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The Perils of Pauline
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Perils of Pauline was a silent movie serial which debuted in 1914. A second serial of this name was released in 1934. There is also a 1947 feature movie which makes reference to the earlier serial, and a 1967 feature film.
Contents |
| The Perils of Pauline (1914) | |
|---|---|
| Distributed by | General Film Company & Eclectic Film Company |
| Release date(s) | 31 March 1914 |
| Running time | 20 chapters |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The very popular silent Perils of Pauline was a cliffhanger serial shown in weekly installments featuring Pearl White as the title character, a perpetual damsel in distress. She was menaced by assorted villains, including pirates and Native Americans. At the end of each installment, she was generally placed in a situation that looked sure to result in her imminent death. The start of the next episode showed how she was rescued or otherwise escaped the danger, only to face fresh peril again.
The serial had 20 episodes, the first being three reels and the rest two reels each. After the original ran, it was reshown in theaters a number of times, sometimes in edited, shortened versions, through the 1920s. Today, The Perils of Pauline is known to exist only in a shortened 9-reel version released in Europe in 1916.
The premise of the story was that Pauline's wealthy guardian Mr. Marvin, upon his death, has left her inheritance in the care of his secretary Mr. Koerner until the time of her marriage. Pauline wants to wait a while before marrying, as her dream is to go out and have adventures to prepare herself for becoming an author. Mr. Koerner, hoping to ultimately keep the money for himself, tries to turn Pauline's various adventures against her and have her "disappear" to his own advantage.
Surviving chapters of Pauline are noteworthy for their unintentionally funny title cards and dialogue captions, filled with misspellings, poor punctuation, and terrible grammar. This was accidental. Pathé, the theatrical distributor, exported the film to France, where it was recut and adapted for home-movie use. 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! Current prints of The Perils of Pauline contain these badly re-translated title cards. Thus, in "The Pirate's Treasure" Pauline detects a time-bomb and says, "What is that tic-tac I can hear." In the same episode she spies one of the quaint locals and observes, "Here is an original old man." The home-movie versions were re-edited into self-contained episodes, so each cliffhanger would be resolved before each chapter ended.
The term cliffhanger originated with the series, owing to a number of episodes filmed on or around the New Jersey Palisades. One of the more famous scenes in the serial was filmed on the curved Ingham Run trestle in New Hope, Pennsylvania on the former Reading Company's New Hope Branch, now the New Hope and Ivyland Railroad line. The trestle still stands, just off Ferry Street, and is now referred to as "Pauline's Trestle". The railroad is also a tourist attraction and offers rides from New Hope to Lahaska, Pennsylvania, crossing over the original trestle.
Milton Berle claimed this as his first film appearance, playing the character of a young boy.
This was the first major theatrical production by the American branch of Pathé, the France-based company that, during the first part of the 20th century, was the largest film equipment and production company in the world.
This successful serial was quickly followed by The Exploits of Elaine, also starring White. Many imitations and parodies followed.
References to Perils appear in 1960s animated cartoon television shows Dudley Do-Right and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop.
| The Perils of Pauline (1934) | |
|---|---|
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 1934 |
| Running time | 12 chapters (231 min) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
A sound film remake of the Pathé serial appeared in 1934; this 12-chapter cliffhanger was produced by Universal Studios. Evalyn Knapp, herself a graduate of silent Pathé short subjects, starred as heroine Pauline Hargrave. Historic footage of the 1930 flight of the Dornier Do X seaplane is featured, with episodes set in Indonesia actually filmed in South America.
- Guns of Doom
- Typhoon of Terror
- The Leopard Leaps
- Trapped by the Enemy
- Flaming Tomb
- Pursued by Savages
- Tracked by the Enemy
- Dangerous Depths
- The Mummy Walks
- The Night Attack
- Into the Flames
- Confu's Sacred Secret
| Preceded by Gordon of Ghost City (1933) |
Universal Serial The Perils of Pauline (1934) |
Succeeded by Pirate Treasure (1934) |
| The Perils of Pauline (1947) | |
|---|---|
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 4 July 1947 |
| Running time | 96 min |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The 1947 feature released by Paramount Pictures is a fictionalized Hollywood account of silent star Pearl White's rise to fame, starring Betty Hutton as White.
The film, a broad satire of silent-movie production, is a musical-comedy vehicle for Hutton, filmed in Technicolor, with original songs by Frank Loesser. The script portrays "Pearl" as an ambitious hoyden who rises from amateur-night vaudeville to silent-screen stardom. The film also stars William Demarest, Frank Faylen, Constance Collier, Billy DeWolfe, and John Lund. It was directed by George Marshall.
Paul Panzer, who played the villain in the 1914 film, has a very small part in this film, as do silent-comedy veterans Chester Conklin, Hank Mann, Snub Pollard, and James Finlayson.
| The Perils of Pauline (1967) | |
|---|---|
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 2 August 1967 |
| Running time | 107 min |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
A 1967 comedy The Perils of Pauline enjoyed neither the commercial nor critical success of the earlier Paulines. Inspired by the Batman TV series, with the same kind of florid villainy and dauntless heroics, this TV pilot starred Pamela Austin as Pauline and Pat Boone as her staunch protector. The pilot did not find a sponsor or a network, and the three sample shows were compiled into a theatrical feature film and released by Universal Pictures. Universal's home-movie company, Castle Films, turned it back into a serial, excerpting four episodes from the feature.
On the Internet Movie Database site:
- 1914 "Perils" at the Internet Movie Database
- 1934 "Perils" at the Internet Movie Database
- 1947 "Perils" at the Internet Movie Database
- 1967 "Perils" at the Internet Movie Database
- The first chapter of the Peril of Pauline at Google Video
- Scenes from the 1914 version were filmed on the New Hope & Ivyland Railroad.