Iola's Promise
About Iola's Promise
Cutthroats hold Iola. The prospector Jack Harper frees her. She treats him as unlike the other white men she has met. His sweetheart and her father are coming by wagon, and he has not found gold. She says she will help. He asks her to cross her heart and draws an X on his chest. She takes the gesture for a tribal mark and tells her people that Crossheart people can be trusted. She leads him to gold. When her people attack the wagon, she dies keeping them off his sweetheart.
Cast & crew
More about Iola's Promise
D. W. Griffith directed. Billy Bitzer photographed it. Biograph released it in 1912. A listing gives 18 minutes. Mary Pickford plays Iola. Alfred Paget, Frank Evans, Dorothy Bernard, Frank Opperman, Kate Toncray, Kate Bruce, William J. Butler, and Charles Gorman are billed. A longer title used at the time is Iola's Promise: How the Little Indian Maiden Paid Her Debt of Gratitude.
Themes
Making
Griffith and Bitzer shot the short at Biograph with Pickford in the part of Iola. The plot turns on one gesture she reads as a clan sign.
Look
Billy Bitzer photographed the rescue, the wagon, and the attack.
Preservation
A print survives.
Notes
- Pickford plays Iola.
- The X Jack draws is the whole of the misunderstanding.
- She tells her people the word Crossheart.
- The gold and the death are both part of the debt she says she owes.
Scenes
- Jack draws an X and says cross your heart.
- Iola shows him where the gold is.
- She is killed shielding his sweetheart from her own people.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Iola's promise (1912).webm)
