See also Biography Index (D) :: Filmography Index (D) :: Discography Index (D)

Seastrom`s film career began in 1923 with the role of Eleanor Harmon in The Call of the Canyon. The film was directed by Victor Fleming. Her first screen work was in comedies. Later she acted under the direction of Cecil B. Demille. She signed a five year contract with First National Pictures in September 1925. Seastrom was affectionately called the Candy Kid at First National because of her taffy colored hair. Like many First National stars, she had an antifat clause written into her contract. Her weight was listed as 117 pounds. The studio stipulated a deadline weight of 140 pounds.

She appeared in The Perfect Flapper with Colleen Moore and Classified with Corinne Griffith. Seastrom barely avoided a potentially disfiguring accident during the filming of We Moderns (1925). A shower of sparks from a short-circuited light fell upon her hair and shoulders at the United Studios. Seastrom escaped injury when assistant director James Dunne grabbed a table cloth from a prop table and covered the actress` head. Electricians shut off the power to a light which hung from the fly gallery above the scene. Seastrom made a full recovery from the burns she sustained. She returned to complete the John Francis Dillon directed film.

She began to gain success after several years of working as an extra (actor). Suddenly her declining health became an issue. She returned to Dallas for a rest in the fall of 1925. While there she became ill. Physicians ordered her to a rest sanitorium for several months. It was feared that if she continued working, she would be forced out of movies completely. First National management agreed to hold the starting date of her contract temporarily, until she regained her health. She lost a role in Irene (1926), which she was scheduled to make with Moore. Her frail strength and a hard work regimine left her a victim of tuberculosis.

Seastrom was taken by her husband to a sanitorium in the hills of California. Actress Barbara LaMarr was a patient there at the time. LaMarr grew weaker while Seastrom seemed to regain her health. In 1926 Seastrom returned to Hollywood to make Delicatessen with Moore. Her final film role was in It Must Be Love (1926).

Dorothy Seastrom died of tuberculosis in Dallas in 1930.