Beulah Bains was born in August 1896 in Birmingham, Alabama, the youngest of four children of Samuel R. Bains and Laura McCorkle Bains. Her family moved to Los Angeles around 1917. In December 1919 she was signed by Charles Chaplin, and she appears as the bride in the wedding scene of The Kid (1921), a scene Chaplin cut from his 1971 reissue and missing from most copies today. She also played Susie Rolles in The Charm School (1921) and Ann in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1923), both now lost, and acted on stage with the Wilkes Players and the Hollywood Community Players. In May 1924 she married Gene Brooks in San Francisco. She fell ill with tuberculosis around 1927 and died at Banning, California, on 16 August 1930, aged 34. She is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, under her married name, Barbara Bains Brooks.
