LITTLE MARY AND THE BIG TREES

In 1917 the most famous actress of the silent screen came to the Santa Cruz Mountains. Mary Pickford arrived at Big Trees Grove to star in the Artcraft film, A Romance of the Redwoods.

Cecil B. DeMille

From 1911 to 1924, Big Trees Grove was used as backdrop for over a dozen silent movies. Both the Welch family’s Big Trees Grove and the neighboring resort, Cowell’s Big Trees, were used as backdrop for these films. A Romance of the Redwoods was perhaps the best known of these. The film is notable not only for the presence of Pickford, but also for being an early outing for its young director, Cecil B. DeMille. 

Mary Pickford’s leading man was former vaudevillian Elliot Dexter. Like many films of the era, the storyline of A Romance in the Redwoods, was quite melodramatic. 

As an orphaned girl in Gold Rush California ...

“Jenny Lawrence (Mary Pickford) is sent ... to join her uncle. He has been killed by Indians, and ‘Black’ Brown (Elliott Dexter), a road agent, takes his name and his respect as a cloak to shield himself from his many deeds of outlawry. Jenny realizes what has occurred but is forced to accept the protection half-heartedly offered her by Brown in preference to the only other shelter of the town – the dance hall.”

At the conclusion of the filming, Pickford was honored in the Santa Cruz tradition.

“When ‘Little Mary’ visited the forest in connection with the production of her latest Artcraft picture … a delegation waited upon her requesting that they have the privilege of naming a giant redwood for her."

“It is the custom on the big tree forest reserve near Santa Cruz, where Mary Pickford’s picture, ‘A Romance of the Redwoods,’ was staged, to name each one of the giants after some prominent person who visited there. Theodore Roosevelt, General Grant, ex-President Taft and a number of other celebrities have trees named after them in these woods, each name being engraved on a brass plate and tacked to the base of the tree.”

“She was asked to select one of the enormous trees, but Mary refused to accept any of them.  Instead she chose a young redwood, only a foot in circumference, and which seemed a mere dwarf among the giants, and requested that this little tree be named after her.”

Unfortunately, we do not know which little Big Tree was given this honor.

Sources: "Mary Pickford Again Honored; Name Given Tree," Los Angeles Herald, May 29, 1917; Screen Examinations, “A Romance of the Redwoods” reviewed by Peter Milne, Motion Picture News, May 26, 1917; "A Romance of the Redwoods," by Edwin M. La Roche, Motion Picture Magazine, July 1917; Cecil B. DeMille advertisement, Moving Picture World, June 16, 1917.

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