Screenland (May-Oct 1931)

130 SCREENL AND Baby Veteran Joan Marsh "comes back"— at eighteen! By Betty Boone WHEN you think of "come-backs" you think of middle-aged persons who have surmounted failure to find success in their mature years, don't you? Well, imagine staging a real comeback at the ripe and glorious age of eighteen ! That's what Joan Marsh is doing. Ten years ago she left the screen, a dimpled, golden-curled, chubby little girl. At the advanced age of eight she turned her little back upon a very real success in order to go to school. Joan's "come-back" doesn't involve 'the surmounting of failure. She left the screen at the very peak of her little-girl career. But it does mean the surmounting of a forced retirement. The wisdom of a father and a mother, not the fancy of a fickle public, caused Joan's disappearance from pictures when she was in demand in every studio in Hollywood. "I was getting smarty and terribly proud of myself," Joan laughed, remembering the little girl whom she had been, "I liked to show off before other children. Being in pictures went completely to my silly little head. So Dad and Mother decided that it was time for me to quit." Joan's Dad is Charles Rosher, one of the most famous cameramen in Hollywood. So Joan, born Nancy Ann Rosher, was reared almost literally in the shadow of a camera. The studio was her day nursery. "J made my first picture when I was nine months old," Joan went on. "Dad was the cameraman for the picture and Mother had brought me to the studio to visit him. The director saw me and insisted that I be the baby they needed in the picture. So Dad gave his consent. Because Dad was turning the camera — in those days they didn't have electric ones — I felt at home, I suppose. They say that I laughed and cooed and held out my arms and did everything they wanted me to do. 'That was the beginning of my first career." So Joan went from one picture to another. Looking at her today, it is very easy to imagine what a cuddly baby she must have been. She played in many of the Mary Pickford pictures, sometimes being one of the pathetic little ragamuffins, sometimes all dressed up in tiny fur coats and bonnets. Joan has wanted to be an actress ever since she has been old enough to want anything. "When I was little, I used to sit and watch Mary Pickford and the other stars and sigh and hope that some day I would be a big star, too. When the children in the neighborhood asked me over to meet their visiting cousins, pointing me out pridefully because I was in pictures, I used to tell myself that some day I would be the famousest actress on the screen !" At the ripe old age of eight Joan retired from the screen to finish her A B C's. Now that she's grown up I more or less.' I she's all set for another career. Then came the Waterloo of all these childish plans. Down firmly came two parental feet, four in fact, and all requests for Joan's services were refused. Joan was put into school and her picture career, so far as her parents were concerned, was ended, finished, completed ! "But I didn't lose hope, not for one moment," Joan laughed, "I had to obey Mother and Dad and give it up, but I knew that I would come back to it some day." That chance for which she was waiting came a little more than a year ago, when she had finished high school. Joan faced the issue with her parents and won. The main reason for her winning was not the force of her arguments but the very important fact that she went out and got herself a job! "After eight years away from it all I was scared to death," she says. "And talking pictures were all new to me. Everything was changed and different. My first real job in my 'come-back' was posing for publicity pictures and posters. While I was doing that, I used to drift around to the various stages and watch the companies working. They gave me a special pass so that I might do it. And, believe me, I learned a lot." Now Joan has signed a long-term contract with MetroGoldwyn-Mayer. Her second career is well started. The first step is finished and she is ready to start on the second. She's Culver City's prize new blonde !