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.
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.
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.
In 1936, she sang on the CBS radio program Flying Red Horse Tavern.
By 1940 Joan Marsh went where the work was, and co-starred with John King in Blame It on Love, a promotional featurette for kitchen appliances. She continued to appear at various studios, being featured in major films and starring in minor ones. When she appeared as a gangster's moll in Universal's Little Tough Guys picture Keep 'Em Slugging, she became friendly with Huntz Hall and Bobby Jordan, who recruited her for their East Side Kids series at Monogram. After her featured roles in Mr. Muggs Steps Out (1943) and Follow the Leader (1944), she retired from the screen at the relatively young age of 30.
During the filming of Charlie Chan on Broadway, Marsh met writer Charles Belden, who had co-written the film's screenplay. They married on December 2, 1938, in Beverly Hills, California. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1943âÂÂfirst in Los Angeles, California, on August 26, 1943, followed by a second divorce on October 23, 1943, "so she won't have to wait a year before remarrying."
In 1943, Marsh married U. S. Army captain John D. W. Morrill in Santa Monica, California.
Marsh later managed a stationery shop. She died at age 86 in Ojai, California on August 10, 2000.