Movies by Mae Marsh
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages
The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.
The Birth of a Nation
Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.
Night Without Sleep
Upon awaking in the morning, a man finds his thoughts clouded by the possibility that he committed a murder.
The Lesser Evil
A young woman's peaceful existence is shattered when she is abducted by the crew of a boat of smugglers, who then also turn against their captain.
I Am Not a Racist
A parody of D. W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation", "I Am Not a Racist" rearranges the scenes of the classic movie and recreates its dialogues to criticize the racism in it and also in the world today. Freemenville is a little city somewhere in the USA. A city ashamed because of its past of slavery, but proud of being the first in the country to end it. There is an annual ball to celebrate this fact. And this year's ball may be the biggest ever, because of the possible presence of a big celebrity, who is coming to town to see the premiere...
Over the Hill
In their farm house in a New York village, Ma Shelby prepares breakfast for her four children, Isaac, Tommy, Johnny and Susan, and then awakens them. The racket the boys make as they play and fight awakens their father, who spanks the eldest, Isaac. When a visitor chides Pa for not working, Ma sticks up for her husband, saying that he has a weak back and that he is waiting for a promised government job.
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
A young girl from Sunnybrook goes to live with her wealthy relatives and falls in love with a doctor. Adapted from Kate Douglas Wiggin's famous novel.
The Battle at Elderbush Gulch
Two young girls are sent away to live with their uncle, which sets off a chain of events resulting in an Indian attack on the town.
Judith of Bethulia
Griffith adapts the story of the Apocryphal Book of Judith to the screen. During the siege of the Jewish city of Bethulia by the Assyrian tyrant Holofernes, a widow named Judith forms a plan to stop the war as her people suffer in starvation, nearly ready to surrender.
The Cinderella Man
When Marjorie Caner returns from abroad, she is quite lonely in her millionaire father's big house. Learning that a young poet, Anthony Quintard, is living in poverty next door while working on the libretto of a great opera, she skips across the roofs and brings him a Christmas banquet. The poet sees Marjorie, and knowing that he detests wealth, she pretends to be the secretary of the Caner family.....
The Mother and the Law
After the relatively low box office takings of 'Intolerance', D. W. Griffith would revisit his epic film three years later by releasing two of the film's interlocking stories as standalone features, with some new additional footage. The second of these was 'The Mother and the Law', which demonstrates how crime, moral puritanism, and conflicts between ruthless capitalists and striking workers help ruin the lives of marginal Americans.
All Woman
Susan Sweeney inherits a country hotel. When she arrives to take possession, she discovers it to be not the palatial resort she believed, but a run-down inn with an attached saloon. As she struggles to make something of her new operation, she becomes involved in the life and difficulties of her new community....
Man's Genesis
An old man tells his grandchildren about prehistoric man: Caveman Weakhands is unable to court a woman because of his physical weakness. Humiliated by Bruteforce, he bumps into Lillywhite, who has also been cowering in her cave in mourning. The two new lovers form a connection, but Bruteforce separates the couple and sends Weakhands scrambling. In his cave, Weakhands thinks up the design of a stone club. With this equalizer, he soon vanquishes Bruteforce and wins Lillywhite back again-- An early step in human progress.
Hoodoo Ann
A teenage orphan (who believes herself to be "hoodooed") is taken in by a childless couple and quickly falls for the boy next door; Her luck seems to have changed. But the idyll is broken up after a trip to the movies-- It seems the 'hoodoo' has returned after she tries to replicate what she'd seen on the screen.
The Little Tease
The supposition was that she was born a tease, for from her first teeth to the time she was almost grown, she vented her witcheries on her unsuspecting parents and the wild things of her mountain home. But that was before the man from the valley lost his way and later found it back again, bearing away the little tease to the valley. While she suffered the qualms of broken faith, her father passed through a like struggle, for he felt the precepts of the "beloved book" had failed him. He closed the door of his cabin upon the world and the ligh...
The New York Hat
To fulfill a dying mother's bequest for her daughter, the town pastor purchases the daughter a stylish hat, and gossip spreads through the town.
Love in an Apartment Hotel
In the apartment hotel lived the aspiring maid, whose solicitude maintained order in the bachelor's apartment. He was her ideal, and the all-adoring bell-boy was firmly but gently given to understand that maids who read "Heliotrope Glendening's Advice to Young Ladies" look higher than ice-water toters. A compromising complication, however, with an unexpected visit from a beautiful lady, quite convinces the aspiring one that wealthy young bachelors may be the grandest men ever, but their aspirations, when it comes to the crucial test, are not...
Arabella
A foal runs away from its native pasture, falls into a swamp and is rescued by the circus dancer Arabella. The stud owner, a young gentleman rider, names the animal after its rescuer Arabella. Arabella then becomes a celebrated racehorse, and when the circus performer and the gentleman rider meet again, they fall in love.
Polly of the Circus
When circus aerialist Polly Fisher is injured, she is taken to the nearby home of minister John Hartley. The two fall in love and marry secretly. But when the news leaks out, the minister loses his pastorate over disdain by the parishioners for Polly's background as a performer. Polly must decide whether to stay with the man she loves or leave him for the good of his calling.
Nobody's Kid
Because of the circumstances of her parents' marriage her grandfather rejects their child, Mary. Following her their deaths she is placed in an orphanage where Mary finds hardship.