This was the original cliffhanger blockbuster, a serial popular enough that William Randolph Hearst ran a matching newspaper serialization alongside it, an early and deliberate cross-media marketing stunt. Star Pearl White did her own stunts and nearly paid for this one for real: the balloon in this sequence broke loose during filming and carried her across the Hudson River into a storm before it could be brought down. Most of the original negatives were later lost, so what survives today is largely a European re-edit, which makes any clean surviving footage of it a little bit of a rarity in itself.This was the original cliffhanger blockbuster, a serial popular enough that William Randolph Hearst ran a matching newspaper serialization alongside it, an early and deliberate cross-media marketing stunt. Star Pearl White did her own stunts and nearly paid for this one for real: the balloon in this sequence broke loose during filming and carried her across the Hudson River into a storm before it could be brought down. Most of the original negatives were later lost, so what survives today is largely a European re-edit, which makes any clean surviving footage of it a little bit of a rarity in itself.
Louis J. Gasnier, Donald MacKenzie — USA — Action / Adventure Serial
The balloon lifts off
This was the original cliffhanger blockbuster, a serial popular enough that William Randolph Hearst ran a matching newspaper serialization alongside it, an early and deliberate cross-media marketing stunt. Star Pearl White did her own stunts and nearly paid for this one for real: the balloon in this sequence broke loose during filming and carried her across the Hudson River into a storm before it could be brought down. Most of the original negatives were later lost, so what survives today is largely a European re-edit, which makes any clean surviving footage of it a little bit of a rarity in itself.