Ben Cameron, a young Southerner from Virginia, goes to California in the early fifties to take up government land. As he enters the little city of San Juan he finds upon the road a starving Spanish peon, Ozozco. Moved by his physical condition, Cameron takes the boy to his home, passing the Mission in the town of San Juan, where a Padre of the Mission is talking to Ines, the rose of her fair California. Love at first sight dominates, and at the fandango that night, Cameron again meets the beautiful Ines, proving her champion when an insulting drunken Spaniard attempts to trespass upon the freedom of the girl Ines. Land grabbers everywhere cause great distress to the Spaniards, who kill at sight all gringoes thieving or taking their lands unlawfully. To avenge himself, the drunken Spaniard causes a raid upon the privacy of Cameron, who is in the act of questioning a number of land grabbers, who are about to make a wholesome raid upon the little village of San Juan. Cameron, captured by the order of the commandant, is doomed to be shot when Ozozco, proving a friend in need, crawls to the stacked muskets and replaces the good cartridges with blanks. Cameron, when shot, falls as if dead and so escapes by the aid of the faithful Ozozco and his sweetheart. Standing on the mountain peak, Cameron holding his sweetheart, now his wife, in his arms, looks over the state they are now leaving for a new world beyond. - Reel Life, December 13th, 1913, p.4
The Rose of San Juan is a one-reel film which would consist of about 1000 feet running for approximately 15 minutes. As the surviving print is only just over 3 minutes, that means there is about 12 minutes or 800 feet of film missing. As the plot descriptions from the trade papers are fairly extensive, we have a good gauge of what scenes are missing. There is no footage of Cameron being captured by the land grabbers he angered earlier or of Ozozco coming to help Cameron by replacing the cartridges with blanks. This version is also missing the final scene of the film where Cameron fakes his death and gets to live happily ever after with his new wife, Ines. By comparing the trade paper summaries and reviews to the existing print, we can see that it is mostly the second half that is lost. The papers also praise the scenic Santa Barbara locations they shot at, one of which can be identified as the Santa Barbara Mission in the scene where the Father of the Mission is turning the land grabbers away. The film also appears to present landgrabbers or white colonizers in a negative light which is interesting given the historical time period of the film, as racism and colonialization were very prevalent. - Megan Tomczak - FAMST 151FA 27 July 2022