Produced by the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company for Paramount release. Director: Cecil B. DeMille. Scenario by William C. DeMille, from the play by Angel Guimera, as translated and adapted by Guido Marburg and Wallace Gilpatrick. Art director: Wilfred Buckland. Photography: Alvin Wyckoff
Picture started: June 14,1915. Picture finished: June 25, 1915. Length: 4,253 feet (five reels).Cost: $ 18,574.97. Released: May 8, 1916.Gross: $ 102,767.81
Cast: Geraldine Farrar (Maria Rosa), Wallace Reid (Andreas), Pedro de Cordoba (Ramon), Ernest Joy (Carlos), Anita King (Ana), Horace B. Carpenter (Pedro), James Neill (a priest), and Billy Elmer (a policeman)
When Geraldine Farrar appeared for her last performance in the current season at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, “wrote an anonymous reporter for Paramount Progress in 1915, ” the audience, at the conclusion of the opera, flatly refused to leave the auditorium. The deafening applause continued without ceasing while Miss Farrar came repeatedly before the curtain, bowing her thanks ….”1 Geraldine Farrar, one of the great stars of the Metropolitan Opera, was beloved by the American public; they were proud that this homegrown daughter of a professional baseball player was an internationally recognized celebrity in a European art form.
Farrar came to pictures at a crucial time in her career. “The European war, ruining opera on the continent,” wrote Morris Gest, “had deprived her of her customary summer of international activity.”2 A longtime friend of Farrar and the son-in-law of Mrs. David Belasco, Gest was a vaudeville producer long connected with Hammerstein’s Victoria Theater, where he handled “everything from a Caucasus bear to a Russian giant or a fake Sultan with a large family ….” After dinner at Farrar’s home one evening, Gest recalled,
She led us to her library, where she has … a painting of the Emperor of Germany in the full flower of early maturity. It was a favorite portrait, presented to her by the Emperor himself.
“How different he is now,” she said. “Really—to perpetuate one’s youth one should have a photograph taken every day—until age begins.”
“The only way to really live forever, “ I answered, “is on a picture screen….”
That evening, according to Gest, the Lasky production of The Girl of the Golden West opened at the Strand Theater in New York. “Miss Farrar was very glad to attend,” continued Gest, “but in the limousine en route confessed to me that she had seen but one ’picture show’ in her life—Quo Vadis?, only a year ago at the Cinema Theater, in Paris.”
In his article Gest insisted that his efforts to bring Geraldine Farrar to the movies were completely unselfish. “I at length made her see that my interest was a friendly one,” he wrote, “ and that I had not entered her home as a friend to make personal profit.” But whatever his motive, he went about his task with great zeal. First he had to persuade the opera star that the public might be interested in seeing her on-screen:
At length I endeavored to show her what a wonderful thing it would be if her performance of Carmen could be perpetuated in motion photography. There are nine million [phonograph] records of your voice to-day …and everyone who owns Farrar records has a Carmen record.3 Every one of those people, as well as many others, would be more than glad of the opportunity to see you as an actress even as they now hear you as a singer. Your voice is heard in every American town and city of consequence, and yet you’ve been in comparatively few of these places. Do you think that your actual moving personality would have less appeal?
Next, Morris Gest invited Jesse Lasky to see Farrar at the Met in Madame Butterfly, and let it be known that Miss Farrar would consider film offers. It was Lasky’s intention that Carmen would provide the vehicle for her screen debut.4
Farrar left the East Coast on June 8, 1915, traveling with an entourage that included Morris Gest and his wife, her parents, and several others in a private Pullman car named “Superb.” Her arrival in Los Angeles was greeted as a major event with Los Angeles mayor Henry Rose and a delegation from City Hall in attendance along with Lasky, DeMille, and others from the studio.
Because grand opera often emphasized the “grand” in performance and gesture, DeMille had doubts that Farrar could make an easy transition to the screen. He proposed making Maria Rosa as her first picture to help the star become accustomed to screen technique. He needn’t have worried. Farrar was a natural. Charming, believable, and capable of great range, she lit up the screen just as she created excitement on the operatic stage, and with the release of Carmen (produced after Maria Rosa, but released first) she became a top film star—at least for a time.
Maria Rosa is an outstanding film, notable not only for Farrar’s performance, but also for the excellence of its photography. Alvin Wyckoff used lighting to create dramatic moods in a manner fairly unique for 1915. The contrasts of light and dark, dim interiors with bright exteriors seen through windows or doors, were extremely difficult photographic feats with the low-speed, high-contrast film stocks of the time.
Although Maria Rosa was written in 1890, Angel Guimera’s play had its first American performance in New York in 1914. William deMille’s screenplay is a free adaptation of the Guimera original: In the play the character played by Wallace Reid is already dead and only referred to in dialogue. In the movie, the Reid character is framed for murder and sent to prison. His rival for the hand of Maria Rosa causes her to believe that her lover has died while incarcerated. She consents to marry the rival, only to have Reid appear on her wedding day.
Wallace Reid had his first starring role in a DeMille picture with Maria Rosa. DeMille claimed that Reid’s bit part as a blacksmith in The Birth of a Nation first drew his attention to the young actor, but by 1915 Reid was already a veteran of four or five years in the business with the American Film Company, Vitagraph, and Reliance-Majestic. He even directed a number of the films in which he starred before he joined the Lasky forces.
By coincidence, the star of the New York production of Maria Rosa, Lou-Tellegen, was also under contract to the Lasky Company. Though he was not scheduled to appear in the picture (Pedro de Cordoba played the role of Ramon), Lou-Tellegen sat in on some of the story sessions with Cecil and William deMille. During one of these sessions he met Farrar for the first time; they were married in 1916.5