Surviving episodes of THE HAZARDS OF HELEN

[silentfilm]

Here's the ones that I know about:

From the Library of Congress' online catalog:
LC Control No.: 88705383
Type of Material: Moving Image or Slide/Transparency
Main Title: The Hazards of Helen. No. 13, Escape on the fast freight / Kalem ; director, J.P. McGowan ; producer, Paul C. Hurst ; author, E.W. Matlack ; scenario writer, Frank Howard Clark.
Published/Created: United States : Kalem, 1915.
Description: 1 reel of 1 (inc.) (818 ft.) : si., b&w ; 35 mm. ref print.
1 reel of 1 (inc.) (818 ft.) : si., b&w ; 35 mm. dupe neg.

From the UCLA catalog:
[ 1 ] The hazards of Helen. No. 108, The trial run / Hazards of Helen. No. 108, The trial run / Kalem ; director, James Davis. 1916.
Title has multiple holdings

[ 2 ] Hazards of Helen. No. 13, The escape on the fast freight / Hazards of Helen. No. 13, The escape on the fast freight / Signal-Kalem ; producer, Paul C. Hurst ; writer, Edward Matlack. United States : Signal-Kalem, 1915 ; United States : Distributed exclusively by Image Entertainment : National Film Preservation Foundation, c2007.
Library Location: NON-CIRCULATING RESEARCH AND STUDY CENTER COPY Call Number: DVD4053 M Status: No item data available

[ 3 ] The hazards of Helen. No. 26, The wild engine / Hazards of Helen. No. 26, The wild engine / Kalem Co. ; director, J.P. McGowan. United States : Kalem Co., 1915 ; United States : National Film Preservation Foundation, 2004.
Library Location: NON-CIRCULATING RESEARCH AND STUDY CENTER COPY Call Number: DVD619 M Status: No item data available

[ 4 ] Hazards of Helen. No. 33, In danger's path. Hazards of Helen. No. 33, In danger's path. In danger's path / Signal-Kalem ; director, J.P. McGowan. 1915.
Title has multiple holdings

[ 5 ] The hazards of Helen. No. 9, The leap from the water tower / Hazards of Helen. No. 9, The leap from the water tower / Kalem ; J.P. McGowan, director. 1914.
Library Location: Non-circulating Nitrate Vaults archival copy Call Number: M46170 Status: Noncirculating

The Netherlands Film Museum has BOX CAR TRAP, THE (J.D. Davis, Kalem 1915, "Hazards of Helen Railroad series # 25" )
PAY TRAIN, THE (Kalem 1915, "Hazards of Helen" #31)

According to the Treasures from the Film Archives book, the BFI has Helen's Sacrifice #1, Escape on the Fast Freight #13, The Girl at Love Point #20, The Open Drawbridge #16, The Pay Train #31, and The Railroader's Bravery #29. The Eastman House has Escape on the Fast Freight #13, The Wild Engine #26 and The Runaway Sleeper #106. The NY MOMA has The Trial Run #108.


The Escape on the Fast Freight #13 is on the Treasures from the American Archives III DVD set.

The Wild Engine #25 is on the More Treasures from the American Archives DVD set.

Blackhawk used to sell In Danger's Path #33, Leap From the Water Tower #9 (which I have on 16mm), The Open Track #63, and Pay Train #31 and 8mm and/or 16mm.

EmGee used to sell The Governor's Special #76 in 16mm.

According to the Silent Era website (http://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/H/Ha ... n1915.html), the following episodes still exist:
prints exist of episodes 1, 3, 39, 63, 69, 76 and 96; episodes 13, 26 and 106 exist in the Library of Congress film archive [35mm]; episodes 20-21 exist in the National Film Archive of the British Film Institute film archive; episode 108 exists in the International Museum of Photography and Film at George Eastman House film archive; episodes 9, 26 and 33 exist in the Film Preservation Associates film collection (Blackhawk Films collection) [16mm reduction positives, 8mm reduction positives]; also, episodes 9, 31 and 33 are held in private film collections [16mm reduction positives].

Does anybody know of any others?

[35MM]

You can watch "The Wild Engine" at the Internet Archive.

http://www.archive.org/details/hazards_ ... ild_engine

[silentfilm]

I recently acquired a 16mm print of The Wild Engine, which includes two HofH episodes. According to the Blackhawk Films prologue, Aywon acquired the first 40-something chapters of HofH in 1919 and recut them into an entirely new serial, The Adventures of Helen. The print I have is chapter one, which includes two original episodes edited into one new one. The intertitles have been changed to bridge the stories together and eliminate any reference to Kalem, the original producer.

I'm not sure what the original title was for the first part, but Helen is a schoolteacher who is fired to being too "frivolous" with the children. She saves the day though when a boxcar full of dynamite rolls down a hill. The second half of the chapter is much more exciting. Helen applies to be the telegraph operator for the train company, but the owner doesn't believe that women can work calmly in an emergency. A locomotive engineer gets knocked off the train and Helen performs not one but three rescues of different trains. This is the episode that is available on the Internet Archive and the Treasures from the Archives II DVD set.

[Shorty]

I have most of the 8mm 'Helen' episodes - nice prints

[Dana]

There's a 200 foot portion from a nitrate of THE RUNAWAY BOX CAR that we've "restored" to digital. Hand scanned it frame by frame and then steadied it a bit in Final Cut.
It's at this address: http://www.filmandmedia.ucsb.edu/news/s ... oxcar.html

[silentfilm]

Excellent! Too bad it ends at a very critical part. The Harzards of Helen was not a cliff-hanger, but this fragment literally is a cliff-hanger.

[filmart_dd]

A collector in Queensland, Australia, has LEAP (ep.9) in a good 16mm with music track.

[silentfilm]

Blackhawk sold Leap from the Water Tower in 8mm and 16mm and I have a print of it. We screened it at the Kanas Silent Film Festival several years ago.

[Rodney]

Blackhawk sold Leap from the Water Tower in 8mm and 16mm and I have a print of it. We screened it at the Kanas Silent Film Festival several years ago.

One of the quaint things about the Blackhawk prints of HELEN is that they were obviously marketed to railroad buffs. The added introductory titles give long biographies not of the actors and actresses, but of the train engines that appear in the films.

[silentfilm]

Blackhawk had dozens of train films that they sold to railroad buffs. They were all documentaries about particular train lines. And when they come up on eBay, they still go for pretty good prices.

[Zepfanman]

There's a 200 foot portion from a nitrate of THE RUNAWAY BOX CAR that we've "restored" to digital. Hand scanned it frame by frame and then steadied it a bit in Final Cut.
It's at this address: http://www.filmandmedia.ucsb.edu/news/s ... oxcar.html

That link isn't working for me. Is this the 3m48s clip you're referring to?

[filmart_dd]

Many thanks to Zepfanman for re-locating this fascinating piece from a fragment of nitrate. And thanks to the painstaking team at UCSB.
According to the biography by John J. McGowan (no known relationship), The Runaway Box Car was episode 47 of The Hazards of Helen, issued on October 2, 1915. The credited cast there differs from credits in IMDb.
That was near the end of the weekly series produced by the J.P. McGowan-Helen Holmes team. This episode combined two of their favorite themes, runaways and sealed box cars. Presumably the audiences of the day would have been acutely aware of those dangers, which today to a novice viewer may seem a bit quaint.
As a director, McGowan had a good eye for a shot and a good sense of building the sequence. His films are full of visual action in comparison with others of the time. This fragment directed by James Gunnar Davis shows similar suspense.
J.P. McGowan has avid followers and reearchers in his birth state, South Australia. Helen, too, has keen followers in Nebraska and New York state.

[Evan Anderson]

"Pearl White, swooning in the face of peril, was a piker compared to Helen Holmes. Helen leapt from buildings, sped around mountain curves in a motorcar and jumped from a galloping horse to a train. And though she occasionally was rescued by a handsome male hero, it was Helen who single-handedly collared the bad guys and brought them to justice." - page 279, Downriver

Though this is the opinion of Downriver's main character, I basically agree. based on my viewing of "The Wild Engine." If other chapters in Hazards of Helen are anywhere near as invigorating as that one, I'd line up to obtain a copy of the complete series.