Towering above the village is the estate of Elias Graves, a wealthy man who hopes to use his influence to remove these squatters from his land.

When his lawyer is unable to do so directly, he instead enacts a ban on net fishing, removing the livelihoods of many people in the village, including Tess and her father.

One of the first feature films to come out of early Hollywood, shooting was spread between the California cities of Del Mar and Santa Monica.

[5] When Zukor gave Mary Pickford the script to Tess of the Storm Country, she had to be persuaded to take the lead role.

The script was based on a successful novel of the same name by Grace Miller White, but it eliminated much of the book's moral pieties, complexity, and regional dialect.

Pickford eventually accepted the role due to the popularity of White's novel, but she chafed under Edwin S. Porter's direction.

The aging Porter was still employing an outdated approach to film-making that worked so successfully for him in films like The Great Train Robbery (1903).

"[6] The film first released in US theaters on March 30, 1914, and was rapidly successful, particularly in propelling the fame of its star, Mary Pickford, to new heights.