Lillian Lorraine

Biography

Lillian Lorraine entered the world as Lillian Jacques—or De Jacques—sometime between the Utah snows of 1892 and 1894, depending on which document you trust. At six, her father vanished; she and her mother packed their hope into a trunk and headed to kin in Leadville, Colorado, then straight on to Manhattan. Before she could vote, she was on a Broadway stage. Sixteen-year-old Lillian’s copper-penny hair and sapphire eyes caught the notice of Florenz Ziegfeld, who plucked her for Miss Innocence (1908) to warble “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.” Follies glories followed—Ziegfeld Follies, Over the River—and so did the impresario himself: forty-one, married to Anna Held, and suddenly obsessed with the teenager who headlines called “the most beautiful actress alive.” He bankrolled her publicity and hung a nude portrait of her in his office; they rewarded each other with equal measures of devotion and betrayal. Hollywood beckoned in 1912: The Immigrant’s Violin marked her screen debut and, on the same impulsive weekend, she wed broker Frederick Gresheimer—only to discover his divorce wasn’t final. A second ceremony took place in April 1913; weeks later Ziegfeld and Gresheimer traded punches outside Reisenweber’s Café. Ninety days into the marriage Lillian sought an annulment, alleging false imprisonment. She returned to cameras for Should a Wife Forgive? (1915), the fifteen-chapter serial Neal of the Navy, and Playing the Game opposite Charles Ray. Back under Ziegfeld’s roof, she headlined the 1918 Follies and the rooftop revue Midnight Frolic until a 1921 pavement spill outside the Silver Slipper left her hospitalized. The accident accelerated a fondness for gin; offers dried up. Her screen farewell came in the 1924 comedy Lonesome Corners, followed by a bankruptcy petition in 1923. Vaudeville circuits kept her afloat until 1928, when a burst appendix nearly finished the job fate had started. Age brought aching joints, privacy, and, in February 1941, a self-started apartment fire that landed her in a psychiatric ward. Recovery introduced her to Jack O’Brien, an accountant who became her common-law husband for the remainder of her days. On 17 April 1955 she simply failed to wake up. Only three mourners arrived for the funeral mass; she was lowered into a pauper’s grave until admirers later raised funds for a proper stone at St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx.