The Perils of Pauline (1947) is a fictionalized Hollywood account of silent film star Pearl White’s rise to fame. Pearl White (Betty Hutton) is a frustrated factory worker who aspires to become a dramatic actress. She joins a touring theatrical troupe managed by handsome but pompous Mike (John Lund), but fame and fortune elude her because she’s unable to suppress her natural rambunctiousness. In desperation, White takes a job at a movie studio, where she promptly finds herself in the middle of a slapstick pie fight. Pearl soon becomes world-famous as the star of such cliffhanging, tied-to-the-railroad-tracks serials as The Perils of Pauline. A great retro-movie on the birth of the cliff-hanger serial!
