Lorraine Baines McFly

Lorraine Baines McFly is a fictional character, a lead character in the Back to the Future motion picture trilogy, played by actress Lea Thompson. She did not appear in the animated series, though was mentioned.

Family

Lorraine is the eldest child of Sam and Stella Baines. She has 5 siblings; Milton (born 1942), Sally (born 1947), Toby (born 1949), Joey (born 1954), and one sibling born in 1956 whom we never hear any details of in the finished films. (However, Stella is pregnant in November 1955, and a draft script for the second film shows a 1967 dinner scene with "eleven-year-old Ellen").^[1]

She married George McFly, and by 1985 they have three children; Dave, Linda and Marty McFly.

Pre-Back to the Future

Lorraine Baines was born in 1938 in Hill Valley, California.

Little is known about Lorraine's life prior to 1955, which is when we first meet her chronologically. What is known is that she has been smoking and drinking for a while, and has "parked" in cars with a few boys before the events of the film. As such, George is probably not her first boyfriend.

Lorraine liked the attention of boys when she was in school, and lots of them were attracted to her, including both George McFly and Biff Tannen. She can stand up for herself, yet despite this she likes her men to be strong and able to protect her. She likes thinking back to the "old days", often telling the story of how she met and fell in love with George. Her best friends at school were Betty and Babs, and she could often be found in Lou's Cafe gossiping with them.

Lorraine originally met George on November 5, 1955 when her father almost ran him over with his car. She felt sorry for him, before falling in love with him. They had their first date a week later at the Enchantment Under The Sea dance at school. In this timeline of 1985, she was depressed at how her husband could not stand up for her or himself. She told her children not to park in cars with members of the opposite sex, under the false pretense that she never did that when she was their age. She also doesn't think very highly of Marty's girlfriend, Jennifer, feeling that a girl who calls a boy is only looking for trouble (in the alternate 1985 timeline however, Lorraine thinks that Jennifer is a very nice girl).

Back to the Future

Lorraine's life was changed when Marty McFly, her future son, accidentally arrived in 1955 in Dr. Emmett Brown's DeLorean time machine. Having followed George McFly from Lou's Café, Marty pushed George out of the way of the car that was supposed to hit him. Lorraine felt sorry for Marty and then became infatuated with him, not knowing that her new crush was her future son.

Over the next week, Lorraine pursued 'Calvin Klein' (misinterpreting the name on Marty's underwear), whom she considered 'an absolute dream'. Marty, however, had discovered the damage to future history and was anxiously trying to get George back together with Lorraine. Uninterested in George's advances, Lorraine asked Marty to attend the big dance with her.

Marty came up with a plan: George would 'rescue' Lorraine from a sexually-aggressive Marty at the dance, and they'd fall in love. Unfortunately, Marty's plan went awry when a drunken Biff, angry at Marty for causing him to crash into a manure truck, pulled Marty from the car and attempted to force himself upon Lorraine. George arrived and, while initially stunned to find Biff instead of Marty, heeded Lorraine's pleas for help and tried to fight Biff. Biff immediately overpowered him, but when Biff shoved Lorraine, George suddenly snapped and punched Biff in the jaw, knocking him out. Swayed by George's show of force, Lorraine left with George, and the future McFlys were back together.

At the dance, Mark Dixon "cut in" while George and Lorraine were dancing, again jeopardizing Marty's future. George stood up for himself and Lorraine one more time and pushed Dixon away, then kissed Lorraine, restoring the timeline. After dancing to Marty's rendition of "Johnny B. Goode", Lorraine and George said goodbye to Marty. Over the next thirty years, George became a successful science-fiction writer, and Lorraine happily stayed with him.

Back to the Future Part II

After thirty years had passed, by 2015, Lorraine is still happily married to George. The couple have now retired and appear to be quite well off, possibly due to George's writing career taking off after 1985. Like most mothers, Lorraine still worries about her children even when they are adults and have left home. Marty is stuck in a dead-end job and is having marriage problems with his wife Jennifer, and Lorraine wants to make sure everything is OK. As much as she loves her son, though, she feels his life could have turned out much better, and wonders if Jennifer married Marty because she felt sorry for him (the reason why she originally fell in love with and married George McFly before the first film.)

As Marty and Doc headed back in time, to 1985, they discovered that it had become much worse. Biff Tannen had given himself a sports almanac to bet on horse tracks in 1955, and the consequences were 'disastrous'. Biff had hit it big, and started a company called 'BiffCo' to invest his money and make an enormous empire. Having control over the Hill Valley Government (and later the USA, as he got Nixon re-elected for at least four terms in a row) but not over his girl, Lorraine, he shot George McFly dead on March 15 1973, leaving Lorraine a widow.

Biff and Lorraine married soon thereafter, and a likely theory assumed is that Lorraine only married him because he could provide for her children. The marriage was not a happy one - Lorraine missed George every day, and was often verbally and physically abused by Biff. Lorraine was usually alone - the kids were sent to boarding schools in Switzerland, and she was living mostly by herself on the 27th floor of their casino hotel, Biff Tannen's Pleasure Paradise (built on top of the Courthouse) with only alcohol for company. She also had breast enlargements, which Biff had coerced her into getting. Lorraine has tried on numerous occasions to leave Biff, but stays with him purely so her kids will not suffer (Biff threatens to cut them off, get them sent to jail, etc).

On the evening of October 26/October 27, 1985, Marty showed up in Hill Valley. Lorraine was surprised he had come back from Switzerland, and even more surprised when he appeared to have forgotten everything about his family. He was disgusted by the fact Biff was Lorraine's husband, and left after hearing that George was at the Cemetery. Unknown to Lorraine, Marty and Doc left later that night, at 2:42am, to set things right in the year 1955.

Having returned to November 12, 1955, Lorraine's age is again reduced by thirty years. Now seventeen, Marty watches her as she gets out of Ruth's Frock Shop, having bought a dress, and is harassed by teen Biff, who claims that he'll marry her someday, someday she'll be his wife. Lorraine and Babs hurriedly flee from Tannen.

That evening, Lorraine can be seen at the dance with 1955 Marty, and later, after the punch, with George. We vaguely see her through the window again as Marty '55 says his goodbye, but we do get the expression that everything is all right again, and after the almanac is burned, it is all right, and Lorraine goes back from being an alcoholic to the way she was before Old Biff made his way back to 1955.

Back to the Future Part III

Lorraine does not play a large role in Part III. She is visible in the 1955 scenes, but obviously avoided by Doc '55 and Marty, who don't want to mess with Marty's future even more. During the 1880s scenes, George's great-grandmother, Maggie McFly, is around (also played by Thompson). Although she is not a blood relative to Lorraine, Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis explained that they simply did not want to make a Back to the Future movie without Thompson. They also offered an "in-universe" explanation — namely that "men are attracted to women who remind them of their mothers", so all McFly men after Seamus took wives who resemble Maggie.^[2]

In the 1985 scenes, Lorraine is visible at the McFly house, similar to the scene at the end of Part I.

References

External links

• Lorraine Baines McFly at the Internet Movie Database