Exporting Perilous Pauline
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Exporting Perilous Pauline

Pearl White and Serial Film Craze

Marina Dahlquist, Marina Dahlquist

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Exporting Perilous Pauline

Pearl White and Serial Film Craze

Marina Dahlquist, Marina Dahlquist

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About This Book

Exceptionally popular during their time, the spectacular American action film serials of the 1910s featured exciting stunts, film tricks, and effects set against the background of modern technology, often starring resourceful female heroines who displayed traditionally male qualities such as endurance, strength, and authority. The most renowned of these "serial queens" was Pearl White, whose career as the adventurous character Pauline developed during a transitional phase in the medium's evolving production strategies, distribution and advertising patterns, and fan culture. In this volume, an international group of scholars explores how American serials starring Pearl White and other female stars impacted the emerging cinemas in the United States and abroad. Contributors investigate the serial genre and its narrative patterns, marketing, and cultural reception, and historiographic importance, with essays on Pearl White's life on and off the screen as well as the "serial queen" genre in Western and Eastern Europe, India, and China. Contributors are Weihong Bao, Rudmer Canjels, Marina Dahlquist, Monica Dall'Asta, Kevin B. Johnson, Christina Petersen, and Rosie Thomas.

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CHAPTER 1

Changing Views and Perspectives

Translating Pearl White's American Adventures in Wartime France

RUDMER CANJELS
Near the end of 1915, the French surrealist writer Philippe Soupault witnessed an unprecedented force of cinematic inundation that flooded Paris and left distinctive markers in daily life.1
One day you saw huge posters, as long as snakes, stretching out along the walls. At each streetcorner a man, his face covered with a red handkerchief, was pointing a revolver at the unconcerned passersby. You thought you heard galloping, a motor kicking over, screams of death. We descended on the cinemas and understood that everything had changed. Pearl White's smile appeared on the screen; this almost ferocious smile announced the upheavals of the new world. We finally understood that the cinema was not a perfected toy but the terrible and magnificent flag of life.2
The film to which Soupault was referring was an American serial that in France was called Les Mystères de New-York. The menacing revolver and the red handkerchief belonged to a criminal who terrorized the actress Pearl White for many episodes. However, this serial was, as will be discussed, not the same as the version previously released in America. This one was positioned quite firmly in its new French setting, not only acquiring a different structure but also an adjusted content. An important tool for accomplishing this was the tie-in, a novelization that appeared alongside the film, a tool that most likely was also noticed by Soupault. Namely, printed on the posters of Les Mystères de New-York that have survived, we find the words, “Grand Roman Cinéma Américain adapté par Pierre Decourcelle, publié par Le Matin.” (Big American cinema novel adapted by Pierre Decourcelle, published by Le Matin.)
Present, past, and future episodes of a serial not only referred to and interacted with one another but were transformed into a new national context outside the cinematic space, that is, daily life in France. This article will examine how in two Pearl White serials in particular, French customs, speech, and views were used to create a connection between America and France, how patriotic undertones and anti-German slurs were used in a war-related context to accommodate and appeal to national sensibilities. A serial had the capacity to appear in different lengths and constructions (not only in the form of the short American serial of two reels), while at the same time it could absorb and integrate locality.3 The use of seriality thus marked a different use of a global film form, one that could change and create a spontaneous mixture of globalization and localization. Homogeneity and heterogeneity as well as global and local were thus not necessarily each other's opposites.4

Elaborating Media Expositions

Marketing played an important role in the success of film serials, and the tie-in was among the most effective marketing strategies. The American tie-in published in weekly episodes in newspapers told the story of one film serial episode that at the same time could be seen at the cinema. The tie-ins created a resonating vibe of seriality that helped push film distribution and consumption in a rhythmic manner, as was first witnessed with the Edison serial What Happened to Mary in August 1912. It was only in 1915, when in America serials had already been popular for several years and tie-ins were widely publicized, that the European film market was introduced to the serial. As this volume makes abundantly clear, the most successful star of the American serial was without a doubt Pearl White, not only in the U.S. but in many other countries as well. Pearl White was not known in Europe before the release of her serials, but massive marketing campaigns soon remedied that.5 Her early serials were produced by Pathé-Exchange, the American branch of the French Pathé, and directed by the Frenchman Louis Gasnier, who had left France in 1910. It was thus through a boomerang effect that the first American serial was released on a large scale in France by the French Pathé: Les Mystères de New-York.6
Les Mystères de New-York was not originally one Pearl White serial, but a combination of three Pathé-Exchange serials that in America had followed each other in succession in 1914 and 1915. Each starred the famous serial queen Pearl White: the fourteen-part The Exploits of Elaine (1914), the ten-part The New Exploits of Elaine (1915), and the twelve-part The Romance of Elaine (1915). The original episodes were re-cut in France and rearranged into a serial of twenty-two episodes. Each episode still had more or less the same length as the original, around six hundred meters, or twenty minutes. As the French episodes followed the original order of the three American serials, Elaine Dodge (Pearl White), with the help of Craig Kennedy (Arnold Daly), now successively had to deal with The Clutching Hand (Sheldon Lewis), the evil Wu Fang (Edwin Arden), and the international spy Marcus Del Mar (Lionel Barrymore). Pathé released the serial in at least forty-nine Parisian cinemas in France on December 3, 1915.7 Up until early May 1916, a new episode could be seen in the Parisian cinemas every week, while during the previous week the corresponding story line, written by Pierre Decourcelle, could be read in the Paris newspaper Le Matin.8
Even though it is not mentioned in the advertisements or in the serial novel, Decourcelle did not start from scratch but relied heavily on the three American serial novels that had been written especially for the film serial by the well-known American detective writer Arthur B. Reeve. Reeve had already introduced the Craig Kennedy character in the December 1910 issue of the Hearst-owned Cosmopolitan. The fictional Kennedy, a professor at Columbia University as well as a scientific detective, quickly became known in America as the American Sherlock Holmes. Kennedy uses his knowledge of chemistry to solve cases, but he also invents numerous devices like a wireless telephone, a wireless fax machine, and a portable seismograph that could differentiate between the footsteps of various individuals. In the three Elaine stories, the character of Elaine obviously also gets a great deal of attention. She does not so much function as a sidekick, but more as an individualistic young woman whose doings and happenings assist and endanger Kennedy, while the two fall in love with each other. The serial novels that were connected to the Pathé films appeared in the Sunday editions of the Hearst syndicated press and were later published as a novel, also by Hearst.9
Like other American serials (including those of later date), the Elaine film serials cared little for developing character or deepening dramatic complexity. Sensation and shock were more important than psychological drama. Compared with several film episodes that have survived, the novelization of The Exploits of Elaine adds more insight into the relationship between Kennedy and Elaine.10 Their reflections on some of the dangerous situations are elaborated upon, while the various scientific experiments and gadgets Kennedy uses are more fully explained, and the coincidental happenings that often appear in these kinds of serials are given more connection. The serial novel was thus used for enriching and contextualizing the film.11 The American tie-in, however, did not provide a very detailed story when compared with the elaborate French version.

American and French Crimes: Changing and Creating a Narrative

Each week for twenty-two weeks, an episode from Les Mystères de New-York could be seen in Paris, while the story by Decourcelle could be read daily in Le Matin as well as in French provincial newspapers. In addition to the story in the newspapers, the publishing house La Renaissance du Livre sometime later released a weekly booklet for twenty-five centimes. Each booklet corresponded to one film episode; later these could also be bought bound together as a book. From that moment on, a film serial was, because of its close ties to the serial novel, designated a ciné-roman in France.12
Pierre Decourcelle was a popular fiction writer who had written the successful novel Les Deux gosses (Two little boys), and in 1908 he, together with Eugène Guggenheim, founded the literary adaptation company, Société cinématographique des auteurs et gens de lettres (SCAGL).13 Les Mystères de New-York probably benefited from Decourcelle's writing skills as well as his ability to translate a story from one medium into another. Decourcelle's Les Mystères de New-York elaborated much more on the story and its characters than did Reeve's novel. Sometimes, Decourcelle directly translated parts of Reeve's text, but often he developed and expanded the story. This expansion can be seen, for instance, with the minor secondary character of the gunman Limpy Red, one of the first characters introduced in the film and novel. In Reeve's novelization of The Exploits of Elaine, he is described only as “a red-headed, lame, partly paralyzed crook.”14 When Limpy Red, pressed by Elaine's father, snitches on his evil boss and gives the father an envelope with directions to The Clutching Hand's whereabouts, Reeve writes: “When Limpy Red, still trembling, left the office of Dodge earlier in the evening, he had repaired as fast as his shambling feet would take him to his favourite dive upon Park Row. There he might have been seen drinking with any one who came along, for Limpy had money—blood money—and the recollection of his treachery and revenge must both be forgotten and celebrated.”15 When Limpy continues to another venue for more drinks, he is killed by means of a lead pipe, held by one of The Clutching Hand's associates.
images
A foldout booklet of Les Mystères de New-York, given away as an appetizer by the newspaper Le Matin. It told part of the storyline of the first episode.
In Les Mystères de New-York, Le Bancal Rouge (as Limpy Red is called) is a more interesting character, receiving an extended background. Le Bancal Rouge used to be a rifleman performing his feats in music halls and circuses but became addicted to alcohol and as a result came under the influence of La Main Qui Étreint (The Clutching Hand). In Les Mystères de New-York, Le Bancal Rouge goes to the pub after revealing the whereabouts of the evil gang, not to drink away his blood money, but to be around people for safety and to wait to be accompanied to the port. In exchange for information on the whereabouts of the evil La Main Qui Étreint, Elaine's uncle (originally it was her father) had promised him a safe passage on the ship La Lorraine that would take him to France. Le Bancal Rouge had received enough money to build a new existence, perhaps opening a bar in Paris. While waiting, he has a drink and asks explicitly for the extra dry Pommery champagne instead of some German label.16 After several hours of waiting in vain for his transport to arrive (Elaine's uncle in the meantime has been murdered), a rather slatternly, strong-armed, red-haired woman of German descent with a glass eye starts flirting with him, trying to profit from his apparent wealth. Getting restless and drunk, he tries to perform a William Tell trick on her, but she refuses. When the bar closes, Le Bancal Rouge leaves scared and full of doubt. Outside he is murdered with a cloth filled with sand by an accomplice of La Main Qui Étreint.
Through expansion and the deployment of his eye for detail, Decourcelle succeeded in making a more compelling story than the rather stilted and very basic version by Reeve, with its sparse details. Decourcelle took, in many instances, many more words to describe a setting (that fitted the film version rather well) and to relate that setting to the history of the characters. Decourcelle also inserted brief references that evoked the troubled world outside the film theater. La Lorraine, for instance, was an actual ship that had run between Le Havre and New York between 1900 and 1914. During the war the ship was used as an armed merchant cruiser renamed Lorraine II.17 Lorraine was, of course, also a province of France that together with Alsace had been lost during the Franco-Prussian war in 1871 and which France wished to recover in World War I. Similarly, the reference to Pommery champagne can be linked to the Franco-Prussian war as well as to World War I. Champagne was a region in France that had often been invaded and ravaged, perhaps more than any other French province. At the time, the German front line was not very far from the soon-to-be-blown-up Pommery Chateau.18
As we shall see, the overall tie-in was frenchified and made explicitly anti-German; Le Bancal Rouge's rejection of German champagne was only the first and small sign of these changes. Fragments of text refer not only to a common French history but also to French clichés and habits. Therefore, it is possible that the tie-in might have made the transition from French films to American imports easier for the French audience to accept. French film production had received a very hard blow with the start of World War I. Many experts, actors, and workers left for the front, and film factories were abandoned. Pathé (as well as others) had already begun restructuring the company to be more of a distribution company than a firm regularly producing films. In 1915 American films were imported on a large scale to meet the product demand of exhibitors, creating an invasion of American products.19 Les Mystères de New-York was, judging from advertisements and articles in film journals, probably the most well-known of the new American productions arriving at that time on the French market, except for the shorts by Charles Chaplin (known in France as Charlot).

Serialized War Relations Invading the Fabric of Life

It is fair to say that Le Bancal Rouge's extended exploits probably were due to the adjustment to a different tradition in France. Whereas in America, most novelized serials as well as film serial tie-ins were only published once a week (usually on Sunday), in France the very popular serial novel scheme was a daily one. Thus, to achieve a proper adjustment with regard to the film release pattern, a ...

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