Not to be confused with silent film actress Louise Lorraine.

Lillian Lorraine (January 1, 1892 – April 17, 1955) was an American stage and screen actress of the 1910s and 1920s, best known for her beauty and for being perhaps the most famous Ziegfeld Girl in the Broadway revues Ziegfeld Follies during the 1910s.

Biographie

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. Her personality and private life reportedly was a large influence on Anita Loos in the creation of the character of Lorelei for the novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Although her affair 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. Lorraine's fame waned in the 1920s, and she worked for a period in vaudeville.


Marriages
Lorraine's first marriage was to Frederick M. Gresheimer. They married on March 27, 1912 after meeting on a beach. Ten days later, Lorraine announced that the marriage had been a mistake and that the couple was "incompatible" due to her career. The marriage was later found to be invalid as Gresheimer had not divorced his first wife. Lorraine and Gresheimer remarried in May 1913. Three months later, Lorraine filed to have the marriage annulled after claiming that Gresheimer misrepresented himself.

In the late 1940s she married Jack O'Brien, an accountant, taking his name. According to Lillian's biographer, Nils Hanson, no records of a marriage exist and the marriage was likely a common-law marriage.