So popular was The Perils of Pauline, released in a record number of prints in mid-March 1914 and serialized in scores of Hearst and other newspapers, that Pathé’s American subsidiary had Louis Gasnier produce a second serial starring Pearl White, The Exploits of Elaine. Beginning in early January 1915, Pathé-Exchange released the fourteen episodes of Elaine every two weeks, after Arthur Reeves’s serial installments had appeared in major newspapers: “Read it now, then see it all in motion pictures.”
Elaine had White’s character repeatedly threatened by the ‘Clutching Hand’ and rescued from thinly disguised sexual assault either by her quick thinking or by Craig Kennedy (Arnold Daly), a ‘scientific detective’. Like other serial films, Elaine was promoted especially to young women: in the USA, exhibitors could use song slides and sheet music for audience sing-alongs of Elaine, My Moving Picture Queen; in England and Scotland, some theaters lured women workers with giveaways of thousands of “Elaine” hats. In France, Pathé combined The Exploits of Elaine, The New Exploits of Elaine, and The Romance of Elaine into a single serial titled Les Mystères de NewYork and coordinated its weekly release of twenty-two episodes (two reels each) with  Pierre  Decourcelle’s  daily  serialization in “Le Matin”, then collected into weekly booklets. Intriguingly, Les Mystères de New-York reworked the originals to fit the situation of France in the Great War, giving a strongly anti-German and pro-American slant to both the film and its novelization.

Richard Abel