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(June 19, 1893 - July 8, 1950)
 While
there is no known official birthplace record, Helen Holmes stated in
an interview that she was born in South Bend, Indiana, but grew up
in Chicago, Illinois. She began working as a photographer's model
but turned to acting, performing in live theatre and making her
Broadway debut in 1909. She became friends with film star Mabel
Normand.
Holmes began her film career in 1912 with Keystone in a bit part
arranged by Mabel Normand. She made only a few more appearances in
Keystone films and, although attractive, her lack of glamorous
beauty relegated her to secondary roles until late 1913 when she
signed with the Kalem Company's new Hollywood studio.
Helen Holmes' first film at Kalem was directed by J.P. McGowan whom
she would develop a relationship with and soon marry. In her first
two years with Kalem Studios, Holmes appeared in more than thirty
film shorts during which time her athletic ability to do physically
demanding stunts led to her big break.
At a time when the women's suffrage movement was much in the news,
in March of 1914 Kalem Studios' competitor Pathé Frères released an
adventure film serial titled The Perils of Pauline. Starring Pearl
White as a bold and daring heroine, the Pathé serial became an
enormous box-office success. As a result, Kalem Studios jumped on
the bandwagon and in November of 1914 released their own adventure
series called The Hazards of Helen.
Cast as the series star, during the twenty-six "thrill-a-minute"
episodes in which Helen Holmes performed, she did almost all of her
own stunts. Playing an independent, quick-thinking and inventive
heroine, as part of her dangerous exploits Helen did such things as
leap onto runaway trains or treacherously chase after bad guy train
robbers. The Hazards of Helen made Holmes a major star and she and
her now husband, director J.P McGowan, decided to capitalize on her
fame and left Kalem to work for Thomas H. Ince Productions and
Universal Pictures. After a few films, Holmes and McGowan formed
Signal Film Productions to make their own adventure films. Between
late 1915 and early 1917, they made a dozen films together that met
with reasonable success but financial and distribution problems
ended the production partnership and Holmes did not appear in
another film until 1919, this time as the star in another film
company's production. In 1919 and 1920 she made only one film each
year and only two in each of the next three years. Between 1924 and
1926 Helen Holmes made eighteen more short adventure films but her
popularity began to wane in a market over saturated with female
cliffhanger films. Holmes made several Westerns opposite actor and
rodeo performer Jack Hoxie in the mid-1920s. |
