Mae Marsh was a movie actress, whose prominence and importance is most closely tied to silent pictures. She appeared in more than 100 pictures before 1928, including D.W. Griffith's Intolerance and Birth of a Nation, and made another 90 or so once the switch had been made to talking pictures. In 1921, in response, she claimed, to thousands of requests for advice from her fans, she authored a short book, "Screen Acting" that is one part memoir and two parts instruction book for those hoping to find work acting on the screen.