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One of the least remembered of the many actresses molded by the great master himself, D.W. Griffith, Clarine Seymour sadly did not live to witness the release of her first starring film, The Idol Dancer (1920). A beautiful brunette with large, luminous eyes, Seymour had appeared in a couple of Thanhouser productions in New York, supported serial queens Pearl White and Mollie King, and played second fiddle to circus performer turned slapstick comic Toto prior to signing with Griffith in 1918. Unfortunately, with the exception of True Heart Susie (1919), in which she was fine as the "other woman," none of her films were among the director's best. In fact, Scarlet Days, an overly melodramatic Western, is by many thought to be his very worst. But Seymour always emerged unscathed and usually with glowing reviews, better even than those awarded Carol Dempster, the nominal star of Scarlet Days and Griffith's main protegée at the time. The Idol Dancer, set on a tropical island and with Seymour playing an Eurasian dancing girl tempting both Creighton Hale and Richard Barthelmess, was no masterpiece, either, but Seymour earned star billing and the trade paper Exhibitors' Herald found her "more fascinating than ever." This and most other reviews, sadly, were posted posthumously. Officially, Seymour's tragic death was blamed on an intestinal malaise, but, according to Lillian Gish, who certainly was in a position to know, the young actress succumbed from exposure suffered during the near arctic location filming of Way Down East (1920), a fate eerily similar to what befell her character in True Heart Susie. Seymour was summarily replaced by dancer Mary Hay but, again according to Gish, may still be spotted in a couple of long shots.