While visiting Universal Pictures that year, she was offered a part in a comedy series starring Eddie Lyons and Leo Moran, possibly to replace their female regular, Betty Compson, who graduated to features.

Afterward, she played leads in one- and two-reel comedies, and appeared in important parts in longer features.

[1] She performed with Colleen Moore in The Nth Commandment (1923) and was the female lead in The Brass Bottle (1923), directed by Maurice Tourneur.

[3] She was cast with Paul Hurst in an orphanage drama produced by the Tiffany Pictures about children of a deceased firefighter.

[4] After the advent of sound, Merriam's roles consisted of portrayals of pre-Code tarnished society women, notably the drunken mother of two little girls who are in great danger in Night Nurse (1931) starring Barbara Stanwyck and Clark Gable, and as the syphilis-infected Elise in Damaged Lives (1934).