Volume III: Biographies

HULING, Lorraine **

Actress (1915-1916)

Thanhouser Career Synopsis: Lorraine Huling was an actress with Thanhouser during the 1915-1916 period, having joined Thanhouser in the spring of 1915.

Biographical Notes: Born to wealthy parents in Oakland, California, Lorraine Huling spent much of her life in Europe, where she studied art, history, and other subjects, including French, German, Latin, and Greek. Around 1912, she returned to America and, seeking something to stimulate her, sought a role on the stage. She played in Prunella, Help Wanted, and other Broadway productions, directed by George Foster Platt, under the management of her friend, Winthrop Ames. At one time she was a model for Charles Dana Gibson, Charles Penfield, Irving Wiles, and other artists. Her early motion picture career included Famous Players, where she played ingenue parts in Bachelor's Romance, The Straight Road, The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch, and others.

She joined Thanhouser early in 1915 and was seen in various films, including the 1915 Falstaff release of Movie Fans, the 1916 films The Bubbles in the Glass, King Lear, and others. While with Thanhouser, she received extensive publicity. Later she was with the National Drama Corporation and appeared in The Fall of a Nation, released in October 1916, Thomas Dixon's attempt to repeat the screen success achieved by his earlier literary effort, The Birth of A Nation. Dixon had been impressed with her performance in The Straight Road and signed her for a part in his film.

The New Rochelle Evening Standard, July 18, 1916, carried this item: "Lorraine Huling, who will shortly be seen as Cordelia in the Thanhouser film version of King Lear, in which Frederick Warde is to be featured has gone to her summer home in Westport, Connecticut for five weeks' vacation before rehearsing for a new picture with the Famous Players. Miss Huling has three of the girls who appeared with her in The Fall of a Nation with her as her guests for two weeks and all of them indulge in bareback riding to the exclusion of everything else but a little food now and then."

An article in the New York Morning Telegraph, July 21, 1916, noted that Miss Huling lived in Westport, Connecticut, and had arranged to go into training in Rowayton, Connecticut, in the National Service School, conducted on the grounds of the estate of Mrs. Josephine Graw. An accomplished horsewoman, she was to learn the routine and discipline of army training, with the exception of firearms, and was to take charge of a riding class of 30 students. In an article in The Sunday Leader, Cleveland, July 30, 1916, she was quoted as saying: "Marriage? Shush! All the interesting men are in jail." The 1918 edition of the Motion Picture Studio Directory noted that at the time Lorraine Huling was still with Thanhouser in New Rochelle, but this represented an unrevised earlier listing.

Thanhouser Filmography:

1915: The Reformation of Peter and Paul (4-23-1915), Movie Fans (Falstaff 4-30-1915), The Three Roses (5-16-1915), Truly Rural Types (Falstaff 6-4-1915), Through Edith's Looking Glass (6-13-1915), In the Valley (6-18-1915), Which Shall It Be? (6-22-1915), The Flying Twins (7-1-1915), Fifty Years After Appomattox (7-4-1915), Getting the Gardener's Goat (Falstaff 7-30-1915), When Hungry Hamlet Fled (8-17-1915), Out of the Sea (9-12-1915), Helen's Babies (9-14-1915), A Disciple of Nietzsche (9-25-1915), The Mystery of Eagle's Cliff (10-3-1915), The Scoop at Bellville (10-12-1915), His Wife (10-28-1915)

1916: The Bubbles in the Glass (1-4-1916), King Lear (12-17-1916)

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