Claire Mersereau

Claire Mersereau (August 25, 1894 – June 26, 1982) was an American actress born in New York City who worked in both silent film and stage productions during the early twentieth century. She was the sister of actress Violet Mersereau.

Mersereau began performing at a young age, appearing before King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in 1904 in a production of Her Own Way alongside Maxine Elliott. Her stage work encompassed productions of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Zaza, and The Clansman. In 1919, she took on the leading role of Pollyanna Whittier in a touring production of Pollyanna, a stage adaptation by Catherine Chisholm Cushing drawn from Eleanor H. Porter's novel series. The role had previously been performed by Helen Hayes and Patricia Collinge, and was later taken on by Viola Harper. The Green Bay Press-Gazette noted that Mersereau was "just a bundle of gladness on the stage" and that "her rare bits of humor frequently brought forth much applause."

Her Broadway career spanned from 1919 to 1925. She originated the role of Countess Ermintrude in Forbidden Fruit, which ran from 1919 to 1920, and created the role of Vivienne in the comedy Sophie in 1920. Her final Broadway credit came in 1925, when she played Lydia Bertram in George M. Cohan's American Born.

Mersereau's film work belongs to the silent era. Among her earliest screen appearances were Those Jersey Cowpunchers (1911), 'Lizbeth (1913), and several 1915 productions including The Avalanche, When It Strikes Home, and Right Off the Bat. She played the title character in Ashes (1916), directed by Robert F. Hill, in which she portrayed a maid in an Alaska boarding house who inherits a fortune; the cast also included Nellie Slattery, Stanley Walpole, and Joseph Granby. That same year she appeared in The Mantle of Deceit alongside Walpole, with whom she also worked in The Seeds of Redemption (1917). Her final film role was Lyda Desmond in Black is White (1920), directed by Charles Giblyn and featuring Holmes Herbert, Jack Crosby, Clifford Bruce, and Lillian Lawrence.

Mersereau died of bronchial pneumonia on June 26, 1982, at Cloisters of Mission Hills in San Diego, California.