Seena Owen
From Wikipedia Seena Owen (November 14, 1894 – August 15, 1966) was a Danish-American silent film actress. Born Signe Auen at Spokane, Washington, the youngest of three children raised by Jens Christensen and Karen (née Sorensen) Auen. Her father and mother came from Denmark in the late 1880s and settled in Minnesota where they married in 1888. Within a short period of time they relocated to Portland and then Spokane, where her father became proprietor of the Columbia Pharmacy. Her first important film was A Yankee From the West (1915) under the name Signe Auen at the age of 21. She was later convinced to change her name and settled on Seena Owen, the phonetic spelling of her real name. In 1916 she performed in D. W. Griffith's Intolerance. The same year she married George Walsh whom she had met on the set of Intolerance. The marriage lasted until their divorce in 1924. A regular player for the rest of the silent era, Owen appeared in films such as Maurice Tourneur's Victory in 1919 where she was photographed to great effect by Tourneur's cameraman, Rene Guissart. In 1920, she appeared in "The Gift Supreme" with Lon Chaney, who appeared with her in Victory. She co-starred with Gloria Swanson and Walter Byron in the ill-fated Queen Kelly (1928), as the mad Queen who whips Swanson in one scene. With the arrival of sound in movies, Owen's weak voice became a problem and forced her to retire from the silver screen in 1933. After her retirement, she worked on a number of films in the 1930s/40s as a screenwriter including two starring Dorothy Lamour: Aloma of the South Seas and Rainbow Island, both in 1941. The former was written in part with her sister, Lillie Hayward, a successful Hollywood screenwriter, Seena Owen died on August 15, 1966 at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, aged 71, and was interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Known For
Credits
- 1932 · Officer Thirteen as Trixi Du Bray
- 1932 · Queen Kelly as Queen Regina V
- 1929 · The Marriage Playground as Rose Sellers
- 1928 · Man-Made Women as Georgette
- 1928 · The Blue Danube as Helena Boursch
- 1927 · The Rush Hour as Yvonne Dorée
- 1926 · The Flame of the Yukon as The Flame
- 1926 · Shipwrecked as Lois Austin
- 1925 · Faint Perfume as Richmiel Crumb
- 1925 · The Hunted Woman as Joanne Gray
- 1924 · I Am the Man as Julia Calvert
- 1924 · For Woman's Favor as June Paige
- 1924 · The Great Well as Camilla Challenor
- 1923 · Unseeing Eyes as Miriam Helston
- 1922 · The Face in the Fog as Grand Duchess Tatiana
- 1922 · Back Pay as Hester Bevins
- 1921 · The Woman God Changed as Anna Janssen
- 1921 · Lavender and Old Lace as Ruth Thorne
- 1921 · The Cheater Reformed as Carol McCall
- 1920 · The Gift Supreme as Sylvia Alden
- 1920 · Sooner or Later as Edna Ellis
- 1919 · Victory as Alma
- 1919 · The Life Line as Laura
- 1919 · The Fall of Babylon as Attarea
- 1919 · Riders of Vengeance as The Girl
- 1919 · One of the Finest as Frances Hudson
- 1919 · The Sheriff's Son as Beulah Rutherford
- 1919 · A Man And His Money as Betty Dalrymple
- 1919 · Breed of Men as Ruth Fellows
- 1918 · Branding Broadway as Mary Lee
- 1917 · Madame Bo-Peep as
- 1917 · Madame Bo-Peep as Octavia
- 1917 · A Woman's Awakening as Paula Letchworth
- 1916 · Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages as Princess Beloved (Attarea) (Babylonian Story)
- 1916 · Martha's Vindication as Dorothea
- 1915 · The Lamb as Mary
- 1915 · A Yankee from the West as Gunhild, a Norwegian Girl
- 1915 · The Fox Woman as The Fox Woman, Alice Carroway, a.k.a. Ali-San
- 1915 · An Old-Fashioned Girl as Bertha - the City Girl
- 1915 · The Craven as May Walton
- 1914 · The Better Way as