page_title: Helen Holmes
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Helen Holmes / Life
caption_attribution_description: English: Advertisement in The Moving Picture World with Helen Holmes.
context_page_description: Helen Holmes was an American silent film actress, producer, director, screenwriter, and stuntwoman. She is most notable for starring in the 1914–1917 serial The Hazards of Helen.
context_section_description: Helen Holmes was born on June 19, 1892, in Illinois. While there is uncertainty about her place of birth, Holmes stated in an interview that she was born on a farm in South Bend, Indiana, but grew up in Chicago, Illinois. A 1917 article indicates Holmes was born on her father's private railroad car, "Estevan".
  Holmes was the daughter of Norwegian immigrant Louis A. Holmes (born in Norway in October 1862), a railroad clerk employed by the Illinois Central Railroad, who had migrated to the United States in 1867, and his wife Sophia (born April 1869 in Indiana), and was the sister of Frank O. Holmes (born June 1889 in Illinois) and Florence (born in May 1896 in Illinois), and two other siblings who died in infancy.
  Holmes was educated in St Mary's Convent in South Bend, Indiana. Holmes 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.
  Due to tuberculosis in the family, about 1910 Holmes and her widowed mother and siblings moved to California Valley, a few miles east of Shoshone in Death Valley, California, where they lost their life savings in a real estate swindle buying a property by the Colorado River. Meanwhile, Mabel Normand moved to Hollywood in 1912 to work at Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios, and she encouraged Holmes, after her brother had died, to try the film business in the balmier climes of the West Coast.
  Throughout her career Helen Holmes had occasionally gone back to performing in the theatre, and with the end of her marriage in 1925 she returned to the stage, making her last appearance on Broadway in 1935. She eventually married film stuntman Lloyd A. Saunders and as a result of the popularity of the Rin Tin Tin dog films, the two began training animals for use in the movies. After retiring from movies Helen ran a small antique business in her San Fernando home. She had an extensive collection of rare dolls.
  Lloyd died in 1946, and Helen died in 1950 as a result of heart failure. She had been ill for five years with a heart condition. She died in Burbank, California at her home, 1401 West Olive Street. She was 58 years old. Funeral services were conducted at Pierce Brothers Hollywood Chapel at 5959 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, California. She was interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
caption: Advertisement in The Moving Picture World, 1916
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