Charis Wilson

Helen Charis Wilson (; May 5, 1914 – November 20, 2009) was an American model and writer, most widely known as a subject of Edward Weston's photographs.

Early life

Charis Wilson was born in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Harry Leon Wilson and Helen Charis Cooke Wilson. Her father wrote popular fiction, including the bestselling novel Ruggles of Red Gap, which was later made into a movie. Income from his writing provided a relatively high standard of living for the time, and in 1910 he built a 12-room house in Carmel Highlands. Two years later, when he was 45, he married Cooke, who grew up in Carmel-by-the-Sea. She was 16.

With no other course available to her Wilson went back and forth between San Francisco and Carmel, enrolling in and then dropping out of secretarial school. Her fluency in French and her good looks led her to work briefly as an actress for the French Theater of San Francisco. Due to her father's lack of belief in her, her self-esteem plummeted. Wilson wrote in her memoir that she was "desperately unhappy" as she "acquired a number of boyfriends and patronized the last of the speakeasies" [the illegal secret bars that operated during the Prohibition era]. She described herself as falling into a downward spiral of depression, heavy drinking and a series of unsatisfactory boyfriends.