Marin Sais - Rise To Stardom

Rise To Stardom

In December 1915, Sais was filming a lead role on location in the Mojave Desert when a sudden sandstorm blew in. She and the film crew were stranded for a day, unable to get to the nearest settlement. She suffered seriously from exposure but recuperated after a few days of rest in Los Angeles, California. In 1916 she began appearing as the character Barbara Brent in a Horne directed Western series of shorts.

By 1918 Sais was a highly popular and publicly recognizable film personality and was chosen by Japanese silent film matinee idol Sessue Hayakawa to appear opposite him in a series of film collaborations, the first being the 1918 racial drama The City of Dim Faces followed by His Birthright, released the same year and also starring Hayakawa's actress wife Tsuru Aoki. Sais' collaboration with Hayakawa ended with the 1919 film Bonds of Honor and the same year Sais appeared with Swedish actress Anna Q. Nilsson in the moderately successful drama The Vanity Pool.

In 1920, Sais married silent Western actor Jack Hoxie whom she met on the set of the 1916 film Tigers Unchained. It was her second marriage. The two began appearing in a number of well-received Western action and adventure films. Although the couple would divorce seven years later, Sais would rarely appear in films outside of the Western genre from 1920 onward. One notable film of the period was the Bruce M. Mitchell directed 1924 film The Hellion, which featured British actor Boris Karloff in one of his first prominent roles.