Forgotten star

In Titanic (1953), produced by Twentieth Century Fox, both stars actually knew survivors of the disaster. Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck had not only known real-life passengers but they were some of the most famous aboard the ship. In his youth as a professional dancer in the 1910s and ‘20s, Webb had taught the Tango and similar popular steps to society women and other celebrities, including Lady Duff Gordon, famous as the dress designer Lucile; ¹ and Stanwyck owed her first dramatic role on Broadway to Renée Harris, better known then as Mrs. Henry B. Harris.² Harris, the first female producer on the New York stage, discovered Stanwyck dancing in a nightclub and cast her in a supporting role in the hit play The Noose at the Hudson Theatre in 1926.

That in itself is remarkable. It’s not known whether Webb or Stanwyck even knew much about the Titanic aspect of Duff Gordon’s or Harris’s lives when they were associated with the actors but it’s likely. As interesting as that is, there’s a further connection between a performer in Titanic (1953) and Duff Gordon. Few people know it, but Mae Marsh, a major star in the early silent days of film, had a small character role in the Webb-Stanwyck picture. Marsh had been a client of the New York branch of Lucile Ltd, Lady Duff Gordon’s fashion business, for a number of years. Moreover, Marsh had personally met with the designer on several occasions to plan wardrobes for her films.

* * *

So what part did Mae Marsh play in Titanic? It was a small role with a single line of dialogue, but fans of the film will remember it well. When Julia Sturges (Stanwyck) with her children, Annette (Audrey Dalton) and Norman (Harper Carter), are safely in a lifeboat being lowered past A Deck, it stops to take on more passengers. But the boat, No. 6, is full and an officer standing by prevents an older third class woman from getting aboard, telling her there’s no more room. The woman looks frightened: “Where will I go, officer?” Norman witnesses the situation, stands up and gives the lady his seat.

It’s a pivotal scene. But the backstory of the once famous, beautiful star, completely unrecognizable as a steerage passenger, is almost as notable and Marsh having been a regular patron of Lucile’s is an unexpected point of interest.

There’s no way to know if Lucile, one of the most famous women on the ship, ever crossed Marsh’s mind when she played this tiny but memorable part in the iconic movie, but the possibility is intriguing.

According to Marsh’s 1921 autobiography, Screen Acting, she first went to Lucile Ltd in 1917 to ask Lady Duff Gordon to design frocks for her new film, The Cinderella Man.³

I wrote the following in my biography of Lucy Duff Gordon, Lucile - Her Life by Design (2012):

Mae Marsh, best known for her part in the D. W Griffith epic Birth of a Nation, recalled a “clothes conference” with Lucy for The Cinderella Man in which the two discussed in detail the general plotline, not just the character, she would be playing in the picture…For The Cinderella Man, Lucy suggested green and gray as the most effective colors to use for Marsh’s gowns, a compromise between what flattered the performer and what the screen would register…The Cinderella Man was a success but Marsh found the role unfulfilling. Admitting she preferred ragamuffin parts, the actress promised to ‘never do another picture where Lucile Ltd marries the Brooks Brothers in the last act.’ Yet she starred in three other Lucile-costumed films.”⁴

Press publicity bears out that the three other movies in which Mae March wore Lucile dresses were Hidden Fires (1918), Flames of Passion (1922) and Paddy, The Next-Best-Thing (1923).

 * * *

Marsh’s career began to wind down by the mid-1920s. After appearing with success in Griffith’s The White Rose (1923) with Ivor Novello and in another movie with Novello, The Rat (1925), she retired, returning in 1930s sound films as a character actress. She became a favorite with director John Ford, appearing in such movies at The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green was my Valley (1942) and The Searchers (1956). She won the George Eastman Award in 1955. Mae Marsh died of a heart attack in California in 1968. She was 73.

As for Lucile, she, too, retired from full-time work in the 1920s. She continued freelance as a designer and stylist into the early 1930s, wrote a bestselling memoir Discretions and Indiscretions in 1932, and appeared in newsreels and on the radio. In 1935, Lucy Duff Gordon died in London of breast cancer complicated by pneumonia at age 71.

The movie Titanic was one of Mae Marsh’s smallest roles but in it she enacted the same kind of tumbledown part she had most enjoyed playing as a star 30 years earlier. And although no longer living by 1953, the memory of Lucile is strong in the Academy Award-winning script: she was mentioned twice, once by her formal name, Lady Duff Gordon, and once by her fashion label Lucile. Fittingly, that sobriquet is spoken by Webb, her former dance instructor, in describing his movie daughter’s lush wardrobe aboard ship.

Notes

1. Webb, Clifton (2011), Sitting Pretty: The Life and Times of Clifton Webb, p. 79.
2. Wilson, Victoria (2013) Steel-True: A Life of Barbara Stanwyck 1907-1940, pp.67-68, 72-75.
3. Marsh, Mae (1921) Screen Acting, p. 71. 
4. Bigham, Randy Bryan (2012) Lucile - Her Life by Design, pp. 166-167, 291.

Acknowledgements 

Thanks to Mike Poirier and Gregg Jasper.