The Perils of Pauline (1914 serial)

The Perils of Pauline
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Louis J. Gasnier Donald MacKenzie
Written by	Charles W. Goddard George B. Seitz
Starring	Pearl White
Cinematography	Arthur C. Miller
Distributed by	General Film Company & Eclectic Film Company
Release date	March 31, 1914 (1914-03-31)
Running time	20 chapters (total of 410 minutes)
Country	United States
Language	Silent with English intertitles

The Perils of Pauline is a 1914 American melodrama film serial produced by William Randolph Hearst and released by the Eclectic film company, shown in bi-weekly installments, featuring Pearl White as the title character, an ambitious young heiress with an independent nature and a desire for adventure.

Despite popular associations,^{[citation needed]} Pauline was never tied to a railroad track in the series, an image that was added to popular mythology by scenes in stage melodramas of the 1800s, in serials featuring the resourceful "railroad girl" Helen Holmes in her long-running series The Hazards of Helen, and in other railroad-themed Holmes cliffhangers such as The Girl and the Game. The images of Holmes' railroad adventures were blended in the public mind with Pearl White's cliffhanging adventures, probably because White became the bigger celebrity.

The serial had 20 episodes, the first being three reels (30 minutes), and the rest two reels (20 minutes) each. After the original run, it was reshown in theaters a number of times, sometimes in re-edited versions, through the 1920s. Today, The Perils of Pauline is known to exist only in a condensed, reformatted 9-chapter version (approximately 214 minutes), released in Europe in 1916 by Pathé Freres.^[1]

In 2008, The Perils of Pauline was selected by the Library of Congress for the United States National Film Registry, as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".