Seena Owen

Born: 1894-11-13

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.


Placeholder

Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages

as Princess Beloved (Attarea) (Babylonian Story)
Released: 1916-09-04

The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven...

Movie page

The Blue Danube

as Helena Boursch
Released: 1928-03-11

Marguerite, the beauty of an Austrian village, loves the poverty-stricken Baron Erich von...

Movie page

Queen Kelly

as Queen Regina V
Released: 1932-10-18

A prince betrothed to a mad queen falls in love with an orphan girl from a convent.

Movie page

Unseeing Eyes

as Miriam Helston
Released: 1923-11-18

The sister of a silver mine owner hires a renegade pilot to fly her to her brother's rescue.

Movie page

The Fall of Babylon

as Attarea
Released: 1919-07-21

After the relatively low box office takings of 'Intolerance', D. W. Griffith would revisit his...

Movie page

Victory

as Alma
Released: 1919-12-07

Adaptation of Joseph Conrad novel about lust and violence on a South Seas Island.

Movie page

Officer Thirteen

as Trixi Du Bray
Released: 1932-11-26

A motorcycle policeman's partner is deliberately run off the road and killed by a member of a...

Movie page

Riders of Vengeance

as The Girl
Released: 1919-06-09

Harry's bride is murdered at their wedding along with Harry's mother and father, and the...

Movie page

One of the Finest

as Frances Hudson
Released: 1919-06-01

Traffic cop Larry Hayes takes care of four-year-old Mary Jane, the daughter of Gus Andrews, a...

Movie page

Back Pay

as Hester Bevins
Released: 1922-01-08

This 1922 Frank Borzage film is a masterwork waiting to be rediscovered. Hester Bevins is a...

Movie page

The Marriage Playground

as Rose Sellers
Released: 1929-12-12

A delightful pre-code cocktail recipe. Take three couples (add gin and tonic), their several...

Movie page

The Face in the Fog

as Grand Duchess Tatiana
Released: 1922-10-07

Boston Blackie Dawson gets some jewels that belonged to the imperial family of Russia. A gang of...

Movie page

The Lamb

as Mary
Released: 1915-11-06

Gerald, the somewhat frail son of a wealthy New York family, is bested at the beach by Bill, a...

Movie page

Martha's Vindication

as Dorothea
Released: 1916-02-20

A 1916 film directed by Chester M. Franklin.

Movie page

Shipwrecked

as Lois Austin
Released: 1926-05-09

Larry O'Neil, a ship's cook, finds and befriends stowaway Lois Austin, who is a fugitive from a...

Movie page

The Woman God Changed

as Anna Janssen
Released: 1921-07-03

In a jealous rage dancer Anna Janssen shoots her common-law husband Alastair De Vries in a cafe...

Movie page

Man-Made Women

as Georgette
Released: 1928-09-09

The man who loved her showed her how to hold the man she loved. A novel picture story packed...

Movie page

The Cheater Reformed

as Carol McCall
Released: 1921-01-02

Thomas Edinburgh is secretly in love with Carol, wife of the Reverend Luther McCall, and...

Movie page

Breed of Men

as Ruth Fellows
Released: 1919-02-02

Boss rider "Careless" Carmody is made sheriff of an Arizona frontier town by Chicago swindler...

Movie page

Sooner or Later

as Edna Ellis
Released: 1920-02-01

When newlywed Robert Ellis suspects that his missing wife is having a clandestine affair, he...

Movie page

The Flame of the Yukon

as The Flame
Released: 1926-08-30

George Fowler, a young man from the states, arrives at the Mias saloon, and the proprietor,...

Movie page

The Sheriff's Son

as Beulah Rutherford
Released: 1919-03-30

Sheriff's son Royal Beaudry is thought a coward, even by the young woman he has his heart set...

Movie page

Lavender and Old Lace

as Ruth Thorne
Released: 1921-06-01

Mary Ainslie has been waiting 30 years for her fiancé, a sea captain, to return. She has kept a...

Movie page

A Man And His Money

as Betty Dalrymple
Released: 1919-03-16

Inheriting a fortune allows Harry Lathrop to indulge in extravagant spending and wild wine...

Movie page

A Woman's Awakening

as Paula Letchworth
Released: 1917-03-24

A 1917 film directed by Chester Withey.

Movie page

Branding Broadway

as Mary Lee
Released: 1918-12-15

Drunk and disorderly cowpoke Robert Sands is banished from an Arizona frontier town and hops on...

Movie page

For Woman's Favor

as June Paige
Released: 1924-08-01

A modern love story is the framework for a costume love story, based on Boccaccio's "The Falcon."

Movie page

The Life Line

as Laura
Released: 1919-10-05

Jack Hearne, known as the Romany Rye, prefers living with the gypsies rather than claiming the...

Movie page