Miriam Seegar

Biography

Miriam Seegar was born on September 1, 1907, to Frank and Carrie (née Wall) Seegar, both teachers. Raised in Greentown, Indiana, in the Seegar-Sewell home on 404 S. Main Street, she was the fourth of five daughters. Her sisters, known around town as the Seegar Sisters, were educator Helen Seegar-Stone (1895-1976) stage actress and opera singer Dorothy Seegar-Hatch (1897-1999) Mildred Seegar (1905-1913) and actress Sara Seegar (1914-1990.) Seegar viewed her first movies in Kokomo, Indiana at the age of eight. As the sisters started acting and singing, Frank Seegar left teaching to open a hardware store in efforts to support his daughters' growing singing and acting pursuits. After his death at Seegar's age of 14, her two older sisters invited her to spend summers with them in their bedbug-laden Upper West Side apartment in New York City. Helen, working in a theatrical producer's office and Dorothy, acting and singing on Broadway, sent Miriam to an agent, and she began appearing on stage in minor, uncredited roles. She would return to Greentown in the winter upon her mother's insistence to complete her schooling with her younger sister, Sara. After finishing school, Seegar acted in her first Broadway production as a Spanish blonde in a now-forgotten play at the 48th Street Theatre, followed by five more stage stints. While playing the part of the ingenue in The Squall (1926-1927) prolific producer Albert H. Woods took notice, and offered Seegar to star with Ernest Truex in the London West End production of his hit show Crime (1928.) At the age of 18, Seegar accepted Woods' offer and moved to London, soon followed by her mother and sister Sara to live with her in the Park Lane Hotel: "All my life I had wanted to go to England. I was just beginning to get a start in New York, but I was glad to be transferred to England." Between Stage engagements with multiple productions in London, she acted in her first two films The Price of Divorce and The Valley of Ghosts (film), both released in 1928. Next Miriam was chosen to co-star with Nelson Keyes in When Knights Were Bold (1929 film), as her figure of just under 5'1 and 100lbs would make her shorter and smaller than Keyes. The film was being directed by American director Tim Whelan, whom Miriam had just met. After the film's release she and Whelan, 14 years her senior, moved to Hollwood in 1929 and started dating. She quickly went to work making three pictures in 1929, signing with Paramount for Fashions in Love and the love doctor then making Seven Keys to Baldpate for RKO. For the next three years, Seegar made 11 more films, most being B-movies. Blonde haired, blue eyed Miriam was one of the tiniest women in pictures, standing at just under 5'1 tall and weighing 100lbs. From a 1930 Photoplay magazine: "The question of clothes is a problem to her. Everything must be specially made, since she has no desire to step out in twelve-year-old dimities from a department store. She sees a gown model she likes and has it duplicated in a more miniature form. She likes frocks of rich material, but made without fuss and furbelows." Miriam didn't consider her name good for screen purposes as she said people were inclined to accent the last syllable, as if it were "cigar." However, she refused to change it unlike some Hollywood actresses, even after being asked by Albert H. Woods while offering to send her to London for "Crime." Also from Photoplay in 1930: "Miriam has had no very serious love affairs, although she does admit that she has been in love. In fact, several times. The only trouble is that she falls out of love so easily. She says that she believes married men are far more interesting than the young eligibles, but she's an old-fashioned girl and does not care to be the "heavy" in a real life triangle drama. Seegar married Tim Whelan in 1931, and the couple had two sons, Tim Junior and Michael(1935-1997,) born with down's syndrome. Miriam's last film, false faces, was made in 1932. It played the Times Square Paramount, where her first American picture had been premiered just three and a half years earlier. Seegar retired from acting to raise her first child, Tim Whelan Jr, and found her career at odds with her husband's: "The sort of roles I got latterly were not becoming for a woman whose husband was then a major force in motion pictures. Selznick and Cukor offered me work, but after a while I just said no." In 1953, she received her ASID certification and began working as an interior decorator, first with Harriet Shellenberger and later on her own. She did not retire until 1995. Her husband died in 1957, and decades later, both sons died within a span of nine months. Tim Whelan, Jr. died from cancer in 1997, and son Michael, who was born with Down syndrome, died in 1998. In 2000, at the age of 93, Seegar appeared in the documentary I Used to Be in Pictures, which featured commentary from many of her contemporaries. Thereafter she made a series of guest appearances at film festivals which culminated in an award for her screen work from the Memphis Film Festival when she was 95. On her 102nd birthday she sailed from Southampton to New York on the RMS Queen Mary 2 and back again. Miriam Seegar had two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren at the time of her death on January 2, 2011. No specific cause of death was given, but her daughter-in-law Harriet Whelan stated that Seegar was very frail and had died from "age-related causes".