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This chapter examines the delayed but still strong and lasting impression that Pearl White left on Czechoslovakia's critics, viewers, and avant-garde movement. Drawing on a series of articles in Czech periodicals from the late 1910s to the 1930s, it considers the issues presented by White and the American serial films regarding the international market, the need to come to terms with Hollywood's global reach, and the impact of glocalized Americana for local production. The chapter first looks at the sudden influx of American films in Czechoslovakia after World War I before discussing how America was perceived as a model of democracy and cultural modernity in the early years of the First Czechoslovak Republic. It then explores how White fueled the fantasies of the Czech populace as well as the ways that she was appropriated and re-imagined in the service of various discourses that spoke for the mental and physical well-being of the nation. It also analyzes White's Czech career within the context of larger issues related to spectatorship, film aesthetics, and the creation of star mythology.

This chapter examines the Pearl White phenomenon on the French market, with particular emphasis on the French influence on Pathé Frère's American serial films and the obvious resemblance between the Pauline character and the French athlete, mountaineer, and aviator Marie Marvingt. Also known as “the fiancée of danger,” “the most important woman in France since Joan of Arc,” and “the universal sportswoman,” Marvingt was already familiar to the American audience by the time The Perils of Pauline was released in 1914. The parallels between the stories of White and Marvingt suggest that the former's popularity among French audiences was not simply due to some exotic fascination for the peerless modernity of the American New Woman, but was instead rooted in some very familiar experiences of feminine heroism. This chapter also explores White's forerunners as well as emulators in the French serial genre from Musidora to Protéa.

This chapter examines the evocation of Pearl White's star persona by avant-garde theorists and filmmakers ranging from Sergei Eisenstein to surrealist Robert Desnos. The avant-garde's reactions to White fall largely along movement lines. At once the embodiment of a low-culture narrative mode and a spectacular star object who transcended any particular plot line, White's pejorative status as “the most assassinated woman in the world” may have been more revealing than Jean Epstein originally intended. Whereas Epstein decried White's constant near-death experiences and numerous last-minute escapes as unrealistic pulp fiction, surrealists celebrated her as a “marvelous” apparition. This chapter compares the reactions of adherents of surrealism and impressionism to White and considers how Desnos and the surrealists attempted to transpose the “love and poetry” of her films into their own filmmaking practice. It suggests that White's legacy aside from international stardom exerted an influence upon the avant-garde movement, and that her influence had revolutionary potential for challenging the status quo.

This book explores the historiographic importance, narrative patterns, marketing, and cultural reception of the serial genre through a wider contextualization of the serial phenomenon and its fearless female heroines led by Pearl White, who plays the title character in The Perils of Pauline. It investigates the complexities of Pearl White's performance and the overall cultural power of serial queens in many markets at a critical historical juncture in the history of cinema. It examines how the serial film became part of a rethinking of production strategies, distribution and advertising patterns, and fan culture. It also considers the American film industry's expansion on the international market, fueled in large part by the profitable serial format, along with the serial craze's international impact. The book suggests that American serial films are an illustration of both globalization and an accompanying hegemonic practice of Hollywood cinema and the vicissitudes of glocalization.

This chapter examines Pearl White's serials in France and the transformations made in tailoring them to the local French setting during World War I. It first provides an overview of the glocalization of American serial films in France before discussing two of Pearl White's serials, Les Mystères de New-York and The House of Hate (La Maison de la haine). It then considers the marketing adaptations and marketing tie-ins of the serials for the French market, along with the incorporation of anti-German propaganda in their French novelizations. In shows that the adaptation not only aligned promotional material or changing intertitles to accommodate viewership, but also, under the stress of war, localization transformed a supposedly national body of “foreign” films into a highly flexible transnational film form. The chapter also explains how Pearl White's love for France that was often made apparent in her serials boosted the French admiration of her.

This chapter examines the fate of Pearl White's serials on the Swedish market during the early 1900s. More specifically, it analyzes the impact of censorship on White's films, and American serial films in general, in Sweden. Aside from censorship imposing stringent regulations on crime serials, traditional forms of marketing diluted the impact of the format and upset the chronology for the episodes, undercutting the popularity of the serial queens. Despite all the hype concerning her international following, White was never perceived as a truly big star in Sweden, mainly because only a selected few of her films actually made it to Swedish audiences. Out of her eleven serial films, only The Perils of Pauline and the three Exploits of Elaine serials were screened in Sweden. Furthermore, none of the Swedish copies have survived. The chapter also discusses Pathé Frère's impact on the Swedish film industry.

This chapter examines the construction of one form of modern Indian femininity in the late colonial period by focusing on the intriguing figure of Fearless Nadia, aka Mary Evans. Billed as the “Indian Pearl White,” Evans seems to have been the personification of the “Heroine of a Thousand Stunts” but without her gentler qualities. This chapter first provides an overview of the Fearless Nadia serial films before discussing the films of brothers Homi and Jamshed Wadia, including Diamond Queen. It then analyzes Nadia within the film production context of 1930s Bombay and how the Wadia brothers dealt with her whiteness/otherness and negotiated the points of tension in her image. It also considers the extent to which Nadia copied White and other Hollywood stunt stars, suggesting that this was a form of colonial mimicry in reverse that provided potent currency in the nationalist era. The chapter shows that, despite her whiteness, Fearless Nadia became part of the nationalist movement during the late colonial period in films that many considered anti-British.

This chapter details how, given The Exploits of Elaine's enormous appeal, plans for an extension, or “extender,” began even as the original serial was still in production. Indeed, the opening episode of The New Exploits of Elaine (1915) was released just one week after the first serial concluded. By picking up where Exploits left off, both William Randolph Hearst and the Whartons hoped to maintain the keen interest in the adventures of Elaine Dodge and Craig Kennedy—and in Pearl White and Arnold Daly, the popular stars who played them. The production of serial-sequels, by then, had become an increasingly common practice among studios hoping to capitalize on their original successes. The unresolved-plot ending of The New Exploits of Elaine provided a natural segue into the third and final installment of the Elaine serial. On the one hand, The Romance of Elaine harked back to familiar elements of the serial formula, among them recurring threats from a mysterious villain, death-defying escapes, car chases, explosions, and romantic rescues. On the other, it celebrated Elaine's tenacity and reinforced the image of her as a new and increasingly independent female type of protagonist within a sensational, action-packed, typically male-oriented and male-dominated story line.

This chapter focuses on the serial The Exploits of Elaine (1914). The fictional Elaine Dodge, an enterprising young woman who dedicates herself to solving the mystery of her father's death at the hands of an anonymous villain, would help to shape and advance the Wharton brothers' film career. As Pathé-Hearst's The Perils of Pauline (1914) neared its conclusion, newspaper tycoon and movie producer William Randolph Hearst was determined to create a new serial that would afford his popular star Pearl White an exciting encore. That serial was The Exploits of Elaine, which was expected to be a landmark venture for Hearst. In turn, for the Whartons, the chance to be associated with Hearst's enterprise seemed an unparalleled opportunity, one that would allow them to move beyond short pictures and to make their own singular contribution to the increasingly popular serial genre.