Late Memphis actress Helen Bowman remembered as 'a complete and total star'

Helen Bowman, a self-described "little old lady" who devoted her post-retirement years to becoming a ubiquitous and essential screen presence during the heyday of Memphis independent filmmaking, died Sunday. She was 82.

The cause was "heart complications," according to one of her daughters, Dr. Angela Walk, a chiropractor in Nashville, where Bowman had relocated in recent years.

Bowman was a 5-foot-4 hummingbird of a woman with the high-pitched, honeyed voice of an aging Southern belle, but she made a solid impression onscreen. She often was cast to type as a sympathetic grandmother or "meemaw," but occasionally she turned the type on its head, as in writer-director J. Lazarus Hawk's 2000 short film "The Morning Ritual," which builds to a shock moment in which the strangely mute Bowman opens her mouth to reveal a cataract of blood and a severed tongue.

"It was crazy," Walk said. "We had to laugh about it, because she was a sweet little lady, and she kept getting parts in horror films."

Bowman's late-in-life interest in acting was not her first experience with the creative arts. According to her daughters, Bowman wrote dozens of songs through the decades. She pitched them to Nashville publishers, but only one caught the fancy of a top artist: "These Colors Won't Run," a patriotic pop-country anthem recorded in 1996 by B.J. Thomas, and credited to Helen Walk Bowman, Craig Harris, Mimmye Goode and Michael Horton.

The patriotism was no opportunistic gimmick. A Clarksdale, Mississippi native with a business degree from the University of Memphis, Bowman worked for the Army Corps of Engineers in Memphis; later, she worked at the now decommissioned Defense Depot. Her husband, the late Ronald Bowman, was an Army colonel assigned to the 632-acre depot.

In her 50s, Bowman began taking acting classes. Soon, she was the go-to actress for local independent or "indie" directors whose projects required a woman more mature than the twenty-somethings who were the filmmakers' peers. 

"Morning Ritual" was co-produced by Craig Brewer, who also cast Bowman in his first two features, "The Poor & Hungry" (2000) and the Oscar-winning "Hustle & Flow" (2005). Represented in Memphis by the Lisa Lax Agency, Bowman also had a small role in "The People vs. Larry Flynt" (1996), made in Memphis by two-time Best Director Oscar-winner Milos Forman ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Amadeus"). She appeared on an episode of HBO's "Eastbound & Down," and she earned money in television commercials for such brands as Hampton Inn and LifeWay Christian Resources.

But mostly Bowman was an acting hobbyist and enthusiast, appearing for minimal or nonexistent pay in a slew of features and shorts crafted by artists attracted to the expressive possibilities of the relatively inexpensive and accommodating digital technology that was revolutionizing the so-called "filmmaking" process. (In recognition of this technology, Brewer branded his early works "digifliks.")

"Helen Bowman was a complete and total star," said writer-director Morgan Jon Fox, who cast Bowman in such early features as "Blue Citrus Hearts" (2003) and the stream-of-consciousness "omg/HaHaHa" (2007).

Although Bowman was unknown outside of Memphis, "It's hard to explain the gratitude and excitement I felt in my early 20s as a burgeoning filmmaker when she would come on set," Fox said. "It was huge, like you landed Judi Dench or Ellen Burstyn in your tiny little movie."

Bowman also worked with such Memphis filmmakers as Mike McCarthy ("Cigarette Girl"), Edward Valibus ("Grim Sweeper"), Brandon Hutchinson ("Dollars and Signs") and Mark Jones ("Fraternity Massacre on Hell Island"), to name a few. A frequent co-star was local indie cinema's most active older male actor, Donald Meyers, who was a crusty Tracy to Bowman's elegant Hepburn in probably a half-dozen shorts. 

Fox said Bowman was "always up for adventure," whether the role required her to wear bunny ears and soak her feet in a kiddie pool or to lie in the middle of the street for hours on end so the filmmakers could capture a time-lapse sunset shot.

"She just said, 'Well, I'm just a little old lady who is fortunate to get to do some cool and strange things.'"

In addition to Walk, Bowman leaves another daughter, Debra Walk McClure, of Nashville, and a brother, Horace Walk, of Clarksdale.

Services will be at 10 a.m. Friday at Meredith-Nowell Funeral Home in Clarksdale.