Acrobatic dancer Miriam LaVelle in Seven Days Ashore (1944). Miriam LaVelle Patterson was born on January 14, 1926 in St. Louis, Missouri. “Until I was three years old,” she said, “I had a foot ailment. My folks started me dancing to cure it. Now I can’t stop.” Miriam danced her way to a gig on Broadway where a MGM scout saw her and signed her to a film contract. She performed specialty numbers in a few films and then continued her career on the nightclub circuit. She made her tv debut performing on The Ed Wynn Show in 1949. In 1950 it was reported she had split her head open during a tv rehearsal and was rushed to a hospital. There’s very little information available about her after this, except that she married in 1957 and then passed away at the age of 31 on October 20, 1958 in Los Angeles.