Mae Marsh — Onlooker (1924) 🇺🇸
Mae Marsh is gradually receding from the busy side of life, losing much of the pathos and quaintness that so endeared her to all of us, and taking on a greater dignity. In her quiet, serene way, she is content to be but a shadow to the bustling, ambitious world.
“Matrimony comes before my career — rather, Mary, my little girl, precedes everything,” she explained her partial seclusion recently, while in Hollywood playing in the Warner Brothers’ picturization of “Daddies.” “Whenever I hear an actress orate about her career and how she could never make her art fit in with matrimony, I wonder if she is really a human being. It is not only heartless but unnatural.
“By working I can parallel my husband’s activities with my own, keep abreast of the changing times, feel that I am contributing something. But it is second in importance.
“I used to be thrilled over everything, crazy about acting, the movies,” the stage. I often look back on those days now and wonder at my own wild visions. I cherish the memories of those early days, when Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish and I were all starting in the films under Mr. Griffith’s [D. W. Griffith] direction — but I can never again feel such a part of things as I did then. For a few more years I want to be a tiny part of that busy world, to contribute what I may while I am still young, if a corner remains for me; but gradually I am getting away from it all. I don’t care for a lot of money, only comfort.”
Perhaps her gradual withdrawal was caused in some measure by the disillusionment that blighted so many of her aspirations. After leaving Griffith’s management her films for other companies brought her money but no more fulsome glory; the stage play in which her hopes were centered for a time and which starred her, fared badly. So it’s no wonder in a way that she has decided now that the more dependable things are the ordinary ones closer at hand.
“While I am acting, though, I want to do the sort of things for which I am suited, both physically and by inclination — the things with a touch of pathos, a good deal of heart. I don’t ride on the critics’ bandwagon when they deride sentimental plays as mushy. The White Rose, I thought, was wonderful — the heart back of it.”
In Daddies, which Miss Marsh has just completed for Warner Brothers, you will not see the Mae of the quaint ways, the poignant tragedy — the odd little Griffithian flower trod down by cruel heels only to bloom in the last reel in a more heart-gripping poignancy. The rôle is sweet and simple — a typical ingénue — and not at all suited to her. You may trust that her artistry will handle it capably — but it does seem a pitiful waste of such individual talent.
“I hope to be back with Mr. Griffith in a few months, doing the sort of rôle which has the greatest appeal for me — and the only thing in which I have any appeal.
“It is rather odd, but in England the actors are superior to the actresses, why I don’t know, unless the girls lack the independence to achieve individual expression. Here it is the opposite, our girls have the greater talent. We have no really great men actors. I wonder why?”
Idly she left the query, without attempt to answer it. For a moment one might have felt it a pity that she seemed so out of things; but then one would surely realize that what she says is true, that the problems we confute and discuss and get all wrought up over don’t really matter, that the greater interest lies in rearing one very small and quaintly serious young person by the name of Mary.
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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, March 1924