American actress and singer, also known as Dorothy Hagan. Her parents were Mary (née Wittrock/Whitrock, later m. Henning & Otte; 1850-1942) and Albert Hagen (1847-1880), both German natives, who married on 1 May 1871 in Boone, Iowa; after Albert's passing, Mary would marry twice more. Alvina/Dorothy had several siblings: Clara Marie (Hagen) Jacobs (1873-1942), Albert H. Hagen (1875-1929), William Louis Hagen (1877-1956), and stepsister Mary (Henning) Douthwaite (1884-1967). On 27 July 1904, Alvina/Dorothy married John W. Thayer (1864-1920), a dry goods merchant, in Los Angeles; she was widowed by Thayer's passing on 22 May 1920 (pulmonary tuberculosis).
Per the U.S. Censuses, Dorothy was still acting in films as late as 1940. Dorothy Hagen Thayer died at 8:35pm on 19 September 1957, at Royal Minor Sanitarium in Los Angeles, California, USA; cause of death was acute circulatory failure (1 day) due to a cerebral hemorrhage (1 week) and gen. ∇ cerebral arteriosclerosis (duration: years). Her occupation is given on her death certificate as a reader at a Christian Science church. She was cremated and interred at Angelus Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles. Her death certificate (informant was her stepsister, Mary Douthwaite) gives her date of birth as 9 February 1881; a delayed birth certificate filed in 1942 gives the date as a day later and a year earlier, with 1880 further confirmed by the 3-month old "Alvena" (Dorothy)'s presence in the 1880 U.S. Census (recorded 4 June).
Complicating matters in trying to collate Dorothy's credits and information is the presence of Dorothy "Dot" Hagar (b. Chloie Dot Hagar, 1885-1957), an Ohio-born actress and dancer who worked in films at around the same time, including Triangle-Keystone comedies for Mack Sennett during the mid-late 1910s. IMDb currently (as of October 2025) mixes together the filmographies of the two, giving birth info from Hagar's entry in the 1920 U.S. Census (b. ca. 1896 -- shaving a decade off her real age -- in Ohio). Coincidentally, both Dorothys died the same year (Hagar, by then known as Chloie Dot Cochrane, died on 4 July 1957 in Florida).
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