Partners in Peril

Walter Miller and Allene Ray co-starred in ten classic cliffhanger serials produced and released during the late silent era by Pathé, one of the pioneering motion-picture companies. Miller and Ray were an incredibly popular team whose incredibly popular and profitable chapter plays included THE GREEN ARCHER (a 1925 adaptation of Edgar Wallace's best-selling mystery novel), THE HOUSE WITHOUT A KEY (the 1926 serial that introduced Charlie Chan to moviegoers), and THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE (a 1928 mystery-horror hybrid whose grotesquely disfigured villain anticipated a slew of fright-film characters). Working in tandem with chief director Spencer Bennet and their favorite scenarist Frank Leon Smith, Miller and Ray temporarily restored luster to a unique film form that had become tarnished. This monograph exhaustively covers the Miller-Ray phenomenon: author Ed Hulse has seen all surviving footage from their chapter plays, and his account also relies on private correspondence from Frank Leon Smith, interviews with Spencer Bennet, and careful analysis of surviving scripts from their serials. The text is supplemented with dozens of rare photos, including previously unpublished candids taken during production. Fans and students of silent movies will relish Hulse's extensively researched coverage of this unappreciated and largely undocumented phase of film history.