Career Highlights: Carnegie Hall, Rainbow Island, The Great Man's Lady
First Major Screen Credit: The Cheater Reformed (1921)
Biography
Dark-eyed American actress Seena Owen was praised by virtually every cameraman of the silent era as being one of the greatest natural beauties, impossible to photograph badly. She started her film career at the old Kalem Studios, then moved to D.W. Griffith's company, where she appeared as the Princess Beloved in Griffith's multipart "film fugue" Intolerance (1916). It was on the set of this picture that Ms. Owen met her future husband, actor George Walsh, with Griffith himself allegedly playing cupid with the cuddly couple. Twelve years later she played another monarch, the insane Queen Regina, in Von Stroheim's Queen Kelly; the highlight of this performance was the scene in which, dressed only in a filmy nightgown, Owen flogged Gloria Swanson throughout the marbled halls of her palace. When talkies revealed a flat and listless voice, Seena Owen quit acting to become a prolific screenwriter; while working at Paramount, she cowrote two of Dorothy Lamour's biggest hits, Aloma of the South Seas (1941) and Rainbow Island (1941). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Seena Owen (November 14, 1894 - August 15, 1966) was an American silent film actress. She was born in Spokane, Washington.
Her first important film was A Yankee From the West (1915) under the name Signe Auen at the age of 21. 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. She also co-starred with Gloria Swanson and Walter Byron in the ill-fated Queen Kelly (1928), in which she plays the mad Queen who whips Swanson in one famous 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 co-wrote two films with Dorothy Lamour, Aloma of the South Seas and Rainbow Island, both in 1941.
Owen is also known for being on William Randolph Hearst's yachtThe Oneida during the weekend in November 1924 when film director and producer Thomas Ince died there under mysterious circumstances. This incident was depicted in the film The Cat's Meow.