Pearl White - Career Rise

Career Rise

In 1910, White was offered a role by Pathé Frères in The Girl From Arizona, the French company's first American film produced at their new studio in Bound Brook, New Jersey. She then worked at Lubin Studios and several other of the independents, until the Crystal Film Company in Manhattan gave her top billing in a number of short films.

In 1914, Pathé director Louis J. Gasnier offered her the starring role in The Perils of Pauline, a film based on a story by playwright Charles W. Goddard. The film was one where "Pauline" was the central character in a story involving considerable action, which the athletic Pearl White proved ideally suited for. The Perils of Pauline consisted of twenty episodes. A box-office success, the movie made White a major celebrity, and she was soon earning the then astronomical sum of $3,000 a week. She followed this with an even bigger box-office winner, The Exploits of Elaine.

Flying airplanes, racing cars, swimming across rivers, and doing other similar feats, White made four more successful serials on the same theme. She did much of her own stunt work and she suffered injuries that would force her to use a stunt double in her later films.

Read more about this topic:  Pearl White

Famous quotes containing the words career and/or rise:

    In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.
    Barbara Dale (b. 1940)

    Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.
    Stefan Zweig (18811942)