"Perils of Pauline" -- cliff-hanger or not?

[Dan Goncharoff]

I just want to point out that PoP was not the first adventure serial --
that was The Adventures of Kathlyn. Unfortunately, the films of that serial
are mostly lost. The story was also serialized in the Chicago Tribune,
however; does that have an accessible archive?

DanG


On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 8:39 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "Perils of Pauline" -- cliff-hanger or not?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 2/18/2014 11:09 AM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
> >Joel
> >
> >Why, among all the popular adventure serials at the time, do think it had
> >to be The Perils of Pauline?
>
> The immense success of P. of P., the celebrity of Pearl White, that
> it was one of the first serials (that is, movies with continuing
> plots) to be made, and that it did have a cliff-hanging scene.
>
> P. of P. was a sensational success, probably the most popular serial
> of its time.  Pearl White, who started her career in 1910, was a
> popular leading lady in comedies by 1914.  She was the subject of an
> article in The Moving Picture World in 1910, three weeks before a
> (full-page) article on Mary Pickford.  White's "greatest serial
> success" was The Exploits of Elaine, released in December 1914, the
> same month the last episode of P. of P. appeared, and Exploits was
> followed by two sequels in 1915.  She made seven more serials, "all
> of them immensely successful."  (Anthony Slide, Early American Cinema).
>
> P. of P. was the fourth movie serial to be released.  (Shelley Stamp,
> Movie-Struck Girls, 104, 118).  Pauline was probably seen as the
> classic "damsel in distress".  Stamp (137--138) contrasts Pauline to
> the heroine of What Happened to Mary (1912): Mary is active and has
> initiative; Pauline is unaware of the plots against her and a victim
>
> In addition to her discussion of episode 12 that I quoted, Stamp
> (113) cites reviews that imply P. of P. left viewers in suspense,
> waiting for the next installment.  Although one wrote "this [leaving
> plot situations unresolved] seems to have been obviated to a great
> degree in The Perils of Pauline", he added "*though each installment
> ends at the most interesting moment,* it is a complete picture in
> itself."  Another wrote that the first episode "stops abruptly in
> what appears to be the most vital spot in the narrative, and there is
> no doubt it will influence the audience, or a large part of it, to
> see what ensues, as no completed plot would do."  [Viz. episode 6,
> where Pauline descends safely from the cliff, only to have the
> episode end with her abduction and imprisonment by the villains.]
>
> So I am speculating that the presence of "suspense" at the end of
> episodes of the early serials may have become associated with the
> "suspense" of Pauline depending from and on the cliff, leading to the
> joining of "cliff" with the suspension of "hanging".  (From its
> casual use in Fred's 1931 quotation, as though everyone would know
> why Variety called "Battling with Buffalo Bill" a "cliff hanger", I
> imagine it had arisen earlier.)
>
> Joel
>
>
> >DanG
> >
> >
> >On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 10:34 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> >
> > > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > > -----------------------
> > > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > > Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> > > Subject:      "Perils of Pauline" -- cliff-hanger or not?
> > >
> > >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> > > There are some who call the 1914 Perils of Pauline a cliff-hanger,
> > > and some, probably the majority, who do not.  The argument is
> > > complicated by the fact that the negatives and prints for the
> > > original 20 two-reel chapters have not been found, and later releases
> > > have cut and pasted episodes.
> > >
> > > Shelley Stamp, in "Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture
> > > Culture after the Nickelodeon" (2000), p. 119, suggests why P. of P.
> > > may have been called a cliffhanger:
> > >
> > > "In its account of the serial's twelfth chapter, the [New York
> > > Dramatic] Mirror leaves out scenes that the Moving Picture] World
> > > recounts at the beginning of the episode, and describes how the
> > > installment ends with an incident that the World includes at the
> > > beginning of the subsequent installment, complaining that this ending
> > > is 'something like breaking off a story in the middle of a sentence.'
> > > It therefore appears plausible that at least one exhibitor may have
> > > shown the second reel of the twelfth episode together with the first
> > > reel of the thirteenth episode as a combined package, possibly in
> > > order to achieve a 'cliff-hanger' effect. ... [It seems likely] that
> > > just as release dates seem to have been staggered in conjunction with
> > > newspaper supplements, the ordering and combination of separate reels
> > > might also have varied from venue to venue."
> > >
> > > I note that the "original story synopses" from the Moving Picture
> > > World seem to be taken as the true picture, and perhaps adduced as
> > > the definitive evidence that P. of P. was not a cliff-hanger.  See
> > > <http://www.serialsquadron.com/forums/>
> > > http://www.serialsquadron.com/forums/
> > > (Movie Serial Message Boards) and select 1910s-20s Silent Movie
> > > Serials & Series / The 20 Original Chapters of THE PERILS OF PAULINE.
> > >
> > > Whether or not what the Mirror saw was common, I still surmise that
> > > "cliff-hanger" arose from association with the cliff-hanging scene in
> > > the immensely popular P. of P.  Now all that remains is to find it
> > > near 1914, or even better in a reference to P. of P. itself.
> > >
> > > Joel
> > >
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