Miriam Seegar
| Miriam Seegar | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 1, 1907 Greentown, Indiana, U.S. |
| Died | January 2, 2011 (aged 103) Pasadena, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Film actress |
| Years active | 1928–33 |
| Spouse | Tim Whelan (1931–1957) (his death) |
Miriam Seegar Whelan (September 1, 1907 – January 2, 2011) was an American silent film actress.
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[edit] Early life
Born in Greentown, Indiana, Her parents were teachers. She was one of four daughters. Her father later opened up a hardware store but died when Miriam was 14. The third of four talented sisters: Dr. Helen Seegar Stone (1895–1976) (educator); Dorothy Seegar (Broadway and opera singer); and the youngest Sara Seegar Stone (1914–1990) (stage, film and TV character actress). She made her film debut in 1928. Her first film was The Price of Divorce, in which she starred alongside Frances Day and Rex Maurice. The film was never released, but was adapted for sound and released two years later as Such Is the Law. She followed that with a lead role in The Valley of Ghosts the same year. She starred in four films in 1929 and six films in 1930, including New Movietone Follies of 1930 and The Dawn Trail opposite Western film star Buck Jones. In 1931 and 1932, she made a total of six films, all B-movies,
[edit] Personal life
Miriam retired from acting in 1933. After which she married and had children, later finding employment as an interior decorator. She and director/husband had two sons. Her husband died in 1957, and decades later, tragically both sons died within a span of nine months. Son Tim S. Whelan Jr died from cancer in 1997, and son Michael, who was born with Down's Syndrome, died in 1998. Seegar had 2 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren at the time of her death in 2011.
[edit] Later life and death
In 2000 aged 93, Seegar appeared in the documentary I Used to Be in Pictures, which featured commentary from many of her contemporaries. There after she made a series of guest appearances at film festivals which culminated in an award for her screen work from the Memphis Film Festival in 2002 when she was 95. 2007 saw Miriam turn 100 years old and marked 10 years since Tim Jr's death and 50 years since Tim Sr's death. When she was 101 she was still her height of 5' ¾" (154 cm). On her 102nd birthday she sailed from Southampton to New York on the Queen Elizabeth. Seegar died on January 2, 2011, according to her daughter-in-law Harriet Whelan. No cause of death was given apart from Harriet said that Miriam was very frail and could not respond and stated that she died from "age-related causes". She was 103 years old. Her death in January 2011, followed by the death of Barbara Kent in October of that year, and of screen writer Frederica Sagor Maas in January 2012, leaves only Carla Laemmle and child performers such as Mickey Rooney and Baby Peggy as living silent film veterans.
