[4][5] 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,[6] but grew up in Chicago, Illinois.

[13] 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 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.

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.

In March 1914, at a time when the women's suffrage movement was much in the news, Kalem Studios' competitor Pathé Frères released an adventure film serial titled The Perils of Pauline.

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.