Mae Marsh Biography

2nd verse of 'Mae Marsh, Motion Picture Actress' by Vachel Lindsay - see Poems page

An early portrait, circa 1913 Brief Biography
Mae was born on 9th November 1895 as Mary Wayne Marsh, in Madrid, New Mexico. Her father, who worked for the railroad as an auditor, died when she was just four years old. Her mother remarried soon afterwards and the family moved to San Francisco, only for a further tragedy to strike when her stepfather was killed in the 1906 earthquake. I am unsure of what happened to her mother, but it was her great aunt that took Mary and her older sister, Marguerite, to Los Angeles. In an effort to find the girls employement, her aunt took them around the various film studios hoping they might find work as 'extras'. Mary was small and slightly built, with big blue eyes. In time both sisters managed to find work, which Mary had to fit in with her convent education.

In 1910, Mary was bunking school to see her older sister perform in a West Coast Biograph production, when she was "noticed" by the films director, D.W. Griffith. During an excursion to California the following winter, Griffith invited Mary to appear in his films. In 1912 she went to New York and after a couple of appearances in Kalem films joined Griffith's stock company of players at Biograph. Like Lillian Gish, she made an ideal Griffith heroine, at once youthful and mature, physically frail but spiritually strong. She rapidly became one of the director's favorite actresses, and a frequent co-star of Bobby Harron. It was Griffith who renamed her Mae, there being already several Mary's around. Griffith foresaw a bright future for the young Mae Marsh.

Mae was usually cast in the tragic and/or dramatic role; her physical expression of sadness, pain, anxiety, etc, and her very manner and movement gave here a unique screen presence. It's my opinion that she was indeed unique, no other actress at that time, that I have seen, possessed what she had - the ability to portray so many emotions in a single scene. Not even Lillian Gish, whome I adore, could match Mae, though Miss Gish's portrayal of sheer terror in Broken Blossoms is something to behold!

Scenes from Intolerance and The Birth of a Nation

Undoubtably her two outstanding achievements were in Griffith productions. As "The Little Sister" Mae provided some of the most tender and moving moments of The Birth Of A Nation (1915), memorably in the "homecoming" scene with Henry B. Walthall and in the suicide scene, in which she leaps to her death to escape being raped. Mae surpassed her achievement the following year, with a superior dramatic performance as Robert Harron's grief-stricken wife in the modern episode of Intolerance (1916). Both these films also included Miriam Cooper in the cast, whose beauty can be appreciated in several of the video clips. In 1916 she left Griffith to sign a lucrative contract with Goldwyn.

After her time with Griffith, Mae found her career with Goldwyn wasn't living up to expectations and retired from acting at the end of her contract in 1920. In 1918 she had married Louis Lee Arms, a Goldwyn publicity man.

During the following years she appeared in the odd film, both in Hollywood and in England, but preferred home life to roles that failed to offer her a challenge or do justice to her talents. It wasn't until she returned to a Griffith film, The White Rose (1923), that she had the opportunity to give another memorably intense dramatic performance.

Mae in the courtroom scene, Intolerance (1916)

Mae's Salary, Griffith's / Goldwyn
Mae's success in Griffith's two 'spectaculars' earned her a lucrative contract with Goldwyn

The Cinderella Man (1917)	$2,500 week
Polly of the Circus (1917)	$2,500 week
Intolerance (1916)	$85 week
The Birth of a Nation (1915)	$35 week

Except for an occasional role, she retired from the screen in 1925, but returned in the early 30s as a character actress and appeared in numerous talkies through the early 60s, often uncredited. The director, John Ford, recognised and admired her abilities, and she became a big favourite of his, appearing in a number of his big budget westerns through the years.

Some particularly notable films she appeared in during the 40's and 50's include, 'The Grapes of Wrath (1940)'; 'How Green Was My Valley (1941)'; 'Jane Eyre (1944)'; My Darling Clementine (1946)'; 'the Snake Pit (1948)'; 'The Fighting Kentuckian (1949)'; 'The Quiet Man (1952)'; 'A Star Is Born (1954)'; and 'While The City Sleeps (1956)'.

Mae Marsh suffered a heart attack at her home in Hermosa Beach, California, on 13th February 1968. She was aged 72. Her husband outlived her by twenty one years, till his death in 1989, aged 101 years. They are buried in the same plot - see image.

Mae Marsh has left us with some memorable screen performances. I will always look in wonder at her two greatest roles.

Here's a good short bio written by Jack Lodge for an article entitled 'The Griffith Girls', Orbis Publishing Ltd. 1984. Used here with permission -

Mary Wayne (Mae Marsh) followed her elder sister Marguerite to Biograph in 1911. She played the lead in Man's Genesis in 1912 because Pickford and Sweet, among others, refused to perform bare-legged. Her reward was the star part in The Sands of Dee (1912), a role that all Griffith's young ladies had set their hearts on The two films firmly established her as a leading player. As one of the lovers in Judith of Bethulia she is radiant, and the Marsh persona is all there. The Mae Marsh heroine is fragile in appearance, or was in her early days, but she has also been called 'helpless', and she was never that. 'Indomitable' would be a better word. The carriage, the set of the face, the ability to convey a sudden and overwhelming happines, all these speak of an inner resource that nothing can touch.

It is wrong to see the Little Sister in The Birth of a Nation as essential Marsh; the fluttering, bird-like movements, belong to the part and not to the off-screen actress. Indeed the character is a kind of allegory of the forlornly resisting South. Compare her with the Dear One in Intolerance (1916). Here are strength and determination personified, and the result is a great acting performance. Griffith and his cameraman Billy Bitzer made it possible - never have close-ups been used more effectively or revealed such emotion - but it was Marsh who made her character live with such raw reality, such extremes of joy and grief.

After Intolerance Mae Marsh left Griffith for Goldwyn, and the quality of her films declined. She returned to Griffith, for The White Rose in 1923, then retired for a while before starting a new career as a character actress in the Thirties. In Borzage's Little Man, What Now? (1934), she plays a victim of the German depression - a tiny part, just two scenes, but she can still knock the rest of the film sideways

But for John Ford, that would have been virtually the end. Ford had first met Miss Marsh while riding with the Klan in The Birth of a Nation , and he used her again and again. Often not even credited, she filled corners of the Ford canvas with her brave, undaunted ladies: standing firm as a rock as her home is razed in The Grapes of Wrath (1940); a quite counterpoint to chattering Jane Darwell in The Sun Shines Bright (1953); the curate's proud mother in The Quiet Man (1952); rescued from Indian captivity in The Searchers (1956).

In all these films she still carried an aura of the heroic days, and linked two great masters of the American screen.

Jack Lodge 1984

Mae in a scene from Hoodoo Ann 1916

Hal Erickson wrote a short bio for 'All Movie Guide' -

American actress Mae Marsh was the daughter of an auditor for the Santa Fe railroad - and as such, she and her family moved around quite a bit during Marsh's childhood. After her father died and her stepfather was killed in the San Francisco earthquake, she was taken to Los Angeles by her great aunt, a one-time chorus girl who'd become a New York actress.

Marsh followed her aunt's footsteps by securing film work with Mack Sennett and D.W. Griffith; it was Griffith, the foremost film director of the early silent period, who first spotted potential in young Miss Marsh. The actress got her first big break appearing as a stone-age maiden in Man's Genesis (1911), after Mary Pickford refused to play the part because it called for bare legs. Specializing in dramatic and tragic roles, Marsh appeared in innumerable Griffith-directed short films, reaching a career high point as the Little Sister in the director's Civil War epic, The Birth of A Nation (1915). She made such an impression in this demanding role that famed American poet Vachel Lindsay was moved to write a long, elaborate poem in the actress' honor.

Marsh's career went on a downhill slide in the '20s due to poor management and second-rate films, but she managed to score a personal triumph as the long-suffering heroine of the 1931 talkie tear-jerker 'Over the Hill'. She retired to married life, returning sporadically to films - out of boredom - as a bit actress, notably in the big-budget westerns of director John Ford (a longtime Marsh fan). When asked in the '60s why she didn't lobby for larger roles, Mae Marsh replied simply that "I didn't care to get up every morning at five o'clock to be at the studio by seven."

Thanks to Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide.

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