Updated:
October 13, 2006
he California missions often served as the inspiration for authors and playwrights. California’s Poet Laureate and politician John Steven McGroarty wrote TheMission Play in 1911. It was staged adjacent to Mission San Gabriel Archángel for twenty years. McCroarty credited Frank Miller with the idea for the play. Miller had been to Oberammergau, Germany, and had seen the Passion Play, the epic pageant of Christ’s life first performed in the 17th Century. One account notes (McHale, 1987), that Miller “took McGroarty up to Mount Rubidoux, where ‘beneath’ the shadow of the cross erected to the memory of Father Serra, the plan unfolded" (p.71). Miller invested in McGroaty’s play, as did other Southern California notables, including Henry E. Huntington, Henry Chandler of the Los Angeles Times, and E. L. Doheny. Near the end of the pageant’s run, an auditorium designed by Mission Inn’s principal architect Arthur Benton became home to The Mission Play.
Miller produced his own programs and pageants at the Mission Inn, including A Nativity Play, also written by McGroarty. In it, Frank Miller portrayed Father Serra. At the conclusion of the play, students from Sherman Institute (Sherman Indian High School) presented Native American dances and other recitals.
At the time, there was great public interest in the plight and conditions of the Mission Indians. In her romantic novel, Ramona (1884), and her earlier book, A Century of Dishonor (1881), author Helen Hunt Jackson expressed her concern for California’s Native Americans. Since 1923, a yearly outdoor pageant in Hemet, California has retold the tragic story of Ramona. Hunt’s novel played a significant role in starting the Spanish and Mission revival period that birthed the Mission Inn. Frank Miller chose to make Ramona part of the Inn. The Ramona Dome, adjacent to the Cloister Music Room of the hotel, features a series of windows depicting Ramona and her lover Alessandro in stained glass.
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