What's the Matter With Helen? is a 1971 thriller film starring Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters.
The movie starts with a Hearst Metrotone newsreel from the 1930s that tells of the Iowa murder of Ellie Banner by Leonard Hill and Wesley Bruckner. As they are shown being loaded into a paddywagon following the decree of life sentences in prison, the focus shifts to their mothers, Helen Hill (Shelley Winters) and Adelle Bruckner (Debbie Reynolds), as they fight their way through a crowd to their car.
Once in the car, the grainy footage shifts to color, and Helen reveals that someone in the crowd cut the palm of her left hand. Soon after arriving home and tending to her wound, Helen receives an anonymous phone call from a man who claims, "I'm the one who cut you.... I wanted to see you bleed." This caller threatens to make the mothers pay for the sins of their sons. Helen and Adelle change their names, leave Iowa and head off to Hollywood, where Adelle opens a dance academy for little girls who want to be the next Shirley Temple.
Soon after their arrival, Hamilton Starr (Micheál MacLiammóir), an elocution teacher offers his services to Adelle's school, and she takes him up on his
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