1914 film
The Perils of Pauline
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Theatrical release poster
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Directed by
| |
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Written by
| |
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Starring
| Pearl White
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Cinematography
| Arthur C. Miller
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Distributed by
| General Film Company
& Eclectic Film Company
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Release date
|
- March 31, 1914
(
1914-03-31
)
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Running time
| 20 chapters (total of 410 minutes)
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Country
| United States
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Language
| Silent with English intertitles
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The Perils of Pauline
is a 1914 American
melodrama
film serial
produced by
William Randolph Hearst
and released by the Eclectic film company, shown in bi-weekly installments, featuring
Pearl White
as the title character, an ambitious young heiress with an independent nature and a desire for adventure.
Despite popular associations,
[
citation needed
]
Pauline was never tied to a railroad track in the series, an image that was added to popular mythology by scenes in stage melodramas of the 1800s, in serials featuring the resourceful "railroad girl" Helen Holmes in her long-running series
The Hazards of Helen
, and in other railroad-themed Holmes cliffhangers such as
The Girl and the Game
. The images of Holmes' railroad adventures were blended in the public mind with Pearl White's cliffhanging adventures, probably because White became the bigger celebrity.
The serial had 20 episodes, the first being three reels (30 minutes), and the rest two reels (20 minutes) each. After the original run, it was reshown in theaters a number of times, sometimes in re-edited versions, through the 1920s. Today,
The Perils of Pauline
is known to exist only in a condensed, reformatted 9-chapter version (approximately 214 minutes), released in Europe in 1916 by Pathe Freres.
[1]
In 2008,
The Perils of Pauline
was selected by the
Library of Congress
for the United States
National Film Registry
, as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot
[
edit
]
Before Pauline (Pearl White) will agree to marry Harry (Crane Wilbur), who proposes marriage to her on the tennis court, she says that she wishes to be allowed to embark upon activities of her choice for a year and then write about them afterward. She proceeds then to plan to ride in a balloon, fly an airplane, drive a racing car, ride in a horse race, go on a treasure hunt, act in a motion picture, and tour a submarine, among other things, and frequently ends up in trouble after being assaulted by henchmen of Raymond Owen (Paul Panzer), her adoptive father's scheming secretary, who wants to dispose of Pauline and gain her inheritance for himself. Owen hires the disreputable Hicks (Francis Carlyle) who owes Owen money, and later Gypsy king called Balthazar to sabotage Pauline's plans, or kidnap or murder her and often Harry ends up coming to her rescue when she is trapped on a cliff or tied up in a house set afire, but as the series goes on she is also shown to be able to extricate herself from various predicaments as well. Finally, after she ends up trapped on an abandoned ship being used for target practice by the Navy and is genuinely terrified by the experience, Pauline decides she has had enough of adventuring and agrees to marry Harry. Owen is drowned by a sailor he has refused to allow to blackmail him, and all is well.
Cast
[
edit
]
- Pearl White
as Pauline Marvin
- Crane Wilbur
as Harry Marvin
- Paul Panzer
as Raymond Owen (Called Koerner in the European release)
- Edward Jose
as Sanford Marvin
- Francis Carlyle as Owen's Henchman, Montgomery Hicks
- Clifford Bruce as Gypsy Leader Balthazar
- Donald MacKenzie as Blinky Bill
- Jack Standing
as Lieutenant Summers
- Eleanor Woodruff as Lucille
Chapter titles
[
edit
]
The original serial episodes had no titles, only episode numbers. Titles for episodes have been applied to them from the condensed Pathe release of the serial or sometimes as derived from novelizations of the serial.
The original 20 episodes contained the following story elements:
- MUMMY CASE/WILL Pauline's ambition to have adventures and write about them before marrying, Egyptian mummy speaks to Mr. Marvin, Death of Marvin and Owen's plot to kill Pauline and gain her inheritance
- AIRFIELD Owen tampers with an airplane he thinks Pauline will fly and causes it to crash
- OLD SAILOR'S STORY Blinky Bill the sailor tells a story of mutiny and treasure
- TREASURE ISLAND Expedition to an island to recover lost treasure; bomb on board ship
- RECEPTION/ABDUCTION BY CHINESE Pearl charms Signor Baskinelli, seized by Chinamen, imprisoned in a Joss House
- BALLOON/CLIFF Owen and Hicks conspire to set Pauline aloft in a balloon, rescue from cliff's edge
- HOUSE FIRE/WESTERN ACTION Pauline trapped in abandoned house set afire, Harry rescues her, she travels West and is kidnapped
- INDIANS Pauline is believed to be a goddess and tested by an Indian tribe
- DEVIL'S ISLAND Pauline acts in a movie for director Louis Gasnier
- SMUGGLERS Lighthouse, rocket gun
- SOPHIE MACALLEN'S WEDDING Escaped lions, auto crash
- CAPTURED BY GYPSIES Pauline abducted, Harry fights Balthazar
- SERPENT IN THE GARDEN Snake in basket, Steeplechase, house party in Adirondacks, cliff's edge
- TRAPPED IN RUINED MILL Trapped by rising water, escape on high telegraph wire
- DUEL/AUTO RACE Ferrari challenges Harry to duel, Auto race, car sabotaged by Owen
- THE GERM "Drowning disease" caused by germ
- DOG AND COUNTERFEITERS Pauline's dog abducted by counterfeiters
- SUBMARINE Spy sabotages submarine, Pauline is on board
- FAKE PUBLISHER Hotel trap, circus car, escaped ape
- FLOATING COFFIN: Pauline takes motorboat to abandoned ship used for target practice by Navy men
Titles of the Pathe 9-episode condensed and re-edited re-release stories which have been used subsequently were:
- 1 - "Par le Vertige et Par le Feu" (Trial by Fire (US),Vertigo and Fire, or From Cloud to Cliff)
- 2 - "La Deesse du Far-West" (Goddess of the Far West)
- 3 - "La Tresor du Pirate" (The Pirate Treasure)
- 4 - "Le Virage Mortel" (The Deadly Turning (US),The Deadly Curve)
- 5 - "La Fil Aerien" (A Watery Doom (US), The Aerial Wire)
- 6 - "L'Aile Brisee" (The Shattered Plane (US), The Broken Wing)
- 7 - "La Plongee Tragique" (The Tragic Plunge)
- 8 - "Le Reptile Sous les Fleurs" (The Snake in the Flowers (US), The Serpent in the Flowers)
- 9 - "Le Cercueil Flottant" (The Floating Coffin)
Behind the scenes
[
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]
Pearl White was hesitant to accept the title role, but signed up for $250/week and a large amount of publicity.
[2]
William Randolph Hearst
was involved in plot development. He was also present at the premiere at Loew's Broadway Theatre, on March 23, 1914. According to "The Truth About Pearl White" by Wallace E. Davis, the general release was approximately April 1, 1914.
[3]
E. A. McManus, head of the Hearst-Vitagraph service organization, was the person who proved how successful a serial could be. He co-operated with the largest film equipment and production company in the world at that time, a France-based company named
Pathe
, to produce this serial, which was Pathe's first entry into the medium.
[2]
[3]
George B. Seitz
tried to follow the cliffhanging pattern of
The Adventures of Kathlyn
but each chapter was mostly self-contained.
[3]
After retiring from law enforcement,
William J. Flynn
, former director of the
Bureau of Investigation
(forerunner of the
FBI
), became a scenario writer for the motion picture industry through his acquaintance with the actor
King Baggot
, who was considered the greatest film star in the country at that time in 1912. Producers Theodore and Leopold Wharton commissioned him to write story lines for their films, including
Pauline
. The Whartons also eventually adapted Flynn's experiences into a 20-part spy thriller titled
The Eagle's Eye
(1918), starring Baggot.
[4]
Surviving chapters of the French condensation of
Pauline
are noteworthy for their unintentionally funny re-translations of their title cards and dialogue captions in the English version, filled with misspellings, poor punctuation, terrible grammar, and odd expressions. The film was recut and adapted for home-movie use, and all of the printed captions were translated into
French
. Later, when the American home-movie industry beckoned, the original
English
titles had been scrapped, so the French technicians tried to translate the titles back into English.
[3]
[5]
These errors have also been blamed on
Louis J. Gasnier
, director and supervisor of the production. Gasnier, as explained by
Crane Wilbur
, made linguistic mistakes that confused the French-speaking crew.
[2]
The new title cards also renamed the villain's character: Raymond Owen as "Koerner," in reference to German "villainy" during
World War I
.
Much of the film was shot in
Fort Lee, New Jersey
, where many early
film studios
in
America's first motion picture industry
were based at the beginning of the 20th century.
[6]
[7]
[8]
Scenes were also filmed in
Pittsburgh
,
Pennsylvania
[9]
and
Staten Island
,
New York
.
[10]
The term "
cliffhanger
" may have originated with the series, owing to a number of episodes filmed on or around the
New Jersey Palisades
?though it is also likely to refer to situations in stories of this type where the hero or heroine is hanging from a cliff, seemingly with no way out, until the next episode or last-minute resolution.
Pearl White performed most of her own stunts for the serial, but also was stunt doubled by a man. Filmed in the
Adirondacks
in New York, the stunt double rode a horse off a cliff into the lake below.
[11]
Considerable risk was involved. In one incident, a balloon carrying White escaped and carried her across the
Hudson River
into a storm, before landing miles away. In another incident her back was permanently injured in a fall.
[3]
One of the more famous scenes in the serial which depicted a curved railroad bridge was supposedly the Ingham Creek trestle in
New Hope, Pennsylvania
on the Reading Company's New Hope Branch (now the
New Hope and Ivyland Railroad
line). The railroad is a tourist attraction today. Other supposed locations for the railroad scenes include the
Belvidere-Delaware Railroad
in
Lambertville
and
Raven Rock, New Jersey
and the Long Island Rail Road in the Hamptons on Long Island. These stories are likely legends since there were no major scenes involving action with trains in the serial.
[12]
Milton Berle
claimed
The Perils of Pauline
as his first film appearance, playing the character of a young boy, though this has never been independently verified and is unlikely as no child characters appear in the serial. The serial did mark one of the early credits for the cinematographer
Arthur C. Miller
, who was transferred to the project from the Pathe News department.
Pathe established an American factory and studio facility in
Jersey City, New Jersey
in 1910, and also established the
Eclectic Film Company
as a subsidiary distribution company for both its American and European products. Although the Jersey City plant produced moderately popular comedies, dramas, and newsreels largely directed at the US market,
Pauline
was the first American-made Pathe effort to achieve worldwide success under the Eclectic banner.
The final peril has Pauline sitting in a target boat as the Navy opens fire. The idea was also used in
To the Shores of Tripoli
(1942).
[3]
Sequels and remakes
[
edit
]
This successful serial was quickly followed by
The Exploits of Elaine
, also starring White. Many imitations and
parodies
followed, heralding the first golden age of the American film serial.
The title
The Perils of Pauline
was reused by
Universal Studios
for a
1933 sound serial
with a different plot, by
Paramount Pictures
as the
Betty Hutton
vehicle
The Perils of Pauline
(1947), and by Universal again in 1967 as an
updated comedy
.
An abortive mixed-media musical was planned to be based on the film, called
Who's That Girl?
, meant to be premiered by
The Boys from Syracuse
producer Richard York on Broadway in 1970, with a book written by Lewis Banchi and Milburn Smith, and with the planned participation of the songwriting duo
Ray Evans
and
Jay Livingston
.
[13]
Legacy
[
edit
]
The Perils of Pauline
is the prime example of what scholar Ben Singer has called the "serial-queen
melodrama
".
[14]
There has been a recent reassessment of Singer's model in light of broader film forms.
[15]
The film's style was later subject to nostalgic caricature in many forms (e.g.
Dudley Do-Right
), but the original heroine was neither as helpless as the caricatures, nor did the original series include the much-parodied "tied to railroad tracks" or "tied to buzzsaw" scenarios which appeared in later films in this vein. Even the title phrase "Perils of" was often adopted by later serials, for example, in Universal's
Perils of the Secret Service
,
Perils of the Wild
, and
Perils of the Yukon
. and Republic Pictures'
Perils of Nyoka
.
The 1969?70 cartoon series
The Perils of Penelope Pitstop
was patterned after this serial, and included the plot point of the villain trying to eliminate the heroine so he can keep her inheritance.
The
Thunderbirds
episode "
The Perils of Penelope
" was inspired by
The Perils of Pauline
.
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Harmon, Jim
;
Donald F. Glut
(1973). "1. The Girls 'Who Is That Girl in the Buzz Saw?
'
".
The Great Movie Serials: Their Sound and Fury
. Routledge. p. 8.
ISBN
978-0-7130-0097-9
.
- ^
a
b
c
Lahue, Kalten C. "1. A Bolt From The Blue".
Continued Next Week
. pp. 8?10.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Stedman, Raymond William (1971).
"1. Drama by Instalment"
.
Serials: Suspense and Drama By Installment
. University of Oklahoma Press. pp.
11?14
.
ISBN
978-0-8061-0927-5
.
- ^
Dash, Mike
(2009).
The First Family: Terror, Extortion and the Birth of the American Mafia
. London: Simon & Schuster. p. Epilogue, page 10.
ISBN
978-1-84737-173-7
.
- ^
Miller, Arthur C.;
One Reel a Week
[1967]
- ^
Koszarski, Richard (2004).
Fort Lee: The Film Town
. Rome, Italy: John Libbey Publishing - CIC srl.
ISBN
0-86196-653-8
.
- ^
"Studios and Films"
. Fort Lee Film Commission
. Retrieved
May 30,
2011
.
- ^
Fort Lee Film Commission (2006).
Fort Lee: Birthplace of the Motion Picture Industry
. Arcadia Publishing.
ISBN
0-7385-4501-5
.
- ^
Tiech, John (2012).
Pittsburgh Film History
.
Charleston
:
The History Press
. p. 8.
ISBN
9781609497095
.
- ^
Bailey, Robb. "
16 cult movies filmed on Staten Island: From a Snug porno to a Verrazano jumper
".
Staten Island Advance
(April 1, 2017). Retrieved April 2, 2017.
- ^
MacKenzie, Mary (2007). "Lake Placid and the Silent Film Industry". In Manchester, Lee (ed.).
The Plains of Abraham. A History of North Elba and Lake Placid
. Utica, New York. p. 356.
{{
cite book
}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link
)
- ^
"New Hope & Ivyland Railroad"
. newhoperailroad.com
. Retrieved
June 20,
2008
.
- ^
New York Daily News. October 22, 1969.
- ^
Ben Singer.
Female Power in the Serial-Queen Melodrama: The Etiology of an Anomaly
(
PDF
)
- ^
Shane Denson. "
Rethinking the Serial-Queen Melodrama: Serial Narration and Medial Self-Reflexivity in Transitional-Era Cinema
"
External links
[
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]