[1] The U.S. census of 1900 shows that she and her parents resided in Leadville, Colorado, at her maternal step-grandfather's hotel, and gives her birthdate as January 1894, her name as Lillian Jacques, and her place of birth as Utah.

[2] In 1909, Ziegfeld pulled the teenaged Lorraine from the chorus line in that year's production of Miss Innocence to spotlight her as a solo performer who became celebrated for introducing the song "By the Light of the Silvery Moon".

She ventured into motion pictures with limited success, appearing in about ten films between 1912 and 1922, including the serial Neal of the Navy with William Courtleigh, Jr.[citation needed] Although the affair she'd had with Ziegfeld was over by the end of the 1910s, her box-office drawing power kept her in a number of his productions of the period.

[citation needed] Lorraine's personal life earned her more notoriety than either her talent or her beauty, and she was a staple in newspapers of the day with accounts of her latest turbulent romance or feuds with rival stars such as Fanny Brice and Sophie Tucker.

[citation needed] In his book Scandals and Follies, author Lee Davis writes that, "By 1911, [Ziegfeld] was insanely in love with Lillian Lorraine and would remain so, to one degree or another, for the rest of his life, despite her erratic, irresponsible, often senseless behavior, her multiple marriages [sic] to other men, his own two marriages and his need for all his adult life to sleep with the best of the beauties he hired.

Her body later was exhumed and moved to a friend's family plot in Saint Raymond's Cemetery, Bronx.