Helen Dorothy Martin (July 23, 1909 – March 25, 2000) was an American actress of stage and television who is perhaps most well known for her role in the sitcom 227 as Marla Gibbs' neighbor Pearl.
Martin was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Amanda Frankie (née Fox) and William Martin, a minister.
Martin was a Broadway character actress for many decades, debuting in Orson Welles' production of Native Son in 1941. She appeared in at least a dozen Broadway shows including Raisin from 1973 to 1975, Ossie Davis' Purlie Victorious (and later the musical version, which was called Purlie), The Amen Corner and Tennessee Williams' Period of Adjustment. She was an original member of the American Negro Theater.
She first became famous later in life for her guest role as Wanda on the television series Good Times, and later as the wisecracking neighbor Pearl Shay on the television sitcom 227. She also played on the short run sitcoms Baby, I'm Back and That's My Mama; as Loc Dog's grandma, Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (1996), the matronly grandmother Mama Doll in the 1998 film Bulworth, and the no-nonsense grandmother in the film Hollywood Shuffle. Helen Martin died of a heart attack on March 25, 2000.
References
^ Helen Martin Biography ((?)-2000)
External links
Helen Martin at the Internet Movie Database
This article about an American theatre actor is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
This article about an American television actor born in the 1900s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
NewPP limit report
Preprocessor node count: 488/1000000
Post-expand include size: 2762/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 859/2048000 bytes
Expensive parser function count: 0/500
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Martin"
Categories: 1909 births | 2000 deaths | African American actors | American film actors | American musical theatre actors | American television actors | Deaths by myocardial infarction | People from St. Louis, Missouri | Missouri actors | American theatre actor stubs | American television actor stubs
Views
Article
Discussion
Edit this page
History
Personal tools
Log in / create account
if (window.isMSIE55) fixalpha();
Navigation
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Search
Interaction
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact Wikipedia
Donate to Wikipedia
Help
Toolbox
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Printable version Permanent linkCite this page
This page was last modified on 10 July 2008, at 19:28.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
if (window.runOnloadHook) runOnloadHook();
