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.

[2] 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 and sisters.

“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.

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.

It was the hysterical laugh of the little girl in the cellar...that was far more effective than rolling the eyes or weeping would have been.”[9]D. W. Griffith's cinematic handling of the courtroom episode in Intolerance, in particular his use of close-ups for “dramatic intensity,” are widely recognized.

Sir Alexander Korda included her performance as one of the most outstanding pieces of acting in the silent film era, and June Berry rated her playing of the Dear One as only second to Falconetti’s Joan of Arc (1928).

[12]Mae Marsh, in her 1923 memoir Screen Acting, comments on her struggle to fully deliver the sequence: “The hardest dramatic work I ever did was the courtroom scene in Intolerance.

I put everything into my portrayal that was in me...”[12] Marsh signed a lucrative contract with Samuel Goldwyn worth $2,500 per week after Intolerance, but none of the films she made with him were particularly successful.

Marsh's last notable starring role was as a flapper for Griffith in The White Rose (1923) with Ivor Novello and Carol Dempster.

Marsh returned from retirement to appear in sound films and played a role in Henry King’s remake of Over the Hill (1931).