Pola Negri

In 1902 she attended a ballet school but was later impeded in dancing because of an illness. Therefore she adopted a different method and attended a theater school in Warsaw in order to become an actress.

She made her debut at the theater in 1912 and got soon first leading roles.

She made her debut with Slave of Sin (1914), a film in which she personified the vamp archetype for which she would become famous.

After some Polish film productions she went to Germany in 1917 where she achieved first glorious triumphs. The movies made one of the greatest stars of Pola Negri und she soon belonged together with Henny Porten and Asta Nielsen to the triumvirate of German artists.

Negri made eight films with director Ernst Lubitsch between 1918 and 1925. Seven were made in Germany and their eighth and final film together was Forbidden Paradise (1924), which was filmed in the United States.

Pola Negri was born in Lipno, Poland, and moved to Warsaw as a child. Living in poverty with her mother, a teenage Pola auditioned and was accepted to the Imperial Ballet. Due to an illness that ended her dancing career, she soon switched to the Warsaw Imperial Academy of Dramatic Arts and became an actress. By 17 she was a star on the Warsaw stage, but World War I would soon change the theater scene. Without the theater, Pola turned to films. With her new career in pictures and her stage success in "Sumurun", she went to Berlin and was teamed with German director Ernst Lubitsch. The Lubitsch-Negri combination was very successful and the roles that Pola played were earthy, exotic, strong women. One of her films, Passion (1919), was optioned and retitled "Passion" for exhibition in America.

The film was such a success that by 1922 she and Lubitsch were both given contracts to work in Hollywood. While her first few films showed some success, they were overshadowed by her reported romances with such stars as Charles Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino.

Pola Negri was the first notable German actress to travel to the United States where she appeared in Bella Donna (1923). Her fame in Europe was quickly surpassed by her fame in America, and she achieved her greatest successes with Forbidden Paradise (1924) and Hotel Imperial (1927).

Forbidden Paradise (1924), made with Lubitsch, and Hotel Imperial (1927) were two of her more successful films. However, three things conspired to end her career in Hollywood: (1) The perception that her mourning for Rudolph Valentino was insincere, though Negri did describe him as the love of her life; (2) The Hays Office codes that would not allow her to show the very traits that made her a sex-siren in Europe; (3) Her thick Polish accent would not play in the sound pictures that were coming into vogue. Pola Negri returned to Europe and eventually made films for UFA, which was under Nazi management.

When Rudolph Valentino died in August of 1926, Negri claimed to have been engaged to marry him, and set out from Hollywood by train to attend his funeral in New York. During the trip, Negri collapsed several times. The perception that she used her lover's death as a publicity stunt damaged her reputation.

After her Hollywood forays, Pola Negri returned to Europe. She made a successful comeback in Germany with Mazurka (1935), and she was able to take part in Madame Bovary (1937), Tango Notturno (1937) and Die Nacht der Entscheidung (1938) in the following years.

"Film Daily", Monday, July 3, 1939--Paris (by cable): Pola Negri appeared in court here on the weekend to ask 1,000,000-franc damages as the result of an article appearing in the "Paris Sun" newspaper which represented her as a friend of Adolf Hitler. She was described by two witnesses as having suffered much moral damage by the allegation. The actress remained silent throughout the proceedings, during which the paper's defense counsel tried to show that knowing Hitler was no slander.

In 1941 she returned to America penniless.

She made Hi Diddle Diddle (1943) and became an American citizen in 1951.

According to her autobiography, she also appeared in a Boston supper club engagement in 1945 for a repertoire centered around the song "Paradise", and retired from the entertainment business altogether.

In 1951 she got the American nationality and took up a second successful career as a relater.

Her next and last movie was The Moon-Spinners (1964).

In 1975, director Vincente Minnelli approached Negri to appear as the Contessa Sanziani in A Matter of Time (1976), but Negri was unable to accept due to poor health. In 1978, Billy Wilder directed Fedora (1978). Although Negri does not appear in the film, the title character was largely based on her.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986- 1990, pages 652-654. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.

On her deathbed in 1987, the 90-year-old Negri was being attended by a handsome young doctor who looked at her chart, and failed to respond immediately to seeing her name. In her best Norma Desmond mode, she reportedly pulled herself up into a "movie star" pose and asked, "You don't know who I am?!?!?".