Ramona
About Ramona
Ramona lives on Señora Moreno’s California rancho and loves Alessandro, a Native American sheepherder. Moreno forbids the marriage. The two run away and meet the greed of white landowners. Their baby dies. A white man kills Alessandro over land. Mary Pickford plays Ramona. Henry B. Walthall plays Alessandro. D. W. Griffith directed from Helen Hunt Jackson’s 1884 novel.
Cast & crew
More about Ramona
Griffith and Stanner E. V. Taylor wrote the adaptation. Billy Bitzer photographed it. Biograph released the one-reeler. Wikidata times it at 17 minutes. A print is in the Library of Congress. Griffith’s version was followed by Edwin Carewe’s in 1928, with Dolores del Río, and Henry King’s in 1936, with Loretta Young.
Themes
Background
Jackson’s novel was a protest about the treatment of Native people in California. Griffith’s reel uses the love story to carry that conflict.
Making
Biograph put Pickford and Walthall into Jackson’s rancho story and kept it to one reel. Bitzer shot the elopement and the death of the child inside that length.
Look
Billy Bitzer photographed Pickford and Walthall on the rancho and on the road after they leave it.
Preservation
A print survives in the Library of Congress. Copies are on the Internet Archive and Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Francis J. Grandon, Kate Bruce, W. Chrystie Miller, Dorothy Bernard, Gertrude Claire, and Robert Harron are also in the Biograph cast.
- The story is Jackson’s novel, not a Griffith original.
- An Internet Archive copy is filed as Ramona_953.
- A Commons file is titled Ramona (1910).
Scenes
- Moreno refuses the marriage, and Ramona leaves with Alessandro.
- Their baby dies.
- A white man kills Alessandro in a fight over land.
Influenced by
- Helen Hunt Jackson’s novel Ramona (1884)
Influenced
- Ramona (1928)
- Ramona (1936)
Also available
- Internet Archive (Ramona_953)
- Wikimedia Commons (Ramona (1910).webm)
