Helen Hayes

Her likeness appears on a nondenominated USA commemorative postage stamp issued in her honor on 25 April 2011. Price on day of issue was 44¢.

She was friends with Joan Crawford but also wrote that she was abusive to her children in her memoir "My Life in Three Acts" (1990) : "Joan was not quite rational in her raising of children. You might say she was strict or stern. But cruel is probably the right word".

She was awarded the American National Medal of the Arts in 1988 by the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington D.C.

Recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor by the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation in 1986.

Received the Women's International Center (WIC) Living Legacy Award in 1985.

Charter member of the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1973.

In 1970, she made a screen comeback in Airport (1970), a role originally offered to Claudette Colbert, who declined it, earning Hayes her second Oscar, this time for Best Supporting Actress.

At the age of 90, as a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962) when Carson asked Hayes if she would return for her 100th birthday, she demurely lowered her eyes and softly said, "Oh no, I don't think so." She died in 1993, aged 92.

In 1958, she became the second performer to win the Triple Crown of Acting. Oscars: Best Actress, The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931) and Best Supporting Actress, Airport (1970), Tony: Best Actress-Play, "Time Remembered" (1958), and Emmy: Best Actress of 1953.

Although she played Ingrid Bergman's grandmother in Anastasia (1956), she was less than fifteen years older than she.

Two Broadway theaters were named after her. The first, at 210 W. 46th Street, was named after Hayes in 1955. After it was demolished in 1982, another theater, at 240 W. 44th Street, was renamed in Hayes' honor.

Helen Hayes returned to motion pictures with a few featured roles in 1950s films and frequently appeared on television.

Mother of stage actress Mary MacArthur, who died in 1949 at the age of nineteen, and adoptive mother of actor James MacArthur.

Won three Tony Awards, two Best Actress (Dramatic) awards -- one in 1947 for "Happy Birthday," an award that was shared with Ingrid Bergman for "Joan of Lorraine," another in 1958, for "Time Remembered" -- and a third, Special Tony Award in 1980, namely: The Lawrence Langer Memorial Award for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in the American Theatre. She was also nominated as Best Actress (Dramatic) in 1970 for a revival of "Harvey."

Within four years she had abandoned the screen and returned to the stage for the greatest success of her career, "Victoria Regina", which ran for three years starting in 1935.

Was the 5th actress to receive an Academy Award; she won the Best Actress Oscar for The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931) at The 5th Academy Awards on November 18, 1932.

She made a handful of scattered films during the silent era and in 1931 was signed to MGM with great fanfare to begin a career starring in films.

Her first three films, Arrowsmith (1931), The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931), and A Farewell to Arms (1932), were great hits and she would win the 1932 Oscar for Best Actress for her work in Madelon Claudet. Alas, her lack of screen glamour worked against her becoming a box office star during the golden era of Hollywood, and her subsequent films were often not well received by critics.

Gave birth to her only biological child at age 29 by husband, Charles MacArthur: daughter Mary MacArthur (February 16, 1930- September 22, 1949), who died of polio at age 19. Hayes also had an adopted son, James MacArthur.

Known as "The First lady of the American Theater", Helen Hayes had a legendary career on stage and in films and television that spanned over eighty years. Hayes was born in Washington, D. C. , to Catherine Estelle "Essie" Hayes, an actress who worked in touring companies, and Francis van Arnum Brown, a clerk and salesman. Her maternal grandparents were Irish. A child actress in the first decade of the 20th century, by the time she turned twenty in 1920 she was well on her way to a landmark career on the American stage, becoming perhaps the greatest female star of the theatre during the 1930s and 1940s.

Daughter of Francis van Arnum Brown (1874-1940) and Catherine Estelle Hayes (1877-1953).