Helene Jacobs Malhame Video Recordings circa 1930s-1940s

The films in this collection are silent, but where text appears on screen it is in English.

A first generation American of Lebanese descent, Helen (Helene) Jacobs was born in 1901 to Joseph Jacobs and Affiffie Forzly in Putnam, Connecticut. Joseph was a peddler of sewing supplies and razors, and he opened his first office in lower Manhattan. There, her father “continued the tradition of helping newly arrived Lebanese by selling straight razors on credit and sending them on their way to peddle.” The family of nine first lived in a Lebanese American community in Brooklyn Heights and, due to Joseph's climbing success, later moved to a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

During World War I, Joseph's business was overtaken by domestic competitors. As a teenager, Helen was the first of the Jacobs girls to drop out of school and seek full-time employment to help support the family. Building upon the sewing skills she learned from her mother, Helen enrolled in design classes at the local YWCA and later secured a job with French Art Lingerie Co. in Manhattan, an intimate apparel company manufacturing “boudoir ensembles of pajamas and gowns.” Between 1923 and 1924, Helen secured enough capital to open a family business, Helene Lingerie. Designated lead designer, Helen both designed and constructed numerous collections of handmade lingerie pieces and sets with her younger sister Evelyn.

Helene Lingerie was known for stylish and affordable cotton, silk, and crêpe de chine undergarments for both modern women and young girls. Helen often paired contrasting colors, such as green silks and nude laces or geranium rose and jade green stripes to create eye-catching color schemes. After her father's heart attack in 1931, the business was liquidated and both Helen and Evelyn moved on to various New York-based design houses. Throughout the rest of her career, Helen worked as head designer at Needle Art Corp., head of the silk lingerie designing staff at Sussberg and Fienberg on Madison Avenue, and lead designer at Sussman Silk Co. in Shanghai, China.

The Helene Jacobs Malhame Video Recordings consist of six silent film reels that have footage related to Malhame and her family dating from the 1930s-1940s. There are a variety of scenes on the reels, including children playing, family members interacting, a golf course, a horse racing track, nautical scenes, and some post-war scenes. The reels vary in length from six minutes to twenty minutes.

The reels were acquired for the Khayrallah Center's Turath 2020 digital exhibit.

Materials in this collection are arranged in the order they were received.

The Khayrallah Center claims only physical ownership of the materials. Due to the nature of archival collections, information about copyright and rights ownership in the materials may be difficult to find despite reasonable efforts. Nonexclusive right to authorize uses of these materials for non-commercial research, scholarly, or other educational purposes are granted to Khayrallah Center pursuant to U.S. Copyright Law. Usage of the materials for these purposes must be fully credited with the source. The user assumes full responsibility for any use of the materials.

[Identification of item], Helene Jacobs Malhame Video Recordings, GR 0016, Hoda Z. Nassour and Herbert R. Nassour Jr., MD, Archive of Lebanese Diaspora

Gift of the Malhame Family, 2019 (Accession No. 2024.006).

Processed by Khayrallah Center staff. Finding aid created by Laura Lethers with content adapted from Turath 2020 written by Mandy Paige-Lovingood, 2024 September.