Biography

Pearl White

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Overview

Born
March 4, 1889 · Green Ridge, Missouri, USA
Died
August 4, 1938 · Neuilly-sur-Seine, France (cirrhosis of the liver)
Birth name
Pearl Fay White

Biography

Born on her father's farm in Green Ridge, Missouri, the youngest of five children. Moved with her family to Springfield, Missouri, where she grew up. Joined the Diemer Theatre Company during her second year of high school, and went on the road with a touring stock company at age 18, in 1907. Signed by the Powers Film Co. in New York in 1910, and proceeded to work thereafter for many companies in starring roles. In 1914, she starred in Pathe's The Perils of Pauline, the fifth serial chapter play ever made. She became an international star therein and was the leading heroine of serial films for the next several years. Following an unsuccessful attempt to achieve the same success in feature films, and with her health deteriorating, she retired in 1923, living in France until her death in 1938.
- IMDb mini biography by: Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>
She met her first husband when they were touring together in the Trousdale Stock Company, a repertoire group. Her second husband was an actor and war hero. Her second husband was distraught over the dissolution of the marriage, and disappeared only weeks after the divorce. It was believed that he had committed suicide, until he reappeared in May 1923. On 27 January 1928, he fatally shot himself. When found, his pockets were bulging with clippings about Pearl. She gained her initial fame by performing her own dangerous and life-threatening stunts. Stunt doubles were used after her popularity surged, and the studio became concerned for her safety. On 10 August 1922, during the filming of Plunder, John Stevenson - her stand-in/stunt double - was killed while attempting a dangerous stunt. A rumor immediately spread that she had been killed, and a slight scandal arose when it was revealed that she had used a stand-in. Soon afterward, she went to Paris and subsequently suffered a nervous breakdown. The breakdown was attributed in part to her guilt over Stevenson and McCutcheon. She remained in seclusion in France until McCutcheon's reappeareance in May 1923. She was buried in the Passy Cemetery in Paris, her tombstone bears only her name.
- IMDb mini biography by: Anonymous

Family

Spouses

Trademarks

She was famous for her blond hair, which was actually a wig she began wearing early in her career. She discovered that it photographed better than her own naturally dark hair, and it eventually became her trademark. Whenever she wished to be unnoticed in public, she would appear without the wig - using her own hair as a disguise.

Trivia

Around 1914-15 she was the most popular female star in silent films, for a time even topping Mary Pickford's popularity at the box office.
Second husband, actor/director Wallace McCutcheon Jr. had been gassed in World War One, later suffered mental problems and eventually committed suicide.
Born into poverty, she later became a shrewd businesswoman, investing in a successful Parisian nightclub, a Biarritz resort hotel/casino, and owned a profitable stable of thoroughbred race horses.
Flying airplanes, racing cars and swimming across rivers, Pearl did much of her own dangerous stunt work, and as a result suffered a number of injuries that forced her to begin using a stunt double in her later films. Over the years her alcohol use increased substantially to help numb her chronic pain from all those injuries. In 1933 she had to be hospitalized for alcoholism and became addicted to the drugs used during her treatment.
She was one of five children born to a farmer and his wife, the wife dying when Pearl was only three years old.

Quotes

I have actually gotten to like fear.
[when asked about marrying again after her divorce from Wallace McCutcheon Jr.] Mine was not a divorce of convenience, but one of necessity, and I have no idea of making it a necessity again.