s receipts when the Palace Theatre closed its doors forever on January 12, 1957.

            Dorothy continued to run the Rosa Theatre until September 7, 1962, when she passed away at her home in Waupaca, from a heart attack, three weeks before her planned retirement.  She was laid to rest in the Wisconsin Veterans Home Memorial Cemetery, beside her husband.