Joan Marsh (July 10, 1914 – August 10, 2000) was an American child actress in silent films between 1915 and 1921. Later, during the sound era, she resumed her acting career and performed in a variety of films during the 1930s and 1940s.
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Early years
Marsh was born Dorothy D. Rosher (although some obituaries listed her given name as Nancy Ann Rosher) in Porterville, California. She was the daughter of esteemed silent-film photographer Charles Rosher and his wife Lolita. Her parents later divorced.
Career
In 1915, Marsh made her first film appearance, uncredited, in the short The Mad Maid of the Forest, which her father was filming. Later that same year she was also cast in Hearts Aflame and then billed as Dorothy Rosher. In 1917 she appeared too in A Little Princess and in no less than five other productions in 1918, including the comedy-drama Women's Weapons for Paramount Pictures. After these minor roles as a baby and toddler, Marsh finally became a star in Mary Pickford films such as Daddy-Long-Legs (1919) and Pollyanna (1920). Marsh made her last film appearance as a child in 1921.
She returned to films nine years later with a role in Universal's King of Jazz, in which she sang with Bing Crosby. While at Universal she was featured in the studio's revival of their popular silent series The Leather Pushers, along with another King of Jazz performer, Canadian bandleader Jack White. She was considered a promising starlet and, in 1931, Marsh was one of 13 actresses named as WAMPAS baby stars. She signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer but was released from her contract in 1932. Harry Cohn of Columbia, always willing to sign MGM's castoffs, hired her for two features, after which she freelanced among almost all the Hollywood studios, large and small. She had built enough of a name to receive featured roles; her most familiar role of the 1930s is probably as W. C. Fields's daughter in 1934's You're Telling Me! (Marsh made an impression on Fields, and in a subsequent Fields script for It's a Gift he asked for a "Joan Marsh type".) She was a versatile performer, capable of playing ingenues and "other women", sometimes essaying dialects.
