Mae Marsh

Mae Marsh
Photo of Marsh from The Photo-Play Journal (July 1916)
Born	Mary Wayne Marsh (1894-11-09)November 9, 1894 Madrid, New Mexico, U.S.
Died	February 13, 1968(1968-02-13) (aged 73) Hermosa Beach, California, U.S.
Occupation	Film actress
Years active	1910–1964
Spouse(s)	Louis Lee Arms (m. 1918–68)
Children	3

Mae Marsh (born Mary Wayne Marsh, November 9, 1894 – February 13, 1968) was an American film actress with a career spanning over 50 years.

A frequently told story of Marsh's childhood is that her father, a railroad auditor, died when she was four. Her family moved to San Francisco, where her stepfather was killed in the great earthquake of 1906. Her great-aunt then took Mae and her older sister Marguerite to Los Angeles, hoping her show-business background would open doors for jobs at various movie studios needing extras. However, her father, S. Charles Marsh, was a bartender, not a railroad auditor, and he was alive at least as late as June 1900, when Mae Marsh was nearly six. Her stepfather, oil-field inspector William Hall, could not have been killed in the 1906 earthquake, as he was alive, listed in the 1910 census, living with her mother, May née Warne, and sisters.

Marsh worked as a salesgirl and loitered around the sets and locations while her older sister worked on a film, observing the progress of her sister’s performance. She first started as an extra in various movies, and played her first substantial role in the film Ramona (1910) at the age of 15.

“I tagged my way into motion pictures,” Marsh recalled in The Silent Picture. “I used to follow my sister Marguerite to the old Biograph studio and then, one great day, Mr. Griffith noticed me, put me in a picture and I had my chance. I love my work and though new and very wonderful interests have entered my life, I still love it and couldn’t think of giving it up.”

Marsh worked with D.W. Griffith in small roles at Biograph when they were filming in California and in New York. Her big break came when Mary Pickford, resident star of the Biograph lot and a married woman at that time, refused to play the bare-legged, grass-skirted role of Lily-White in Man's Genesis. Griffith announced that if Pickford would not play that part in Man’s Genesis she would not play the coveted title role in his next film, The Sands of Dee. The other actresses stood behind Pickford, each refusing in turn to play the part, citing the same objection.