Helen Holmes (actress) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Helen Holmes
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Holmes, c. 1916
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Helen Holmes
June 19, 1892 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
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| Died | July 8, 1950 (aged 58) Burbank, California, U.S.
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| Resting place | Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale) |
| Occupation | Actor, film director, film producer, screenwriter |
| Years active | 1912-1943 |
| Spouse(s) | J.P. McGowan (unknown-1925) Lloyd Saunders (?-1946) (his death) |
Helen Holmes (born June 19, 1892 – died July 8, 1950) was an amazing American actress from the silent film era. She was also a producer, director, screenwriter, and a brave stuntwoman! Helen is best known for her starring role in the action-packed film series The Hazards of Helen from 1914 to 1917.
Contents
Early Life and Moving to California
Helen Holmes was born on June 19, 1892. She said she was born on a farm in South Bend, Indiana, but grew up in Chicago, Illinois. Her father worked for the railroad.
Helen went to school at St. Mary's Convent in South Bend, Indiana. She started her career as a model for photographers. Soon after, she began acting in live theater shows. She even made her first appearance on Broadway in 1909. During this time, she became good friends with the famous film star Mabel Normand.
Around 1910, Helen and her family moved to California. They had hoped to start a new life there. Unfortunately, they lost a lot of money in a bad real estate deal. Meanwhile, her friend Mabel Normand moved to Hollywood in 1912. Mabel started working at Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios. She encouraged Helen to try acting in movies too, especially since the weather in California was much better.
Later Life and Interests
Helen Holmes sometimes went back to acting in theater plays. After her first marriage ended in 1925, she returned to the stage. Her last Broadway show was in 1935.
Later, Helen married a film stuntman named Lloyd A. Saunders. They started training animals for movies. This was very popular because of the famous dog films starring Rin Tin Tin. After she stopped making movies, Helen ran a small antique shop from her home in San Fernando. She had a huge collection of rare dolls.
Lloyd, her husband, passed away in 1946. Helen died in 1950 from heart failure. She had been sick for five years. She was 58 years old when she died in Burbank, California. Helen was buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
Becoming a Film Star
Helen Holmes began her movie career in 1912. She got a small part at Keystone Studios thanks to her friend Mabel Normand. She didn't have many big roles at first. But in late 1913, she joined the Kalem Company's new studio in Hollywood.
Her first film at Kalem was directed by J.P. McGowan. Helen and J.P. soon started a relationship and later got married. In her first two years with Kalem, Helen appeared in over thirty short films. Her amazing athletic skills helped her get her big chance. She was great at doing difficult stunts herself!
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In March 1914, another film company released an adventure series called The Perils of Pauline. This show starred Pearl White as a brave heroine and was a huge success. Kalem Studios decided to make their own adventure series. So, in November 1914, they released The Hazards of Helen.
Helen Holmes was chosen to star in this new series. She performed almost all of her own stunts in the twenty-six action-packed episodes. Helen played a smart, quick-thinking, and independent heroine. She did dangerous things like jumping onto moving trains. She also chased after bad guys who robbed trains. Sometimes, a male hero would save her. But in most episodes, Helen found a clever way to escape danger herself. She would also catch the villains and bring them to justice.
The Hazards of Helen made Helen Holmes a very famous star. She and her husband, J.P. McGowan, decided to use her fame to make their own films. They left Kalem and worked for Thomas H. Ince Productions and Universal Pictures. After making a few movies, Helen and J.P. started their own company called Signal Film Productions. They made a dozen adventure films together between 1915 and 1917. These films were quite successful.
However, they faced money and distribution problems, which ended their partnership. Helen didn't appear in another film until 1919. In 1919 and 1920, she made one film each year. She made two films in each of the next three years. During this time, she not only starred in but also produced a series called The Tiger Band (1920) for Warner Brothers.
Between 1924 and 1926, Helen Holmes made eighteen more short adventure films. But her popularity started to fade. There were many other female action films at the time. Helen also starred in several Westerns with actor and rodeo performer Jack Hoxie in the mid-1920s.
Images for kids
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Film still with Holmes "at the throttle" of a locomotive in The Girl and the Game (1916)
See also
In Spanish: Helen Holmes para niños
