Miriam Cooper (November 7, 1891-April 12, 1976) was an American silent motion picture actress from Baltimore, Maryland. She was once described as willowy and languid and a pronounced brunette. Her career on the screen began in 1912 with six films. Among these are Battle in the Virginia Hills, A Battle of Wits, The Farm Bully, and A Race With Time. She starred with Lillian Gish in the first feature-length movie.
Miriam became known for her performances in Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), both films directed by D.W. Griffith. Miss Cooper was the third female star in Birth of a Nation, and the newest member of a trio of actresses employed by Griffith. Aside from Gish and Cooper, there was Mae Marsh, then an eighteen-year-old redhead, known as the Maude Adams of the motion pictures. Marsh and Gish were earning $1,500 per week when Birth of a Nation was filmed. Miriam was only 17 at the time. The epic movie increased her earning capacity substantially.
Cooper married silent film director Raoul Walsh in 1916. Walsh was an assistant director to Griffith in making Birth of a Nation. Afterward he went out on his on and often featured Miriam in his movies. Cooper divorced Walsh and left the film industry in 1927, never to return. She blamed her divorce on the loosening of morals in the motion picture industry.
She resided in Charlottesville, Virginia from 1952 until her death. Her passions included writing and playing golf and bridge. Miriam collaborated with Bonnie Herndon to write Dark Lady of the Silents (1973), a book which describes in detail the motion picture industry during its first years.
Miriam Cooper suffered a heart attack in May 1970 after arriving at the D.W. Griffith Film Festival in Louisville, Kentucky. She recuperated in Kentucky Baptist Hospital. She died at Cedars Nursing Home in 1976. She had been there since suffering a stroke earlier in the same year. She was 84 years old. Her death left Miss Gish as the sole surviving cast member of Birth of a Nation.
Miriam Cooper was born to Julian Cooper and Margaret Stewart in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1891. The family was Roman Catholic, and the Coopers were fairly well-to-do. After the birth of five children in five years (one of whom died in infancy), Julian Cooper deserted his family and fled to Europe. Margaret Cooper raised Miriam and her siblings Nelson, Gordon and Lenore with financial assistance from her mother-in-law. After grandmother Cooper died, the family lived in abject poverty and was forced to move from Washington Heights to Little Italy. At one point, Miriam spent time in an orphanage when her mother was too sick to take care of her. Miriam was educated at St. Walburga's Academy, a convent school, and at Coopers Union Art School. Before stumbling into the nascent motion picture industry, she was a model for artists Harrison Fisher and Charles Dana Gibson. Her first film role was as an extra in D.W. Griffith's Blot on the 'Scutcheon, A (1912). She next traveled to Florida where she played the ingénue in nearly 30 films for Kalem studios. Most of the films were Civil War dramas and romances, and Mirian did all of her own stunts, including horseback riding, running along the tops of trains and swimming a horse across a river, only to be fired in 1913 for asking for a raise. In 1914 Griffith rediscovered a screen test she made for him and brought her into his circle. Miriam had leading roles in both Birth of a Nation, The (1915) and Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916). She also fell in love with one of Griffith's assistant directors, Raoul Walsh. Knowing that Griffith would not like the idea of their getting married, Miriam and Walsh were secretly married on the Hopi Indian Reservation in New Mexico in 1916. Walsh eventually left Griffith for Fox Films. When Miriam joined him, their marriage became public. Miriam lost interest in her film career after their marriage, but Walsh preferred to direct her, and she made quite a few movies for him at Fox, the most popular of which was probably Evangeline (1919). Miriam wanted to be a wife and mother, but the couple was unable to have children, so they adopted two boys. Eventually Miriam tired of Walsh's philandering and divorced him in 1925. She never remarried, and although she felt some bitterness and resentment, it was obvious that she continued to love and admire him after the divorce. Miriam made her last film in 1923. She was tired of Hollywood and the film industry, and once she left it, she never looked back. The money she had saved was adequate for her to live very well. She became a golfing enthusiast and hit holes-in-one in three different states. In the 1960s she was rather surprised to be rediscovered by film historians and college students, but she enjoyed their attention. She completed her autobiography "Dark Lady of the Silents" in 1973, before dying of a stroke in 1976.
