Jurado born on May 19, 1901, in
Sibonga, Cebu, Philippines, to U.S. Army Sergeant Mark Lewis Jacobs and Placida Jurado. Her father, Mark Jacobs was a career military man in (Company H,
19th Military Regiment) working with the
Signal Corps on telegraph communications during the
Philippine-American War. Jacobs eventually attained the rank of colonel and served in World War I. Elena spent her developmental years at
Camp Jossman, a military base on the island of
Guimaras. There she attended school with children of U.S. Army and civil officers. Jacobs left the Philippines in 1913 with his military unit, leaving Placida and Elena behind with Elena being sent to a convent school in Manila for a year. With the written consent of her mother, Elena was first married in 1914 to Ira Jones at
San Agustin Church in
Intramuros, Manila. Shortly thereafter, they moved to
San Francisco, California and she began to study radio communications. Jurado responded to a casting call in September 1921 to portray an Arabian woman in
White Hands, a film set along the
Algerian coast being produced by Max Graf. The film was being shot in a studio in
San Mateo, California and along the Pacific shore beaches of San Francisco. As a result of an encounter on the set with lead actor
Hobart Bosworth, (who would later become a director and film producer in his own right) he was able to convince Graf to hire her based upon her singing and dancing abilities demonstrated in her audition screen test. Bosworth also invited Jurado to audition for his own upcoming productions as well, thus beginning her career in film. ==Professional career==