Helen Holmes(1893-1950)

Gained fame for her portrayal of an adventurous young woman in the "Hazards of Helen" serials, a series of films in which railroads played a great part (she was either jumping onto, off, running across the tops of, or escaping from railroad cars, locomotives, train stations, etc.). By coincidence, when she was growing up in Chicago her father was an employee of the Illinois Central Railroad. The films were directed by her then-husband, J.P. McGowan. Also by coincidence, when McGowan was growing up in Australia his father, who had immigrated from Scotland, worked for the South Australian and later the New South Wales Railways.

[on why she returned to films in 1936 after a ten-year absence] I had made money. [Lloyd A. Saunders] and I married in 1926 and I decided to quit. We went up in Sonora County [California] and bought a cattle ranch. Everything was fine and we kept on making money . . . for a time. Then the bottom dropped out of the cattle market and our "little grey home in the West" went down in the financial earthquake.