The Legend of Pauline’s Trestle

Movie heroine Pearl White was lashed to train tracks in New Hope. Or was she?

Famous Hollywood movie stars were a staple at the Bucks County Playhouse every summer stock season in the 1950s and ’60s. The borough-based New Hope & Ivyland Railroad in its marketing campaign tied into this Tinseltown legacy to help fill the seats on its excursion trains puffing in and out of town on weekends and holidays. The railroad propagated the rumor a lofty, arching trestle over Aquetong Creek in town is where one episode of the famous “Perils of Pauline” series was filmed in 1914. Skip ahead to the 1980s. Mary Anne and I were enjoying breakfast at Karla’s on Mechanic Street in New Hope when we overheard someone mention the story behind “Pauline’s Trestle” and the famous film series. Really? The two of us later walked up the street to see the curving railroad trestle about a block away. In 1914, as the story goes, young actress Pearl White was tied to its tracks in a scripted murder plot as a locomotive comes careening down the line, threatening to run her over.

But is the tale fiction? That’s the question posed by a fan of this column. “If anything, I think it’s possible nothing was filmed there. I’m curious to know the truth, and hoping you, too, would be curious.”

I read up on Pearl and the Pathe brothers, French cinematographers who produced the 20- episode “Perils of Pauline”. From their studio in Fort Lee, N.J., the brothers found it convenient to send movie crews to locations all over the state. For instance, they had Pearl in one episode fly over the Hudson River in a runaway hot air balloon. In another she was trapped in a burning house. In another she clung precariously to a Jersey cliff, inspiring the Hollywood cliche “cliffhanger”. For railroad scenes, the studio used the former Belvidere-Delaware Railroad steaming beside the Delaware River between Raven Rock and Lambertville opposite New Hope.

“Perils of Pauline” catapulted White to international stardom at a salary of $1,750 a week. (That’s $32,500 a week today!). Born in 1889, the Missouri farmer’s daughter started acting at age 6 and later performed as a circus bareback rider. At 18 she joined an acting troupe touring the Midwest. Scouts from movie studios based in Fort Lee, the Hollywood of its time, noticed her. The Pathes offered her a starring role in their first American film, “The Girl from Arizona.” Her beauty and stage presence led to roles with other studios until age 23 when she signed with the Pathes to star in the big budget “The Perils of Pauline”. She appeared in every episode doing her own stunts as the heroine-in-jeopardy. Each 20-minute short ended in Pearl’s grave peril. The cyclic suspense guaranteed box office gold at movie theaters everywhere.

In the serial, young Pauline inherits great wealth from her deceased uncle who had appointed his secretary as Pauline’s guardian to preserve her inheritance until she marries. In the meantime, Pauline is determined to experience daring outdoor adventures. Her guardian plots Pauline’s “accidental” death so he can grab the inheritance cash. What unfolds is high drama in airplanes about to crash, out-of-control automobiles, capsized boats and fights with pirates, rats, sharks and other dangers.

Which brings us to that trestle in New Hope. Was Pearl White really tied to the tracks of the short-line railroad built in 1891? Proving it is difficult. Only 9 of 20 “Pauline” episodes exist. None shows Pearl bound to railroad tracks. A synopsis of all 20 from the IMDb movie database reveals no mention of such an incident.

So, how was I to reconcile these facts with the legend of Pauline’s Trestle? Perhaps local folks in the 1930s got a bit confused. A year before the release of “Perils of Pauline”, actress Mabel Normand was tied to rails in “Race for a Life” (1913). Similar scenes appeared in “The Broken Circuit” (1915), “Hazards of Helen” (1916), “A Lass of the Lumberlands” (1916) and “Teddy at the Throttle” (1917) with Gloria Swanson. In Pearl White’s “The Fatal Ring” (1917), she played Violet Standish who slumps unconscious on railroad tracks with a locomotive racing toward her but not on a trestle.

It seems clear the truth of what if anything was filmed on the rail line is hidden in Reading Railroad archives. The railroad which owned the line in 1914 would have had to give permission for the filming.

In any case, it’s still fun to contemplate the New Hope trestle as a perfect locale for a live action Snidely Whiplash wearing a stove pipe hat and twisting a handle- bar mustache after strapping poor Pauline to the rails. At the last-minute dashing Dudley Do- Right – handsome to boot – arrives to save his beloved.

Sources include “Pearl White: 1910s -1920s” found on the web at www.pophistorydig.com/topics/tag/perils-of-pauline/

Carl LaVO can be reached at carllavo0@gmail.com