Pearl White
Acting
Biography
From Wikipedia Pearl Fay White (March 4, 1889 – August 4, 1938) was an American stage and film actress. White began her career on the stage at the age of six, and later moved on to silent films appearing in a number of popular serials. Dubbed the "Queen of the serials", White was noted for doing the majority of her own stunts in several film serials, most notably in The Perils of Pauline. In 1910, White was offered a role by Pathé Frères in The Girl From Arizona, the French company's first American film produced at their new studio in Bound Brook, New Jersey. She then worked at Lubin Studios in 1911 and several other of the independents, until the Crystal Film Company in Manhattan gave her top billing in a number of slapstick comedy shorts from 1912 to 1914. White then took a vacation in Europe. Upon her return, she signed with Eclectic Film Company, a subsidiary of Pathé in 1914. Pathé director Louis J. Gasnier offered her the starring role in film serial The Perils of Pauline. By 1919, White had grown tired of film serials and signed with Fox Film Corporation with the ambition to appear in dramatic roles. Over the next two years, White appeared in ten drama films for Fox but her popularity had begun to wane. Pearl White's place in film history is important in both the evolution of cinema genres and the role of women. Like many silent film actors, many of White's films are now considered lost. The Perils of Pauline is only known to exist in a reduced nine-reel version released in Europe in 1916, but The Exploits of Elaine survives and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. All of her films were made at East Coast studios as White reportedly never visited Hollywood. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Pearl White has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6838 Hollywood Blvd. The 1947 Paramount Pictures film The Perils of Pauline, starring Betty Hutton, is a fictionalized biography of Pearl White.
Known For
Various groups of people, both well-intentioned and otherwise, search for a buried treasure that is buried underneath a skyscraper.
Plunder
An appreciative, uncritical look at silent film comedies and thrillers from early in the century through the 1920s.
Days of Thrills and Laughter
Queen of the serials Pearl White gets herself into plenty of trouble up Klondike way as a young maiden named Tiger's Cub.
The Tiger's Cub
Only Episode 7, "The Hooded Helper," of this 20-Episode Serial is known to survive. All other episodes are believed to be lost.
The Iron Claw
The Perils of Pauline is a motion picture serial shown in weekly installments featuring the actress Pearl White playing the title character. Pauline has often been cited as a famous example of a damsel-in-distress, although viewers will find her character more resourceful and less helpless than the classic 'damsel' stereotype. Nine episodes (from a condensed 1916 re-release) survive to this day.
The Perils of Pauline
A rollicking compendium of the greatest hits of silent-cinema chase sequences
The Great Chase
A meditation on the human quest to transcend physicality, constructed from decaying archival footage and set to an original symphonic score.
Decasia: The State of Decay
A young girl is presented, on her birthday, with a beautiful pearl necklace, the oldest heirloom in the family. Her maid carefully locks it up in the bureau drawer; but the next morning the necklace is missing. Naturally, the maid is accused, but she denies all knowledge of the whereabouts of the necklace, and puts the blame on the washerwoman, who had called at the time she was locking the jewels up; in consequence, the washerwoman is arrested, and her little son, thrown on his own resources, finds employment with the milkman. Two or three days later, while delivering milk at a fashionable residence, he sees a young lady walking in her sleep, out across the lawn, and follows her to a hollow tree, where he sees her dig up the jewels, which she has hidden on a previous somnambulistic promenade. Of course, this soon leads to the straightening out of all the difficulty. This short is presumably lost.
The Lost Necklace
Cinema a century ago was a new, exciting and highly democratic form of entertainment. Picture houses nationwide offered a sociable, lively environment in which to relax and escape from the daily grind. With feature films still rare, the programme was an entertaining, ever-changing roster of short items with live musical accompaniment. 100 years on, this special compilation from the BFI National Archive recreates the glorious miscellany of comedies, dramas, travelogues and newsreels which would have constituted a typical night out in 1914. Our selection includes a comic short about a face-pulling competition, a sensational episode of The Perils of Pauline, scenes of Allied troops celebrating Christmas at the Front, and an early sighting of one of cinema’s greatest icons.
A Night at the Cinema in 1914
A young heiress of an American gun factory is threatened by a masked man after her father was murdered. This criminal might be a member of her family or a German agent, who wants to get information about the factory's products, perhaps his mystery has a combined solution - we will probably never know...
The House of Hate
Elaine Dodge is the beautiful young daughter of Taylor Dodge, president of the Consolidated Insurance Company. When Mr Dodge is murdered by a mysterious cloaked figure known only as the Clutching Hand, Elaine enlists the aid of Craig Kennedy to unmask the killer
The Exploits of Elaine
Pearl White is a child living alone on a South Seas island after the death of her missionary father. By a stroke of luck, she becomes an heiress, and is transplanted into modern society.
A Virgin Paradise
A beautiful young woman is a daring master thief. She meets the young millionaire Thomas Babbington Norton, while fleeing from the scene of her latest theft.
The Lightning Raider
The story tells of the adventures of an unusual young duke, whose father, the old Grand Duke of Kiev, coveted the wife of Count Dardinilis, his colonel of Huzzars; of the old Grand Duke's plot to get her for himself; of her accidental death at the hands of his Cossacks, and of the colonel's escape with his little daughter to America. The young Grand Duke, now an orphan, comes to America to complete his education.
The King's Game
The heroine had little time for romancing newspaper reporter Walter Jameson, what with Doctor X, alias Marcus Del Mar, threatening American democracy in general and master detective Craig Kennedy's designs for a new torpedo in particular. Whenever Doctor X has Elaine or Jameson in his grasp, they are inevitably saved in the nick of time by a mystery figure garbed in black.
The Romance of Elaine
Bob Monkhouse introduces the golden age of slapstick comedy.
All in Good Fun
A silent movie serial directed by George B. Seitz.
The Fatal Ring
In this tale of the South in the mid-1800s, Annabel Lee and Warner Richmond get married, but they keep the wedding a secret so that Warner can inherit the fortune of his misogynist grandfather. But after the grandfather's death, Warner dumps Annabel for an opera singer. Warner destroys the evidence of his first marriage so he can wed the singer, who then takes his money and leaves him.
Mayblossom
A man is captured by Indians after swearing off all women.
The Woman Hater
When jealousy and envy lead Mary Vantyne to make a foolish decision and commit an impulsive act she sets off a series of events that nearly bring heartbreak to all those in her circle.