Helen Holmes was supposedly reacquainted with Mabel Normand while on a trip to Los Angeles in 1911 after having known each other in New York on the modeling and Broadway scene. The already successful stage actress, along with her widowed mother and siblings, had moved to California to take care of her brother who was dying of tuberculosis. The Holmeses ended up losing their life savings in a property in Death Valley by the Colorado River and Normand recommended Holmes for a bit part at Keystone. Helen only made a few appearances in Keystone films until late 1913 when her lack of glamorous beauty relegated her to secondary roles and she left for Kalem Studios where she would appear in more than thirty shorts in her first two years alone.
Holmes's first starring role was in her own "thrill-a-minute" serial "The Hazard of Helen" which began in November 1914 and ran until February 24, 1917. She would do most of her own stunts from leaping onto runaway trains or chasing after train robbers without any help from the male hero. In December 1918's Motion Picture Magazine, Helen was the second out of the five popular actresses of the year even beating out Mabel Normand. She would soon married Kalem head J.P. McGowan and the married couple would end up leaving Kalem for Thomas H. Ince Productions and Universal Pictures. Helen would continue to perform in theater throughout her film career.
In 1915 they would form Signal Film Productions to make their own adventure films and until early 1917, they made a dozen successful films although with plenty of financial and distribution problems. Helen wouldn't appear in another film until 1919's "The Fatal Fortune." In addition to making only one film a year, she would produce and star in the serial "The Tiger Band" (1920) made by Warner Brothers. Holmes would pair with Jack Hoxie in several Westerns in the mid-1920s as her popularity waned, going back to the stage in 1925 until her last appearance ten years later. She married stuntman Lloyd A. Saunders and retired from both film and stage. The both of them would train animals for the movies and Helen ran an antique shop out of her San Fernando home. She passed away of heart failure at her house in Burbank on July 8, 1950.
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