Miriam Seegar

Miriam Seegar Whelan (September 1, 1907 – January 2, 2011) was an American silent film actress.

Born in Greentown, Indiana, to Frank and Carrie (née Wall) Seegar, both teachers, she was the fourth of five daughters. Her father later opened up a hardware store but died when Miriam was 14. Her sisters were Dr. Helen Seegar Stone (1895–1976), an educator; Dorothy Seegar (1897–1999), actress and singer; Mildred (1905–1913), and Sara Seegar (1914–1990), also an actress.

Miriam Seegar made her film debut in 1928 in 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.

Miriam retired from acting in 1933, later marrying Tim Whelan, a director, with whom she had two sons. She later worked as an interior decorator. 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. Miriam Seegar had two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren at the time of her death in 2011.

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. 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 Queen Elizabeth and back again. According to her daughter-in-law, Harriet Whelan, Seegar died on January 2, 2011 at the age of 103. No specific cause of death was given, although Whelan stated that Seegar was very frail and had died from "age-related causes".

• The Price of Divorce (1928)
• Such Is the Law (1930)
• Clancy in Wall Street (1930)
• What a Man! (1930)
• The Woman Between (1931)
• Out of Singapore (1932)