Gilbert's early life wasn't an easy one. He never really knew his father, (didn't see him again until he was 26) and his mother didn't want him.

He was born John Cecil Pringle on July 10, 1899 in Logan, Utah, the son of Ida Adair and John Pringle. His mother had been working on the stage where she married the producer of her repertory company, John Pringle. When she discovered she was pregnant she went home to deliver and hoped that she might be able to leave the baby with family, but that was not to be.

His mother divorced his father and remarried a comedian named, Walter Gilbert who adopted Jack. All his young life Jack was either traveling with his mother's company staying with family members or attending a military academy (paid for by his step father). One time he was put with a women and her prostitute daughter where he slept on a blanket in the corner of the daughter's bedroom and was forced, at age 7, to see things that no child his age should have seen.

When Jack's mother died in 1913 of tuberculosis, his stepfather, Walter gave the fourteen year old ten dollars and put him on a train to San Francisco. Times were hard for Jack and he was forced to scrub floors and wash dishes in a saloon for two dollars a week. He knew hunger and poverty until he went to a movie starring William S. Hart and noticed his mother's old friend Herschel Mayall in the film. This prompted Jack to go see his stepfather to see if he too could make it in the movies. He was referred to Walter Edwards, a director for Thomas Ince of the New York Motion Picture Corporation in Los Angeles.

William S. Hart was instrumental in helping Jack to find his way. Jack's first break was in one of his pictures, Hell's Hinges, 1916. His first lead part had him playing a hunchback in A Princess in the Dark, 1917.

One thing Jack learned was that looks are everything. At the time, he was very thin, weighing only 115 lbs. even though he was close to six feet tall at 5' 11". In those days actors had to provide their own wardrobe, so Jack borrowed money in order to buy proper attire. He looked a true gentlemen in his new clothing. For years he worked hard in films and even married his first wife, Olivia Burwell, but fame always seemed out of his reach.

World War I was raging and although Jack tried to enlist both in the Army and the Navy, he was turned down. First time because he was underage and the second because of his weight. When he was finally drafted, and awaited his day to go, the influenza epidemic changed everything and soldiers were no longer being sent over. Then, November 11, 1918 came and the war ended so Jack never served.

Soon, Jack was doing quite well. He starred with Mary Pickford in Heart o' the Hills, 1919 and then the lead in The White Circle, 1919 and Deep Waters, 1920.

During this time, he met his second wife, and the mother of his child, Leatrice Joy.

The new decade was approaching, the 1920's and Jack was well suited to the time and was to become a true matinee idol.

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