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010 _a21010545
040 _aUtSlPG
041 7 _aen
_2iso639-1
050 4 _aPN
100 1 _aMarsh, Mae,
_d1894-1968
245 1 0 _aScreen acting
264 1 _aSalt Lake City, UT :
_bProject Gutenberg,
_c2026
300 _a1 online resource :
_bmultiple file formats
336 _atext
_btxt
_2rdacontent
337 _acomputer
_bc
_2rdamedia
338 _aonline resource
_bcr
_2rdacarrier
500 _aRelease date is 2026-02-01
508 _aTim Miller, Paul Fatula and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
520 _a"Screen acting" by Mae Marsh is a practical guide and personal manual on motion‑picture performance written in the early 20th century. It offers clear, experience-based advice for aspiring film actors in the silent era, covering technique, preparation, and career realities, enriched with studio anecdotes and insights from collaborations within the early Hollywood community. The opening of the guide explains that Marsh wrote to answer the flood of fan letters about screen acting, outlining common requests (photos, autographs, “old clothes”) and the central question of how to learn the craft. She debunks the myth of the overnight star, stresses perseverance with examples, and defines seven key traits for success: talent, ambition, personality, sincerity, agreeable appearance, vitality, and quick learning. Early chapters favor expressive faces over mere beauty, show how to study a script and plan “business,” advocate light, thoughtful makeup and character‑true costumes, and use concrete set stories (from Polly of the Circus, The Birth of a Nation, and a fashion-heavy role) to illustrate preparation. She tackles camera‑consciousness with focused concentration, warns against imitation by drawing on genuine emotion, and explains repression and emphasis, mood‑resuming, body language, walking, and the value of real rehearsals. Technical sections introduce shot distances, close‑ups, spoken lines for lip‑read clarity, “hogging the camera,” and keeping poise, then widen to studio atmospheres, the primacy of story, and “observation tours” for realism. This opening culminates in a warm tribute to D. W. Griffith’s patient, collaborative direction and the innovations his teams developed. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
534 _pOriginally published:
_cLos Angeles: Photo-Star Publishing Co., 1921
653 _aMotion pictures
653 _aActing
856 4 _uhttps://archive.org/details/screenacting00marsiala/mode/2up
856 4 0 _uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77829
999 _c118549
_d118549