THE NEW YORK CITY YEARS

“She would find guys who would go out with her, put her up in apartments and buy her fancy things.”

— writer Steven Thompson

“From a very early age, she knew she wanted to be a movie star,” Nicole says of her mother. “She had a form of scoliosis and she had a lot of different struggles, but she always had her eyes on the prize.”

Sandra’s first pursuit involved the world of modeling. “She and a friend of hers decided they were going to go to Chicago and get a job at the Playboy Club,” reports Steven Thompson, a writer whose blog on Christa Helm has proven invaluable in raising awareness of her case. “That never happened, but they did end up in New York City and got some modeling jobs there.”

“When I was two, my mom decided to move to New York City,” Nicole says. “She didn’t want to take me into that lifestyle. Her roommate at the time in Milwaukee knew a woman in Vermont who took care of elderly people and children. She brought me to Vermont and paid that woman to take care of me. She would come back and forth to visit with me, and I would fly out and visit with her.”

Sandra had a plan. She would try to make a success of herself until Nicole turned ten years of age. At that time, her daughter would be better capable of traveling and fitting into her frenetic cosmopolitan lifestyle. Nicole was anxious for her tenth birthday to arrive.

“Going to see my mom was the greatest thing in the whole world, because it was movie stars, dressmakers, plays and David Copperfield shows,” says Nicole. “She was beautiful and very kind to me. It was the highlight of my life.”

“She cared very much for that child,” reports Rene Thompson. “But at the same time, she knew that the way that she was obtaining money was not a situation in which you wanted to raise a child.”

But she didn’t rely on the sharpening of her craft alone. “She liked being a kept woman,” says Steven Thompson. “She would find guys who would go out with her, put her up in apartments and buy her fancy things.”

While she was living in Manhattan, she met a wealthy producer named Stuart Duncan. For all intents and purposes, Duncan became her main financial supporter. Duncan’s family started the Lea & Perrins company – the organization behind the famous Worcestershire sauce – but he had no intentions of following in their footsteps. His ambitions lived in the realm of stage and screen production.

Duncan’s third attempt at producing a successful play turned out to be the charm. Prior to opening, he offered Christa a financial stake in its future success. The play was Godspell. “It was a great success, and she made a considerable profit,” Steven Thompson reports.

Another constant presence in her life was an acclaimed clothing designer named Lennie Barin. He designed costumes for the hit TV show Wonder Woman, and his personal clients included Judy Garland among many others. He also designed dresses for Sandra, who is said to have bankrolled his early business efforts.

Lennie was the cock of the walk in NYC. He knew everyone, could get into any club, and was loved by all. Outgoing, loyal and generous, Lennie took Sandra under his wing and introduced her to powerful people and promising possibilities.

“She was very close with Lennie,” reports his friend Jeremiah Newton. “I remember him mentioning how fabulous she was.“

At the time, Lennie also ran a modeling agency on 14th Street in Manhattan called Oddities which specialized in exotic-looking men and women - the Warhol crowd that was usually not represented by the more traditional agencies. By this time, Sandra had given herself a new name - Christa Helm.

Christa was one of Lennie’s models and charged $60 an hour for her services. She went on several modeling gigs during this time, and was reported to have been featured in a number of television commercials.

She was intermingling with figures like Candy Darling, Andy Warhol and other influencers of the New York scene. And she was frequently observed arm in arm with world-famous icons both famous and infamous.

“I heard she was being kept by the Shah of Iran,” says Jeremiah.

The Shah is frequently associated with Christa’s life story. Christa was pictured wearing jewels she claimed had been gifted to her by the Shah. Her daughter remembers being in the company of the Shah during a trip to see her mother. In fact, nearly everyone associated with Christa knew about her ongoing trysts with the shah.

There’s little doubt that Christa’s life in New York stood in stark contrast to her humble Midwestern upbringing. This became obvious to her childhood classmates when she attended an eighth grade reunion at the Mother of Perpetual Help School in Milwaukee on Saturday, April 21, 1973.

That wasn’t her only return trip to her hometown. “Around Christmas time, she came home to Milwaukee and bought me a round trip ticket to visit with her in New York,” says childhood friend Darlene Thoresen. “It appeared that she was doing very, very well. She lived a wealthy lifestyle. Lots of gowns and furs and jewelry.”

It was upon this visit that Darlene discovered that her friend was keeping a diary of the men she’d been sleeping with. The practice had actually started when they both were teenagers. “We used to keep a personal boy list. It was a ratings system.” Surprised that she was continuing the tradition, Darlene glanced at the diary and instantly recognized some of the more famous names recorded in it. “These were some heavy hitters at the time.”

Most people in Christa’s circle knew of the diary, including Jeremiah and Lennie.

Kent Moran knew of the diary as well. He was another of Christa’s friends from this time period.

It was through Lennie that Kent first came to know Christa. They became fast friends. Only a teenager when he first entered the social fray of New York City, Kent was appropriately star-struck by Christa’s glitzy, free-wheeling lifestyle.

Christa lived in a splendidly furnished brown townhouse at 320 E 30th Street in the Murray Hill section of the city. Kent sent a lot of time with her there, and out on the town. It was a decadent time in New York, and Christa served as Kent’s “hedonistic fairy godmother” through it all.

There was little doubt in Kent’s mind that Stuart Duncan was bankrolling Christa’s style of living, even though her dance card was also occupied with the likes of other prominent figures at the time, including football legend Joe Namath.

One night after attending a terrible movie together, Kent, Lennie and Christa brainstormed a scheme to further exploit Duncan's affections. “I came up with an idea that Christa set up Stuart for money to make a low budget horror film,” Kent recalls. Months later, this scheme began to come into fruition.

Next chapter: LET’S GO FOR BROKE