In 1920, he made his first known appearance opposite Edna Best in Brown Sugar. He also appeared in John Ferguson and the Shakespearean plays The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It. Marshall recalled "Jacques in As You Like It has given me more pleasure than any part I have played". The following year, he toured North America with Australian star Marie Löhr and starred in A Safety Match in London. By 1922, Marshall was making regular appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, debuting on Broadway in The Voice from the Minaret and starring in Coward's The Young Idea (with then-wife Maitland) and The Queen Was in the Parlour. Among his other successes were Aren't We All? (1923), The Pelican (1924–25), Lavender Ladies (1925), Interference (1927–28), S.O.S. (1928) and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1931). His greatest hits with Edna Best were the aforementioned Brown Sugar, The Charming People (1925–26), The High Road (1928–29), Michael and Mary (1930), The Swan (1930) and There's Always Juliet (1931–1932). Early films In 1927, Marshall debuted onscreen opposite Pauline Frederick in the British silent film Mumsie (1927). He made his first American film appearance as the lover of Jeanne Eagels's character in the first version of The Letter (1929), produced at Paramount Pictures' Astoria studios two years later. After The Letter, in Britain once again, he notably starred in Alfred Hitchcock's Murder! (1930). The following year, he returned to Paramount to make Secrets of a Secretary. In Britain he made three films with Edna Best: Michael and Mary (1931), for Victor Saville, The Calendar (1931) and The Faithful Heart (1931) again for Saville. Marshall returned to Broadway to star in Tomorrow and Tomorrow then There's Always Juliet. He primarily made films in the United States for the remainder of his life. Romantic roles As a Hollywood leading man, the suave, gentlemanly actor played romantic roles opposite such stars as Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s. The 1932 film Blonde Venus brought Marshall to fame among the general American public. Later the same year, he played Gaston Monescu, a sophisticated thief involved in a love triangle in Ernst Lubitsch's suggestive, light comedy Trouble in Paradise (1932). In interviews, Marshall expressed a preference for playing this sort of witty comedy role. He discussed his two early films in a 1935