Celebrity Grave: Seena Owen, Silent Screen Actress

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 yacht The 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.

She died in 1966 in Hollywood, California, aged 71. Her remains are at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Selected filmography

Queen Kelly (1929)
Riders of Vengeance (1919)
Victory (1919) with Lon Chaney, Sr. and Wallace Beery
Intolerance (1916)
Little Marie (1915)
The Highbinders (1915)
An Image of the Past (1915)