Marle was born Patrick Cassamer Rafter in 1885,the son of Doctor.John Patrick Arthur Rafter,L.R.C.P.S.I. and Mary (née Mortelle). Mary Mortelle was from Charleville, Cork and John Rafter was born at Knockthomas, Carlow, Ireland and became a physician and the first Roman Catholic Mayor of Bootle.
Marle became a medical student at Liverpool University, but later he decided to adopt a stage career. He also toured South America and the United States where he was producer to the Northampton Repertory Theatre, Massachusetts. Foreign three years he was leading man at the Liverpool Repertory Theatre.
Here he took on the additional work as producer.
His leading parts at the theatre were many and varied, including the title role in August Strindberg"s play The Father and as the butler in The Admirable Crichton. During his term as producer he dealt with all types of plays, from broadest farce to Maurice Maeterlinck"s Mary Magdalene and was the first producer in England to stage a public performance of Eugene O"Neill"s The Great God Brown.
He appeared with some success at the Malvern Drama Festival. In 1935 he appeared as "Relling" in Henrik Ibsen"s The Wild Duck at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre with James Hayter and Arthur Ridley.
He appeared in several silent films, as Lieutenant Daring in Adventures of Lieutenant Daring-in a South American Portuguese (1911).
As the Review Percival Ferrers in The Gentleman Ranker (1912) and as Phipps in The Wheels of Chance (1922). He was the only man to have played Shaw"s O"Flaherty Victoria Cross in London and has been associated with Lena Aswell, Ethel Irving, Charles Hawtrey, Maurice Moscovitch and others
During the First World War he served with the 3rd Battalion of the 7th Kings Regiment, Liverpool.
In the 1920s he was Director at the Rusholme Theatre Manchester. Marle married Josephine Chalmers in 1907. As Josephine Colona she was an actress in her own right, daughter of "The Mexican Tragedian", Don Eduardo Colona.
They had one child, John, born 1907.
Marle was for a time a member of a stock company at the old Sadler"s Wells Theatre.
