8/22/1922 - After years of doing her own stunt work (for which she becomes a major celebrity and is paid $1,750 a week ... quite an increase from making her acting debut at age six playing Little Eva in a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin for $5 a week), including flying planes, racing cars, swimming rivers, and jumping into and off of an assortment of dangerous objects (at 13 she is a bareback rider in a circus) in the Perils of Pauline and the Exploits of Elaine action serials, 33-year-old silent movie star Pearl Fay White (she also survives two Hollywood marriages to actors ... 1907 to 1914 with Victor Sutherland, and 1919 to 1921 with Wallace McCutcheon) finally listens to Pathe Movie executives and allows 38-year-old actor John Stevenson, wearing a blonde wig, to be her stunt double in the film, Plunder.
White
It is a fortuitous decision for White ... not so much for Stevenson.
Scene from Plunder
On 8/22/1922, the day's call sheet for the movie requires Stevenson to jump from the top of a double-decker bus on to the elevated girders in New York City at the intersection of 72nd Street and Columbus Avenue. Unfortunately for Stevenson, in front of a large crowd there to witness the production, he does not successfully make the leap ... slightly short, the actor plunges 25 feet to the pavement, fracturing his skull in the process. Rushed to a nearby hospital, Stevenson passes away the same day.
White - 1924
Haunted by the tragedy, upon completion of filming, White takes a long vacation to France, that becomes her permanent residence when she goes into retirement in Paris (after making her final film there, Terror). But don't think she lives out her later years sitting in a dark room bemoaning her fate ... she leaves the movies with $2,000,000 in her bank account, in 1925 stars on the London stage at a $3,000 a week salary, invests in a successful Parisian nightclub, a Biarritz resort and casino, and a stable of ten racing horses ... nice booty to go along with her townhouse in Plassy and 54-acre estate near Rambouillet. And when she gets involved with Greek businessman Theodore Cossika it just gets even better for the former star, with travel adventures throughout the Middle East and the Orient, and purchase of luxurious home outside of Cairo, Egypt.
White
Eventually though the good life takes its toll, and as a result of way too much drinking and drugs (some taken to mitigate a spinal injury she incurred doing her own stunts, her worst injury comes when actor Paul Panzer loses his balance while carrying her, and she falls backwards down a flight of six staircases), White dies at the young age of only 49 from liver failure. Childless, she leaves $73,000 to various charities and the rest of her estate to her husband, her father, and her nieces and nephews.
White Plot In Plassy
Still remembered, in 1947, Paramount Pictures makes a version of her life starring Betty Hutton called The Perils of Pauline ... and for her contributions to the motion picture industry, in 1960, she receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Mostly forgotten now, the movie that killed Stevenson is one of the few of Pearl White's career that is still available ... the trailer for the film is preserved at the Library of Congress, and the movie itself is a part of the collection of the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
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