The Perils of Pauline (1947)

Director
George Marshall

Main cast
Betty Hutton; John Lund; Billy De Wolfe; William Demarest; Constance Collier

Genres
Comedy

Description
Funloving Pearl White, working in a garment sweatshop, gets her big chance when she "opens" for a delayed Shakespeare play...with a comic vaudeville performance. Her brief stage career leads her into those "horrible" moving pictures, where she comes to love the chaotic world of silent movies, becoming queen of the serials. But the consequences of movie stardom may be more than her leading man can take


Similar movies

The Perils of Pauline is a motion picture serial shown in weekly installments featuring the actress Pearl White playing the title character. Pauline has often been cited as a famous example of a damsel in distress, although some analyses hold that her character was more resourceful and less helpless than the classic damsel stereotype.
Hollywood, 1927: As silent movie star George Valentin wonders if the arrival of talking pictures will cause him to fade into oblivion, he sparks with Peppy Miller, a young dancer set for a big break.
An account of the rise and fall of a silent film comic, Billy Bright. The movie begins with his funeral, as he speaks from beyond the grave in a bitter tone about his fate, and takes us through his fame, as he ruins it with womanizing and drink, and his fall, as a lonely, bitter old man unable to reconcile his life's disappointments. The movie is based loosely on the life of Buster Keaton.
In the fourth of the highly successful Frankie and Annette beach party movies, a motorcycle gang led by Eric Von Zipper kidnaps singing star Sugar Kane managed by Bullets, who hires sky-diving surfers Steve and Bonnie from Big Drop for a publicity stunt. With the usual gang of kids and a mermaid named Lorelei.
Lois Thornedyke, the daughter of a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, writes a scandal column for a New York city tabloid...
The Marx Brothers help young Broadway hopefuls when they get mixed up with gangsters due to a tin of sardines containing Romanoff diamonds.
In 1927, Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont are a famous on-screen romantic pair. Lina, however, mistakes the on-screen romance for real love. Don has worked hard to get where he is today, with his former partner Cosmo. When Don and Lina's latest film is transformed into a musical, Don has the perfect voice for the songs. But Lina - well, even with the best efforts of a diction coach, they still decide to dub over her voice. Kathy Selden is brought in, an aspiring actress, and while she is working on the movie, Don falls in love with her. Will Kathy continue to "aspire", or will she get the break she deserves?
Two strangers, whose paths are always crossing, finally meet when fate steps in. It took them twenty years to fall in love at first sight.
The Uptown Boy, J. Harold Manners (Lloyd) is a millionaire playboy who falls for the Downtown Girl, Hope (Ralston) who works in Brother Paul's (Weigel) mission. In order to build up attendance, and win Hope's attention, Harold runs through town causing trouble, and winds up with a crowd chasing him right into the mission. He eventually wins the girl and they marry, but not without some interference from his high-brow friends.
When a store clerk organizes a contest to climb the outside of a tall building, circumstances force him to make the perilous climb himself.
Harold Meadows (Lloyd) is a shy, stuttering bachelor working in a tailor shop, who is writing a guide book for other bashful young men, "The Secret of Making Love," chapters from which are portrayed as fantasy sequences. Fate has him meet rich girl, Mary (Ralston), and they fall in love. But she is about to wed an already married man, so our hero embarks upon a hair-raising daredevil ride to prevent the wedding.
The most important family in Hickoryville is (naturally enough) the Hickorys, with sheriff Jim and his tough manly sons Leo and Olin. The timid youngest son, Harold, doesn't have the muscles to match up to them, so he has to use his wits to win the respect of his strong father and also the love of beautiful Mary.
A meek Belgian soldier (Harry Langdon) fighting in World War I receives penpal letters and a photo from "Mary Brown", an American girl he has never met. He becomes infatuated with her by long distance. After the war, the young Belgian journeys to America as assistant to a theatrical "strong man", Zandow the Great (Arthur Thalasso). While in America, he searches for Mary Brown... and he finds her, just as word comes that Zandow is incapacitated and the little nebbish must go on stage in his place.
Wealthy Mary Townleigh gets lost in the bush and hurts her ankle, but is rescued and stays with the Hayseed family. She starts a romance with their neighbour, Englishman John Manners. When Joe Hayseed and his girlfriend Pansy Regan decide to get married, the Hayseeds and John visit Sydney to stay with the Townleighs. John is accused of being a fugitive of justice but is eventually proved innocent and he and Mary get married
Episodic look at married life and in-law problems. Adventures include a ride on a crowded trolley with a live turkey; a wild spin in a new auto with the in-laws in tow; and a sequence in which Hubby accidently chloroforms his mother-in-law and is convinced that he has killed her. When she begins sleep-walking, he thinks that she has returned to haunt him.
Harold Van Pelham (Lloyd) is a hypochondriac, rich businessman who sails to the tropics for his 'health.' Instead of the peace and seclusion he is seeking, he finds himself in the middle of a revolution. He is imprisoned where he befriends the friendly giant, Colosso (Aasen), and they engineer an escape. Together, they quell the revolution.
A New York playboy, Wayne Carter, dates wild women until he falls for a hard-working stenographer, Helene Andrews.
Max Tracey is the head waiter at a London hotel. He falls in love at first sight with Sylvia Robertson, an aristocratic woman, and poses as a prince to win her love. In this venture, he is aided by Mr. Westlake, a Ruritanian monarch who owes him a favour. When Sylvia discovers Max's deception, she is appalled, but the situation is resolved when her father tells her that he was once a hotel dishwasher.
Patricia O'Rourke, a good-natured prankster who works as a copy girl for the Sentinel , angers her co-worker Stubbs and is about to lose her job when the managing editor offers her one more chance. Her assignment is to explain the clue that links the Hope Mission, a derelict home run by millionaire Hunter Mason and his secretary, Monty Latham, with a series of local robberies. When Hunter discovers Patricia in his office, he assumes that she is a crook in need of reforming and takes her into his home to be cared for by his mother.....
The daughter of a wealthy industrialist wants to take over the company when her father retires, but the father--an old-fashioned sort who doesn't believe that "girls" belong in business--is planning on leaving the company to her wastrel playboy brother. In order to prove to her dad that she can handle the job, she disguises herself as an ordinary "working girl" and gets a job in her dad's plant. There she meets and falls in love with a clerk. She brings the young man home to meet her folks, but during the evening the family safe is robbed, and all signs point to her new boyfriend.
A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent-film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.
A famous scientist and his beautiful daughter travel to Indochina to find an ivory disc that has the formula for a deadly gas engraved on it. An evil doctor and his gang are also looking for it.
Mamoru Oshii has created and directed some of Japan’s most celebrated motion pictures including highly acclaimed movies like ‘Ghost in the shell’, ‘Patlabor’, and ‘Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade’. It’s nearly time for the debut of the most anticipated anime movie of the year, Talking Head. There’s just a few minor problems: the director has disappeared and the movie isn’t even started! Desperate to meet their deadline, the studio hires a “migrant technical director” to fill in for the missing director. But there’s more going on here than just slipping deadlines. One by one, the staff is being murdered and it’s only a matter of time before the new director’s next on the list! Explore the world of anime from a completely new angle! "Thought-provoking and languidly paced... an unmistakable stamp of Mamoru Oshii" - Animerica
While silent-film star Charlie Chaplin may have charmed American audiences with the onscreen antics of his lovable "Tramp" character, the actor's private life was marred by a series of public scandals that eventually pushed him into exile. In addition to his penchant for much younger women, Chaplin was unjustly hounded by Senator Joe McCarthy's notorious anti-Communist witch hunts, for which the U.S. revoked his visa in 1952. A bitter and disenchanted Chaplin responded by moving his family to Switzerland, where he remained until his death in 1977. This documentary chronicles Chaplin's life and career during those so-called "forgotten years" (during which he became a prolific and highly respected film-score composer) through previously unreleased archival footage and intimate interviews with his friends and family, including his children Geraldine, Michael, and Eugene.
Leo Vincey, told by his dying uncle of a lost land visited 500 years ago by his ancestor, heads out with family friend Horace Holly to try to discover the land and its secret of immortality, said to be contained within a mystic fire. Picking up Tanya, a guide's daughter, in the frozen Russian arctic, they stumble upon Kor, revealed to be a hidden civilization ruled over by an immortal queen, called She, who believes Vincey is her long-lost lover John Vincey, Leo's ancestor.
Semi-true story of the Hollywood murder that occurred at a star-studded gathering aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht in 1924.
From silent film star Sessue Hayakawa to Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle, the Slanted Screen examines the portrayal Asian men in film and television, and how new filmmakers are now re-defining age-old stereotypes.
A producer takes over a small film studio and - sensing that it'll be a good movie- begins investigating an old murder of a silent film star shot in his office years ago. He finds that his life is threatened as he digs deeper into the mystery.
Jean Renoir's directional debut and first silent film stars his wife, Catherine Hessling, as a young girl who manages to turn her tragic family life into one of joy and happiness.
Sea-faring saga of two brothers (Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger) and the woman they both love.
American film star Asta Marvelle travels in Europe aboard the Rome Express . On the train, she meets her former partner in crime, Tony, and is blackmailed into assisting his new accomplice in an attempted art theft. A French police chief foils the thieves, though he allows Asta and Tony to exit the train without arrest.
A con man with his beautiful accomplice and a hostage steals a half million dollars worth of diamonds but finds they're all lost in the desert without water.
Toni Le Brun, a beautiful Viennese singer, becomes the ward of the wardrobe mistress of a Monte Carlo nightclub. Her benefactor, however, is actually a baroness incognito. Toni falls in love with the handsome Richard, but as they prepare to marry, she comes to believe he is only after the wealth accompanying her new noble status. But truth, like true love, will not be kept secret long.
Jake is a driver for a seedy escort service operating out of 'The Naked Eye strip club', he's a street thug type who falls for a witty high-class escort named Sandy. Except one night Sandy is found murdered, the only clues left behind are cell phone calls made the night she died. To avenge Sandy's death Jake must risk everything and walk a bloody path to find her killer.
A naive college student loses a scholarship at the hands of a classmate and makes a pact with a mysterious friend to kill off each other's enemies.
Larry Evans (Rex Lease), champion race car driver, is envied by his chief rival, Eddie DeSylva (Duncan Renaldo), who has more ambitions than merely winning the races; he has designs on the motor patent held by Corbett (Tom Moore), Larry's employer. Eddie also has a yen for Corbett's daughter, Norma (Muriel Evans), who prefers Larry. Eddie intentionally causes a race wreck that injures Larry and sends him to the hospital.
An attractive Russian spy seduces an Austrian officer in order to get some important plans, but when she actually falls in love with him, both of them are placed in a dangerous situation.
Armand and Marie survive in the streets until a scientist takes them in after a botched robbery.
A ruthless opportunist climbs his way up the business ladder. Drama.
A girl is saved by a miracle after she falls from a cliff in the Argentine Andes, and is blessed with healing powers. A shrine is built on the site, and a whole city grows around it, rich with gold from the grateful worshipers. Ruiz, an evil and sadistic general, captures the city, confiscates the gold, and closes the shrine. But the Gaucho, the charismatic leader of a band of outlaws, comes to the rescue.
Nina (Melina Mercouri) is a former silent-film star from Russia who abandons her career to care for her son. She is a single mother -- the boy's father is a famous actor who wants nothing to do with either Nina or her child. She joins an acting troupe where she impersonates a famous French fashion designer, but she leaves the group in Krakow, Poland, when her true identity is discovered. She travels to France, taking several odd jobs in Nice to support her son. When the boy grows to young adulthood, he is recruited to fight during World War II for the French and later the British. He is decorated for valor and returns to locate his estranged mother after two years have passed. Upon arriving home, he finds that his mother had died several years earlier but that she meticulously wrote over 250 letters to give her son moral support and encouragement in the years to come.
Jailed unjustly for a murder he did not commit, a young man uses his amazing powers of escape to free himself and pursue the actual killers, who hold his fiancée captive.
The adventures of the masked hero continues.
A documentary with many excerpts from the films of French movie pioneer Max Linder, narrated by his daughter.
A country girl and her boyfriend arrive in Shanghai for a better life. They soon find only desperation. She is raped and falls into prostitution as he drifts into revolutionary circles. Her access through her trade grants her greater access which she uses to aid her revolutionary lover with tragic results.
Although he's credited only for story, the dialogue has Fuller's headline punch, and of course newspapering was an alternative universe he knew inside out. A publisher whose once-honest New York tabloid has been ideologically hijacked is aiming to make a course correction. Minutes after saying, "The power of the press is the freedom to tell the truth--it is not the freedom to twist the truth," he's a dead man. The rest of the movie deals with the efforts of his old friend, small-town newsman Guy Kibbee, to complete the paper's redemption. Made in mid World War II, the picture angrily and explicitly likens homegrown demagoguery to Nazism--and its condemnation of media organizations "playing on the prejudices of stupid people" has acquired fresh relevance. Otto Kruger and Victor Jory ("a little Himmler") supply the villainy, while Lee Tracy steps up to save the day as a casehardened yellow journalist named Griff.
Dr. Robert Cromwell performs a delicate operation, that has never been done before, and the patient dies. Charged with malpractice and manslaughter, his trial is national news but the jury acquits him. But the court of public opinion is still against him, and the medical board is meeting to decide whether or not to take his medical license away from him. Before they do, Cromwell, an amateur pilot, decides to join his friend, WWI Ace Donald Evans, on a flight to Alaska looking for a shorter route to Japan by following the Aleutian Islands. They crash in Alaska and Evans is killed, but Cromwell is rescued by a fur trapper named Tom Ross. He takes Cromwell to Armstrong's Trading Post, where is is nursed back to health by Klondike, a girl who works for Armstrong, and was engaged to marry Armstrong's son Jim. The latter is suffering from the same disease that Cromwell's last patient had...
A professional clown and a self-indulgent count learn to help each other with their problems, but then become romantic rivals.
A fast moving and low budget crime drama seasoned with mystery & comedy.
AJ Raffles, a handsome jewel thief masquerades as a gentleman of society fitting in with well-to-do people. He dons a mask and waits for an opportune moment to steal belongings, usually some jewelry and to take advantage of unsuspecting women whether at an estate or aboard a passenger ship. Raffles knows secret passageways to aid his escape from capture such as disappearing into a large grandfather clock that is really a secret doorway. He even eludes capture by jumping off a ship and swimming to shore while women passengers fire pistols at him.
Mary Pickford's final film, Secrets (1933) was a fitting swan song, offering Pickford's best performance in a talking film, in a bravura role that takes her character from flirtatious girlhood through maturity and old age. It's a much better performance than her Oscar-winning one in her first talkie Coquette (1929), which today looks hammy and stilted. Based on a popular 1922 Broadway play by Rudolph Besier and Mary Edginton, Secrets is the story of the marriage of Mary and John Carlton, played by Pickford and Leslie Howard. Mary, the headstrong daughter of a New England shipping magnate, elopes to California in the 1860s with her father's employee. The young pioneers face many hardships both on the journey west and after their arrival, as they create a life, a family and a future together. Years later, John gets involved in politics, and some of the couple's secrets emerge, threatening the marriage and his career.
Long considered lost since its first release, the Gillette film is a vital missing link in the history of Holmes on screen.By the time the film was made, Gillette had been established as the world’s foremost interpreter of Holmes on stage. He gave his face and manner to the detective and inspired the classic illustrations of Frederic Dorr Steele.The film faithfully retains the play’s famous set pieces—Holmes’s encounter with Professor Moriarty, his daring escape from the Stepney Gas Chamber, and the tour-de-force deductions—and illustrates how Gillette wove bits from Conan Doyle’s stories, ranging from “A Scandal in Bohemia” to “The Final Problem,” into an original, innovative mystery play.
A schoolteacher in the Yukon promises her hand in marriage to a rich prospector, but instead she marries his no-good brother. After her husband disappears and is reported dead, she marries a rich New York stockbroker, but doesn't tell him about her first marriage. Soon she is contacted by someone who threatens to tell her new husband all about her past if she doesn't pay up.
An impoverished Italian nobleman (Rudolph Valentino) takes a job with a New York antique dealer and falls in love with the secretary. Complications arise when he makes a date with the antique dealer's wife who mysteriously is murdered at the appointed meeting place.
Based on Charles Perrault's fairy tale: Cinderella is mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters, but she is able to go to the Royal Ball with the help of the Fairy Godmother.
Three New York Irish brothers cross paths as policeman, doctor, and bootlegger.
The film is a wide-ranging ensemble piece, with Farrell and Beery playing equally large roles, and detailed subplots about the country's atmosphere before the conflict as well as Stephen Decatur's early naval exploits.
Camille is a courtesan in Paris. She falls deeply in love with a young man of promise, Armand Duval. When Armand's father begs her not to ruin his hope of a career and position by marrying Armand, she acquiesces and leaves her lover. However, when poverty and terminal illness overwhelm her, Camille discovers that Armand has not lost his love for her.

© Valossa 2015–2024