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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 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 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.

This chapter recounts how, soon after completing The Mysteries of Myra, the Wharton brothers undertook a new production, Beatrice Fairfax (1916). This serial was financed once again by William Randolph Hearst and distributed by his International Film Service through the Pathé Exchange. Originally titled Letters to Beatrice, it capitalized on the recent trend of real-life female reporters, who “became familiar, consistent personalities, much like serial queens” and who sought out “novel and thrilling experiences that extended the experiential sphere of women” by vivifying places and activities that were typically “out of reach to women, restricted by virtue of either their danger or their indelicacy.” The Whartons' serial, which reflected the strong real-life collaboration with newspapers that had made the serial genre so popular, was based on Fairfax's widely read “Advice to the Lovelorn” column syndicated by Hearst. But, in fact, there was no actual Beatrice Fairfax; that was a pseudonym used by Hearst employee Marie Manning.