Luray Huntley was working as an actress for D.W. Griffith's stock company when she met her future husband Walter Long, most famous for his black-face portrayal of Gus, an African American, in Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915). Huntley and Long performed together in several of Griffith's films including Traffic in Souls (1913), Let Katie Do It (1916), and Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916). They remained married until her death in 1918 at age 28 due to the Spanish influenza epidemic.