Has the news of the death of Pearl "White reached you? Perhaps she was not a great actress; there is a sad story that when she tried the theatre after the "silent screen," she was actually boóed. But anyone who can remember the cinema of 20 years ago will agree that she deserves remembrance, indeed was more than a little responsible for the cinema's rise to popularity. "Pearl White's Adventures" were for years the big attraction, running in serials night after night, each instalment leaving the heroine in some fearful predicament, so that you had to return next night to see how she would escape. She took the most blood-curdling risks, real ones, no fake, and no "doubles" as nowadays, On one occasion she was shown struggling in the water with a ferry bearing down on her: everything depended on her catching a rope thrown to her, or she must have been crushed to death; she described afterwards how she prayed that the rope would be thrown properly and that she would catch it: She made, and was able to keep, a big fortune; but a spinal accident suffered in one of her films is said to have hastened her death in Paris at the early age of 41.
Of course the films of those days were technically poor, full of flickers, generally jerky in the story-telling. Yet they had something which modern films have lost. They did believe in action; in this they knew that the orthodox stage could never touch them, and they gave it us to the full. Who that saw them can forget such pictures as "Intolerance," "The Four Horsemen," "Way Down East," "The Three Musketeers" and many more stirring evenings? Of course one make believe convention; and when one does get some real action of the old sort it is wonderful how the audience sits up and takes notice.
So here's with gratitude to the indomitable Pearl White. Would not a suitable paradise for her be to go on making films with bigger and bigger thrills and always the rope thrown at the right moment? see
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.