Pola Negri
Encyclopedia
Pola Negri was a Polish
stage and film actress who achieved worldwide fame for her tragedienne
and femme fatale
roles from the 1910s through the 1940s during the Golden Era of Hollywood film. She was the first Europe
an film star to be invited to Hollywood, and became a great American star. She also started several important women's fashion trends. She is known for being one of the most popular stars of the silent film
era, and her varied career included work as an actress in silent
and talking films, theater, and vaudeville
; as a singer and recording artist; as an author
; and as a ballerina
.
, Russian Empire
(present-day Poland
). She was the youngest of three children, but because the first two died young, she grew up as an only child. Her mother, whose maiden name was Eleonora Kiełczewska, was reportedly impoverished Polish royalty, and her father, Jerzy Chałupiec, was a Slovak
immigrant tinsmith. After Chałupiec's father was arrested by the Russians for revolutionary activities and sent to Siberia
, she and her mother moved to Warsaw
, where they lived in extreme poverty.
Chałupiec was accepted into the Imperial Ballet of Warsaw, and began training in the ballet academy. The Academy’s patron and ballet enthusiast was Tsar Nicholas II. The Academy produced such world famous ballerinas as Pawlowa, Tamara Karsawina, and Matilda Krzesinska. Chałupiec's first dance performance was in the chorus of baby swans in Tchaikovsky's
Swan Lake
, and she worked her way up to a solo role in the Saint-Léon ballet Coppélia. A bout with tuberculosis
forced her to stop dancing. Chałupiec was sent to a sanatorium to recover, and during that time, she adopted the pseudonym Pola Negri, after the Italian novelist and poetess Ada Negri
,, with Pola being short for Apolonia.
, Negri had established herself as a popular stage actress. She made an appearance in the Grand Theatre (in Sumurun), as well as in Small Theatre (Aleksander Fredro
's Śluby panieńskie) and at the Summer Theatre in the Saxon Garden
, a popular summer variété theatre.
Negri debuted in film in 1914 in Slave to her Senses (Niewolnica zmysłów). She also appeared in a variety of films made by the Warsaw film industry, including Room No. 13 (Pokój Nr. 13), His Last Gesture (Jego Ostatni Czyn), Students (Studenci), and The Wife (Żona). Negri gained much popularity during her short screen career in Warsaw, acting alongside many of the most renowned Polish film artists of the time, including Józef Węgrzyn, Władysław Grabowski, Józef Galewski, and Kazimierz Junosza-Stępowski.
, Germany, to appear as the dancing girl in a German revival of Max Reinhardt
's theatre production of Sumurun. In this production, she met Ernst Lubitsch
, who at the time was producing comedies for the German Film studio UFA
. Negri was first signed with Saturn Films, making six films with them, including Wenn das Herz in Haß erglüht (If the Heart Burns With Hate, 1917). After this, she signed to UFA's roster; some of the films that she made with UFA include Mania (1918), Der Gelbe Schein (The Yellow Ticket, also 1918), and Komtesse Doddy (1919).
In 1918, Lubitsch convinced UFA to let him create a large-scale film with Negri as the main character. The result was Die Augen der Mumie Ma (The Eyes of the Mummy Ma, 1918), which was a popular success and led to a series of Lubitsch/Negri collaborations, each larger in scale than the previous film. The next was Carmen (1918, reissued in the United States in 1921 as Gypsy Blood), which was followed by Madame Dubarry
(1919, released in the United States as Passion). Madame DuBarry became a huge international success, and managed to bring down the American embargo on German films and launch a demand for German films that briefly threatened to dislodge Hollywood's dominance in the international film market. Negri and Lubitsch made three German films together after this, Sumurun (aka One Arabian Night, 1920), Die Bergkatze (aka The Mountain Cat or The Wildcat, 1921), and Die Flamme (The Flame, 1922), and UFA employed Negri for films with other directors, including Vendetta (1920) and Sappho (1921), many of which were purchased by American distributors and shown in the United States.
Hollywood responded to this new threat by buying out key German talent, beginning with the procuration of the services of Lubitsch and Negri. Lubitsch was the first director to be brought to Hollywood, with Mary Pickford calling for his services in her costume film Rosita (1923). Paramount Pictures mogul Jesse Lasky saw the premiere of Madame DuBarry in Berlin in 1919, and Paramount invited Negri to come to Hollywood in 1921. She signed a contract with Paramount and arrived in New York in a flurry of publicity on September 12, 1922. This ended up making Negri the first ever Continental star to be imported into Hollywood, setting a precedent for imported European stars that would go on to include Greta Garbo
, Marlene Dietrich
, Ingrid Bergman
, Sophia Loren
, and many others.
. While in Hollywood, she started several ladies' fashion trends, some of which are still fashion staples today, including red painted toenails, fur boots, and turbans. Negri was a favorite photography subject of the famous Hollywood portrait photographer Eugene Robert Richee, and many of her best-known photographs were taken during this period.
Negri's first two Paramount films were Bella Donna (1923) and The Cheat (1923), both of which were directed by George Fitzmaurice
and were remakes of Paramount films from 1915. Negri's first spectacle film was the Herbert Brenon-directed The Spanish Dancer
(1923), which was based on the Victor Hugo
novel Don César de Bazan. The initial screenplay was intended as a vehicle for Rudolph Valentino
before he left the Paramount lot, and was reworked for Negri. Rosita, Lubitsch's film with Mary Pickford
, was released the same year, and also happened to be based on Don César de Bazan. According to the book Paramount Pictures and the People Who Made Them, "Critics had a field day comparing the two. The general opinion was that the Pickford film was more polished, but the Negri film was more entertaining."
Initially Paramount utilized Negri as a mysterious European femme fatale and as a clotheshorse as they did with their other major actress Gloria Swanson
, and staged an ongoing feud between the two actresses which actor Charlie Chaplin remembered in his autobiography as "a mélange of cooked-up jealousies and quarrels." Negri was concerned that Paramount was mishandling her career and image, and arranged for her former director Ernst Lubitsch to direct her in the critically acclaimed Forbidden Paradise
(1924). It would be the last time the two worked together in any film. By 1925, Negri's on-screen continental opulence was starting to wear thin with some segments of the American audience, a situation which was parodied in the Mal St. Clair-directed comedy A Woman of the World
(1925), which Negri starred in.
Paramount then began to cast Negri in international peasant roles in films such as the Mauritz Stiller-directed and Erich Pommer-produced Hotel Imperial
(1927) in an apparent effort to give her a more down-to-earth, relatable image. Although Hotel Imperial reportedly fared well at the box office, her next film Barbed Wire (1927) and a number of her subsequent films performed poorly in the United States due to the poor publicity surrounding her behavior at her former lover Rudolph Valentino's New York funeral and her rebound marriage to Georgian prince Serge Mdivani
, although internationally her films continued to fare well.
In 1928, Negri made her last film for Paramount Pictures
, The Woman From Moscow, opposite actor Norman Kerry
. Negri claims in her autobiography that she opted not to renew her contract with Paramount, choosing instead to retire from films and live as a wife and expectant mother in the Château de Rueil-Séraincourt in Vigny, France, which she owned at the time. That same year, she wrote a short volume featuring her reflections on art and film entitled La Vie et Le Rêve au Cinéma (Life and Dreams in the Movies).
's Caesar and Cleopatra
, and Shaw even offered to alter the play to suit the film. When the rights proved to be too expensive, the company settled on an original story and hired German kammerspielfilm director Paul Czinner
to direct. The resulting film, The Way Of Lost Souls (also known as The Woman He Scorned), was released in 1929; it would be Negri's final silent film.
Negri returned to Hollywood in 1931 to begin filming her first talking film, A Woman Commands (1932). The film itself was poorly received, but Negri sang the song "Paradise
" in the film, and the song became a sizable hit and for many years was considered to be a standard. The song was covered by many other performers, including Russ Columbo
and Louis Prima and Keely Smith
. Negri went on a successful vaudeville tour to promote the song. She was employed in the leading role of the touring theatre production A Trip To Pressburg, which premiered at the Shubert Theater
in New York. However, she collapsed after the final curtain at the production's stop at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
due to gall bladder inflammation and was unable to complete the tour.
Negri returned to France to appear in Fanatisme (Fanaticism, 1934), an historical costume film about Napoleón III. The film was directed by the directorial team of Tony Lekain and Gaston Ravel and released by Pathé. It was her only French film. After this, actor-director Willi Forst
brought Negri to Germany appear in the film Mazurka
(1935). Mazurka gained much popularity in Germany and abroad, and became one of Adolf Hitler
's favorite films, a fact that gave birth to a rumor in 1937 about Negri having had an affair with Hitler. There was no truth to the rumor. Pola sued a French magazine, Pour Vous, that had circulated the libelous rumor and won her case. Mazurka was remade (almost shot-for-shot) in the U.S. as a Kay Francis
picture, Confession
.
After the success of Mazurka, Negri's former studio, the now-Joseph Goebbels
controlled UFA
, signed Negri to a new contract. Negri lived in France while working for UFA, making five films with them: Moskau-Shanghai (Moscow-Shanghai, 1936), Madame Bovary (1937), Tango Notturno (1937), Die Fromme Lüge (The Secret Lie, 1938), and Die Nacht der Entscheidung (The Night of Decision, 1939).
After the Nazis took over France, Negri found the oppression of the regime too much to bear, and fled back to America. She sailed to New York
from Lisbon, Portugal, and initially lived by selling off her jewelry collection. Negri was hired in a supporting role as the temperamental opera singer Genya Smetana for the 1943 comedy Hi Diddle Diddle
. After the success of this film, Negri was offered numerous roles which were essentially rehashes or her role in Hi Diddle Diddle, all of which she turned down. In 1944, Negri was engaged by booking agent Miles Ingalls for a nationwide vaudeville tour. According to her autobiography, she also appeared in a Boston supper club engagement in 1945 for a repertoire centered around the song "Paradise", and soon after decided to retire from the entertainment business altogether.
in November 5, 1919, thus becoming Countessa Apolonia Dambska-Challupiec. After a long separation period, Negri and Dambski were divorced on 1922. During their separation period, Negri met industrialist Wolfgang George Schleber, whom she called "Petronius" after the main character in Quo Vadis
. Negri would be Schleber's mistress for most of the remainder of her stay in Germany.
After Negri began working in the United States, she began making headlines and gossip columns with a string of celebrity love affairs with stars such as Charlie Chaplin
, Rod La Rocque
, and Rudolph Valentino
. Negri had met Chaplin while in Germany, and what began as a platonic relationship there became a well-publicized affair and marriage speculation which received the headline, "The Queen of Tragedy To Wed The King of Comedy". The relationship soured, and Negri became involved for a time with actor Rod La Rocque, who also appeared opposite her in Forbidden Paradise (1924).
Negri then met Rudolph Valentino at a costume party held by Marion Davies
and William Randolph Hearst
at the San Simeon estate
, and was Valentino's lover until his death in 1926. Negri caused a media sensation at this New York funeral in August 24, 1926, at which she "fainted" several times, and, according to actor Ben Lyon, arranged for a large floral arrangement, which spelled out "P-O-L-A", to be placed on Valentino's coffin. The press dismissed her actions as a publicity stunt. At the time of his death and for the remainder of her life, Negri would state that Valentino was the love of her life.
Negri followed this with her second marriage, this one to Georgian prince Serge Mdivani
, which caused public opinion in the United States to sour against her because it happened so quickly after Rudolph Valentino's death. Negri and Mdivani were married on May 14, 1927 (less than nine months after Valentino's death), and were divorced on April 2, 1931.
While residing at the Ambassador Hotel in New York in April 1932, Negri was romantically involved with Russ Columbo
and performed with him in the George Jessel
Variety Revue at The Schubert Theatre. After the premier of Negri's film A Woman Commands in Hollywood, Russ Columbo performed Negri's signature song "Paradise" with his orchestra, and dedicated the song to Negri. Columbo also recorded and released the song as a 78 rpm single that year with slightly altered lyrics, and the single became a huge sensation with audiences across the country.
Negri was close friends with actresses Mae Murray
and Marion Davies
, and in fact was sister-in-law to Murray for a time, who was married to David Mdivani, brother to Negri's husband Serge Mdivani. Davies allowed Negri to live in her bungalow when Negri initially emigrated back to California in the 1940s.
In 1948, director Billy Wilder
approached Negri to appear as Norma Desmond in the film Sunset Boulevard (1950), after Mae Murray
, Mae West
, and Mary Pickford
declined the role. Negri also declined the role because she felt that the screenplay was not ready and that Montgomery Clift
, who was slated to play the Joe Gillis character at the time, was not a good choice for the character. The role of Joe Gillis eventually went to William Holden
, and Gloria Swanson
, Negri's former "rival" at Paramount, accepted the Norma Desmond role.
Negri came out of retirement once to appear in the Walt Disney
film The Moon-Spinners
(1964), which starred Hayley Mills
and Eli Wallach
. Negri's appearance in the film as eccentric jewel collector Madame Habib was shot over the course of two weeks. During the time that Negri was filming The Moon-Spinners in London, she made a sensation by appearing before the London press at her hotel in the company of a feisty cheetah on a steel chain leash.
After West's death, Negri moved out of the home she had shared with West into a townhome located at 7707 Broadway in San Antonio. She spent the remainder of her years there, largely out of the public eye. In 1964, Negri received an honorary award from the German film industry for her film work, followed by a Hemis-Film award in San Antonio in 1968. In 1970 she published her autobiography, Memoirs of a Star, which was published by Doubleday.
Negri made an appearance at The Museum of Modern Art
on April 30, 1970, for a screening event in her honor, which featured her film A Woman of the World (1925) and selections from her films. Negri was also guest of honor at a 1972 screening of Carmen held at the Witte Museum
in San Antonio.
In 1975, director Vincente Minnelli
approached Negri to appear as the Contessa Sanziani in his film A Matter of Time
, but Negri was unable to accept the part due to poor health. The role ended up going to Ingrid Bergman
instead.
In 1978, Billy Wilder
directed the film Fedora
; although Negri does not appear in the film, the title character is based largely on her.
Negri's final high-profile coverage in her lifetime was for a "Where Are They Now?" feature on silent film stars, which appeared in Life magazine in 1980.
, however she was also suffering from a brain tumor
(for which she had refused treatment). At her wake at the Porter Loring Funeral Home in San Antonio, her body was placed on view wearing a yellow golden chiffon dress with a golden turban to match. Negri's death received extensive coverage in her hometown newspapers San Antonio Light, and San Antonio Express-News, and in publications such as Los Angeles Times New York Times, and Variety magazine.
Negri was interred in Calvary Cemetery, East Los Angeles
next to her mother, Eleonora. Since she had no children, she left most of her estate to St. Mary's University
in Texas, including several rare prints of her films. In addition, a generous portion of her estate was given to the Polish nuns of the Seraphic Order; a large black and white portrait hangs in the small chapel next to Poland's patron, Our Lady of Częstochowa
, in San Antonio, Texas
.
Pola Negri donated her collection of memorabilia to St. Mary's University in San Antonio, who also set up a scholarship in her name. The Polish Film Festival of Los Angeles remembers Negri with a Pola Negri Award given to outstanding film artists, and the Pola Negri Museum in Lipno gives a Polita award for outstanding artist achievement.
Pola Negri has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
for her contribution to Motion Pictures at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard. She was the 11th star in Hollywood history to place her hand and foot prints in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre
. She has also received, along with Roman Polanski
, a star in Poland's Walk of Fame in Łódź. The Polish post office issued a Stamp honoring Negri in 1996.
In 2006, a feature-length documentary about Negri's life, directed by Mariusz Kotowski
and entitled Pola Negri: Life is a Dream in Cinema
, premiered at the Seventh Annual Polish Film Festival of Los Angeles. The documentary is notable for its in-depth interviews with film stars Hayley Mills
and Eli Wallach
, who were starring actress and supporting actor respectively in the Walt Disney film
The Moon-Spinners
(1964), Pola Negri's final film. Pola Negri: Life is a Dream in Cinema
has played at Pola Negri retrospective screenings in The United States and Europe, most notably at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
in New York and La Cinémathèque Française
in Paris. Kotowski also authored a Polish-language biography of Pola Negri entitled Pola Negri: Legenda Hollywood (English title: Pola Negri: Hollywood Legend), which was released in Poland on February 24, 2011, and produced a 3-DVD compilation of early Pola Negri films entitled Pola Negri, The Iconic Collection: The Early Years (2011).
Poles
thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...
stage and film actress who achieved worldwide fame for her tragedienne
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
and femme fatale
Femme fatale
A femme fatale is a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. She is an archetype of literature and art...
roles from the 1910s through the 1940s during the Golden Era of Hollywood film. She was the first Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an film star to be invited to Hollywood, and became a great American star. She also started several important women's fashion trends. She is known for being one of the most popular stars of the silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
era, and her varied career included work as an actress in silent
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
and talking films, theater, and vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
; as a singer and recording artist; as an author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
; and as a ballerina
Ballerina
A ballerina is a title used to describe a principal female professional ballet dancer in a large company; the male equivalent to this title is danseur or ballerino...
.
Early life
Negri was born Barbara Apolonia Chałupiec according to her birth record and autobiography in Lipno, Vistula LandVistula land
Vistula Land or Vistula Country was the name applied to the lands of the Kingdom of Poland following the defeats of the November Uprising and January Uprising as it was increasingly stripped of autonomy and incorporated into Imperial Russia...
, Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
(present-day Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
). She was the youngest of three children, but because the first two died young, she grew up as an only child. Her mother, whose maiden name was Eleonora Kiełczewska, was reportedly impoverished Polish royalty, and her father, Jerzy Chałupiec, was a Slovak
Slovaks
The Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...
immigrant tinsmith. After Chałupiec's father was arrested by the Russians for revolutionary activities and sent to Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
, she and her mother moved to Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, where they lived in extreme poverty.
Chałupiec was accepted into the Imperial Ballet of Warsaw, and began training in the ballet academy. The Academy’s patron and ballet enthusiast was Tsar Nicholas II. The Academy produced such world famous ballerinas as Pawlowa, Tamara Karsawina, and Matilda Krzesinska. Chałupiec's first dance performance was in the chorus of baby swans in Tchaikovsky's
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
Swan Lake
Swan Lake
Swan Lake ballet, op. 20, by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, composed 1875–1876. The scenario, initially in four acts, was fashioned from Russian folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. The choreographer of the original production was Julius Reisinger...
, and she worked her way up to a solo role in the Saint-Léon ballet Coppélia. A bout with tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
forced her to stop dancing. Chałupiec was sent to a sanatorium to recover, and during that time, she adopted the pseudonym Pola Negri, after the Italian novelist and poetess Ada Negri
Ada Negri
Ada Negri was an Italian poet and writer.-Biography:She was born in Lodi into an artisan family to Giuseppe Negri and his wife Vittoria Cornalba. She attended Lodi’s Normal School for Girls and earned an elementary teacher’s diploma...
,, with Pola being short for Apolonia.
Polish theatre and film career
After Negri returned from her stay at the sanatorium, she successfully auditioned for the Warsaw Imperial Academy of Dramatic Arts. Alongside her formal schooling at the Academy, she also took private classes outside with renowned Polish stage actress and professor Honorata Leszczynska. She made her theatrical debut before her graduation at The Small Theatre in Warszawa on October 2, 1912. Her performance received much acclaim, and she continued to perform there while finishing her studies at the Academy. She graduated in 1914. Her graduating performance was as Hedwig in Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, which resulted in offers to join a number of the prominent theatres in Warsaw. By the end of World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Negri had established herself as a popular stage actress. She made an appearance in the Grand Theatre (in Sumurun), as well as in Small Theatre (Aleksander Fredro
Aleksander Fredro
Aleksander Fredro was a Polish poet, playwright and author.-Life:Count Aleksander Fredro, of the Bończa coat of arms, was born in the village of Surochów near Jarosław, then a crown territory of Austria. A landowner's son, he was educated at home. He entered the Polish army at age 16 and saw...
's Śluby panieńskie) and at the Summer Theatre in the Saxon Garden
Saxon Garden
The Saxon Garden is a 15.5–hectare public garden in downtown Warsaw, Poland, facing Piłsudski Square. It is the oldest public park in the city...
, a popular summer variété theatre.
Negri debuted in film in 1914 in Slave to her Senses (Niewolnica zmysłów). She also appeared in a variety of films made by the Warsaw film industry, including Room No. 13 (Pokój Nr. 13), His Last Gesture (Jego Ostatni Czyn), Students (Studenci), and The Wife (Żona). Negri gained much popularity during her short screen career in Warsaw, acting alongside many of the most renowned Polish film artists of the time, including Józef Węgrzyn, Władysław Grabowski, Józef Galewski, and Kazimierz Junosza-Stępowski.
Ernst Lubitsch and German silent film career
In 1917, Negri's popularity provided her with an opportunity to move to BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Germany, to appear as the dancing girl in a German revival of Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt (theatre director)
----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...
's theatre production of Sumurun. In this production, she met Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his...
, who at the time was producing comedies for the German Film studio UFA
Universum Film AG
Universum Film AG, better known as UFA or Ufa, is a film company that was the principal film studio in Germany, home of the German film industry during the Weimar Republic and through World War II, and a major force in world cinema from 1917 to 1945...
. Negri was first signed with Saturn Films, making six films with them, including Wenn das Herz in Haß erglüht (If the Heart Burns With Hate, 1917). After this, she signed to UFA's roster; some of the films that she made with UFA include Mania (1918), Der Gelbe Schein (The Yellow Ticket, also 1918), and Komtesse Doddy (1919).
In 1918, Lubitsch convinced UFA to let him create a large-scale film with Negri as the main character. The result was Die Augen der Mumie Ma (The Eyes of the Mummy Ma, 1918), which was a popular success and led to a series of Lubitsch/Negri collaborations, each larger in scale than the previous film. The next was Carmen (1918, reissued in the United States in 1921 as Gypsy Blood), which was followed by Madame Dubarry
Madame Du Barry (1919 film)
Madame Du Barry was a 1919 German silent film on the life of Madame Du Barry. It was directed by Ernst Lubitsch, written by Norbert Falk and Hanns Kräly and its cast included Alexander Ekert, with the title role taken by Pola Negri and Louis XV played by Emil Jannings....
(1919, released in the United States as Passion). Madame DuBarry became a huge international success, and managed to bring down the American embargo on German films and launch a demand for German films that briefly threatened to dislodge Hollywood's dominance in the international film market. Negri and Lubitsch made three German films together after this, Sumurun (aka One Arabian Night, 1920), Die Bergkatze (aka The Mountain Cat or The Wildcat, 1921), and Die Flamme (The Flame, 1922), and UFA employed Negri for films with other directors, including Vendetta (1920) and Sappho (1921), many of which were purchased by American distributors and shown in the United States.
Hollywood responded to this new threat by buying out key German talent, beginning with the procuration of the services of Lubitsch and Negri. Lubitsch was the first director to be brought to Hollywood, with Mary Pickford calling for his services in her costume film Rosita (1923). Paramount Pictures mogul Jesse Lasky saw the premiere of Madame DuBarry in Berlin in 1919, and Paramount invited Negri to come to Hollywood in 1921. She signed a contract with Paramount and arrived in New York in a flurry of publicity on September 12, 1922. This ended up making Negri the first ever Continental star to be imported into Hollywood, setting a precedent for imported European stars that would go on to include Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo , born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, was a Swedish film actress. Garbo was an international star and icon during Hollywood's silent and classic periods. Many of Garbo's films were sensational hits, and all but three were profitable...
, Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
, Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...
, Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren, OMRI is an Italian actress.In 1962, Loren won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Two Women, along with 21 awards, becoming the first actress to win an Academy Award for a non-English-speaking performance...
, and many others.
Paramount period
Negri ended up becoming one of the most popular Hollywood actresses of the era, and certainly the richest woman of the film industry at the time, living in a mansion in Los Angeles modeled after the White HouseWhite House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
. While in Hollywood, she started several ladies' fashion trends, some of which are still fashion staples today, including red painted toenails, fur boots, and turbans. Negri was a favorite photography subject of the famous Hollywood portrait photographer Eugene Robert Richee, and many of her best-known photographs were taken during this period.
Negri's first two Paramount films were Bella Donna (1923) and The Cheat (1923), both of which were directed by George Fitzmaurice
George Fitzmaurice
George Fitzmaurice was a film director and producer. Fitzmaurice's career first started as a set designer on stage...
and were remakes of Paramount films from 1915. Negri's first spectacle film was the Herbert Brenon-directed The Spanish Dancer
The Spanish Dancer (1923 film)
The Spanish Dancer is a 1923 silent costume epic starring Pola Negri as a gypsy fortune teller, Antonio Moreno as a romantic count, and Wallace Beery as the king of Spain...
(1923), which was based on the Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
novel Don César de Bazan. The initial screenplay was intended as a vehicle for Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino was an Italian actor, and early pop icon. A sex symbol of the 1920s, Valentino was known as the "Latin Lover". He starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle and Son of the Sheik...
before he left the Paramount lot, and was reworked for Negri. Rosita, Lubitsch's film with Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
, was released the same year, and also happened to be based on Don César de Bazan. According to the book Paramount Pictures and the People Who Made Them, "Critics had a field day comparing the two. The general opinion was that the Pickford film was more polished, but the Negri film was more entertaining."
Initially Paramount utilized Negri as a mysterious European femme fatale and as a clotheshorse as they did with their other major actress Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson was an American actress, singer and producer. She was one of the most prominent stars during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille, made dozens of silents and was nominated for the first Academy Award in the...
, and staged an ongoing feud between the two actresses which actor Charlie Chaplin remembered in his autobiography as "a mélange of cooked-up jealousies and quarrels." Negri was concerned that Paramount was mishandling her career and image, and arranged for her former director Ernst Lubitsch to direct her in the critically acclaimed Forbidden Paradise
Forbidden Paradise
Forbidden Paradise is a 1924 American silent drama film produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by German film director Ernst Lubitsch, a recent immigrant to the United States. The film is based on a 1922 Broadway play, The Czarina, by Edward Sheldon...
(1924). It would be the last time the two worked together in any film. By 1925, Negri's on-screen continental opulence was starting to wear thin with some segments of the American audience, a situation which was parodied in the Mal St. Clair-directed comedy A Woman of the World
A Woman of the World
A Woman of the World is a 1925 silent drama starring Pola Negri. It was directed by Mal St. Clair, produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by their parent company Paramount Pictures.-Synopsis:...
(1925), which Negri starred in.
Paramount then began to cast Negri in international peasant roles in films such as the Mauritz Stiller-directed and Erich Pommer-produced Hotel Imperial
Hotel Imperial (film)
Hotel Imperial is a 1927 American silent film directed by Mauritz Stiller, set in World War I and starring Pola Negri as a hotel chambermaid...
(1927) in an apparent effort to give her a more down-to-earth, relatable image. Although Hotel Imperial reportedly fared well at the box office, her next film Barbed Wire (1927) and a number of her subsequent films performed poorly in the United States due to the poor publicity surrounding her behavior at her former lover Rudolph Valentino's New York funeral and her rebound marriage to Georgian prince Serge Mdivani
Mdivani
Mdivani is the name of a family of nobility, originating from the nation of Georgia. The best known bearers of this name were the children of Zakhari and Elizabeth Mdivani. The five siblings fled to Paris after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and became known as the "Marrying Mdivanis", as they...
, although internationally her films continued to fare well.
In 1928, Negri made her last film for Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
, The Woman From Moscow, opposite actor Norman Kerry
Norman Kerry
Norman Kerry was an American actor whose career spanned over twenty-five years in the motion picture industry beginning in the silent era at the end of World War I.-Biography:...
. Negri claims in her autobiography that she opted not to renew her contract with Paramount, choosing instead to retire from films and live as a wife and expectant mother in the Château de Rueil-Séraincourt in Vigny, France, which she owned at the time. That same year, she wrote a short volume featuring her reflections on art and film entitled La Vie et Le Rêve au Cinéma (Life and Dreams in the Movies).
Later career
Negri's initial 1928 retirement turned out to be short-lived. Negri miscarried her baby, and eventually learned that her husband was gambling her fortune away on speculative business ventures, straining their relationship. She went back into pictures when an independent production company offered her work in a British film production that was to be distributed by Gaumont-British. Initially the film was to be a filmed version of George Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
's Caesar and Cleopatra
Caesar and Cleopatra (play)
Caesar and Cleopatra, a play written in 1898 by George Bernard Shaw, was first staged in 1901 and first published with Captain Brassbound's Conversion and The Devil's Disciple in his 1901 collection, Three Plays for Puritans. It was first performed at Newcastle-on-Tyne on March 15, 1899...
, and Shaw even offered to alter the play to suit the film. When the rights proved to be too expensive, the company settled on an original story and hired German kammerspielfilm director Paul Czinner
Paul Czinner
Paul Czinner was a writer, film director, and producer.Czinner was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary. After studying literature and philosophy at the University of Vienna, he worked as a journalist. From 1919 onward, he dedicated himself to work for the filming industry as writer, director and...
to direct. The resulting film, The Way Of Lost Souls (also known as The Woman He Scorned), was released in 1929; it would be Negri's final silent film.
Negri returned to Hollywood in 1931 to begin filming her first talking film, A Woman Commands (1932). The film itself was poorly received, but Negri sang the song "Paradise
Paradise (1931 song)
"Paradise" is a 1931 song by Nacio Herb Brown, with lyrics by Nacio Herb Brown and Gordon Clifford. It was first sung by Pola Negri in RKO Pictures' 1932 film A Woman Commands, and has since been heard in many other films, including a memorable performance by Gloria Grahame , in the 1949 Nicholas...
" in the film, and the song became a sizable hit and for many years was considered to be a standard. The song was covered by many other performers, including Russ Columbo
Russ Columbo
Ruggiero Eugenio di Rodolpho Colombo , known as Russ Columbo, was an American singer, violinist and actor, most famous for his signature tune, "You Call It Madness, But I Call It Love", his compositions "Prisoner of Love" and "Too Beautiful For Words", and the legend surrounding his early...
and Louis Prima and Keely Smith
Louis Prima
Louis Prima was a Sicilian American singer, actor, songwriter, and trumpeter. Prima rode the musical trends of his time, starting with his seven-piece New Orleans style jazz band in the 1920s, then successively leading a swing combo in the 1930s, a big band in the 1940s, a Vegas lounge act in the...
. Negri went on a successful vaudeville tour to promote the song. She was employed in the leading role of the touring theatre production A Trip To Pressburg, which premiered at the Shubert Theater
Shubert Theatre (Broadway)
The Shubert Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 225 West 44th Street in midtown-Manhattan, New York, United States.Designed by architect Henry Beaumont Herts, it was named after Sam S. Shubert, the second oldest of the three brothers of the theatrical producing family...
in New York. However, she collapsed after the final curtain at the production's stop at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
due to gall bladder inflammation and was unable to complete the tour.
Negri returned to France to appear in Fanatisme (Fanaticism, 1934), an historical costume film about Napoleón III. The film was directed by the directorial team of Tony Lekain and Gaston Ravel and released by Pathé. It was her only French film. After this, actor-director Willi Forst
Willi Forst
Willi Forst, born Wilhelm Anton Frohs was an Austrian actor, screenwriter, film director, film producer and singer...
brought Negri to Germany appear in the film Mazurka
Mazurka (film)
Mazurka is a 1935 German drama film directed by Willi Forst and starring Pola Negri, Albrecht Schoenhals and Ingeborg Theek. A woman is put on trial for murdering a dancer who ruined her marriage. It takes its name from The Mazurka.-Cast:...
(1935). Mazurka gained much popularity in Germany and abroad, and became one of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's favorite films, a fact that gave birth to a rumor in 1937 about Negri having had an affair with Hitler. There was no truth to the rumor. Pola sued a French magazine, Pour Vous, that had circulated the libelous rumor and won her case. Mazurka was remade (almost shot-for-shot) in the U.S. as a Kay Francis
Kay Francis
Kay Francis was an American stage and film actress. After a brief period on Broadway in the late 1920s, she moved to film and achieved her greatest success between 1930 and 1936, when she was the number one female star at the Warner Brothers studio, and the highest paid American film actress...
picture, Confession
Confession (film)
Confession is a 1937 drama film starring Kay Francis, Ian Hunter, Basil Rathbone and Jane Bryan. It was directed by Joe May and is a remake of the German film Mazurka starring Pola Negri....
.
After the success of Mazurka, Negri's former studio, the now-Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
controlled UFA
Universum Film AG
Universum Film AG, better known as UFA or Ufa, is a film company that was the principal film studio in Germany, home of the German film industry during the Weimar Republic and through World War II, and a major force in world cinema from 1917 to 1945...
, signed Negri to a new contract. Negri lived in France while working for UFA, making five films with them: Moskau-Shanghai (Moscow-Shanghai, 1936), Madame Bovary (1937), Tango Notturno (1937), Die Fromme Lüge (The Secret Lie, 1938), and Die Nacht der Entscheidung (The Night of Decision, 1939).
After the Nazis took over France, Negri found the oppression of the regime too much to bear, and fled back to America. She sailed to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
from Lisbon, Portugal, and initially lived by selling off her jewelry collection. Negri was hired in a supporting role as the temperamental opera singer Genya Smetana for the 1943 comedy Hi Diddle Diddle
Hi Diddle Diddle
Hi Diddle Diddle is a black-and-white American comedy film made in 1943 directed by Andrew L. Stone and starring Adolphe Menjou, Martha Scott, Dennis O'Keefe, June Havoc, Billie Burke, and Pola Negri....
. After the success of this film, Negri was offered numerous roles which were essentially rehashes or her role in Hi Diddle Diddle, all of which she turned down. In 1944, Negri was engaged by booking agent Miles Ingalls for a nationwide vaudeville tour. According to her autobiography, she also appeared in a Boston supper club engagement in 1945 for a repertoire centered around the song "Paradise", and soon after decided to retire from the entertainment business altogether.
Personal life
Negri's first marriage was with Count Eugeniusz Dambski, and would prove to be short lived. Negri married Dambski in St Mary's Assumption Church in SosnowiecSosnowiec
Sosnowiec is a city in Zagłębie Dąbrowskie in southern Poland, near Katowice. It is one of the central districts of the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union - a metropolis with a combined population of over two million people located in the Silesian Highlands, on the Brynica river .It is situated in...
in November 5, 1919, thus becoming Countessa Apolonia Dambska-Challupiec. After a long separation period, Negri and Dambski were divorced on 1922. During their separation period, Negri met industrialist Wolfgang George Schleber, whom she called "Petronius" after the main character in Quo Vadis
Quo Vadis (novel)
Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero, commonly known as Quo Vadis, is a historical novel written by Henryk Sienkiewicz in Polish. Quo vadis is Latin for "Where are you going?" and alludes to the apocryphal Acts of Peter, in which Peter flees Rome but on his way meets Jesus and asks him why he...
. Negri would be Schleber's mistress for most of the remainder of her stay in Germany.
After Negri began working in the United States, she began making headlines and gossip columns with a string of celebrity love affairs with stars such as Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
, Rod La Rocque
Rod La Rocque
-Biography:He was born Roderick La Rocque in Chicago, Illinois. He began appearing in stock theater at the age of seven and eventually ended up at the Essanay Studios in Chicago where he found steady work until the studios closed. He then moved to New York City and worked on the stage until he was...
, and Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino was an Italian actor, and early pop icon. A sex symbol of the 1920s, Valentino was known as the "Latin Lover". He starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle and Son of the Sheik...
. Negri had met Chaplin while in Germany, and what began as a platonic relationship there became a well-publicized affair and marriage speculation which received the headline, "The Queen of Tragedy To Wed The King of Comedy". The relationship soured, and Negri became involved for a time with actor Rod La Rocque, who also appeared opposite her in Forbidden Paradise (1924).
Negri then met Rudolph Valentino at a costume party held by Marion Davies
Marion Davies
Marion Davies was an American film actress. Davies is best remembered for her relationship with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, as her high-profile social life often obscured her professional career....
and William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...
at the San Simeon estate
Hearst Castle
Hearst Castle is a National Historic Landmark mansion located on the Central Coast of California, United States. It was designed by architect Julia Morgan between 1919 and 1947 for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who died in 1951. In 1957, the Hearst Corporation donated the property to...
, and was Valentino's lover until his death in 1926. Negri caused a media sensation at this New York funeral in August 24, 1926, at which she "fainted" several times, and, according to actor Ben Lyon, arranged for a large floral arrangement, which spelled out "P-O-L-A", to be placed on Valentino's coffin. The press dismissed her actions as a publicity stunt. At the time of his death and for the remainder of her life, Negri would state that Valentino was the love of her life.
Negri followed this with her second marriage, this one to Georgian prince Serge Mdivani
Mdivani
Mdivani is the name of a family of nobility, originating from the nation of Georgia. The best known bearers of this name were the children of Zakhari and Elizabeth Mdivani. The five siblings fled to Paris after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and became known as the "Marrying Mdivanis", as they...
, which caused public opinion in the United States to sour against her because it happened so quickly after Rudolph Valentino's death. Negri and Mdivani were married on May 14, 1927 (less than nine months after Valentino's death), and were divorced on April 2, 1931.
While residing at the Ambassador Hotel in New York in April 1932, Negri was romantically involved with Russ Columbo
Russ Columbo
Ruggiero Eugenio di Rodolpho Colombo , known as Russ Columbo, was an American singer, violinist and actor, most famous for his signature tune, "You Call It Madness, But I Call It Love", his compositions "Prisoner of Love" and "Too Beautiful For Words", and the legend surrounding his early...
and performed with him in the George Jessel
George Jessel (actor)
George Albert Jessel was an American illustrated song "model," actor, singer, songwriter, and Academy Award-winning movie producer. He was famous in his lifetime as a multitalented comedic entertainer, achieving a level of recognition that transcended his limited roles in movies...
Variety Revue at The Schubert Theatre. After the premier of Negri's film A Woman Commands in Hollywood, Russ Columbo performed Negri's signature song "Paradise" with his orchestra, and dedicated the song to Negri. Columbo also recorded and released the song as a 78 rpm single that year with slightly altered lyrics, and the single became a huge sensation with audiences across the country.
Negri was close friends with actresses Mae Murray
Mae Murray
Mae Murray was an American actress, dancer, film producer, and screenwriter. Murray rose to fame during the silent film era and was known as "The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips" and "The Gardenia of the Screen"....
and Marion Davies
Marion Davies
Marion Davies was an American film actress. Davies is best remembered for her relationship with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, as her high-profile social life often obscured her professional career....
, and in fact was sister-in-law to Murray for a time, who was married to David Mdivani, brother to Negri's husband Serge Mdivani. Davies allowed Negri to live in her bungalow when Negri initially emigrated back to California in the 1940s.
Retirement and later years
After Negri retired from films, she became close friends with Margaret West, an oil heiress and vaudeville actress the she had originally met in the 1930s. The two became housemates, and moved from Los Angeles to San Antonio, Texas, in 1957. Negri would live with West until the latter's death in 1963. Negri became a naturalized citizen of the United States on January 12, 1951.In 1948, director Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
approached Negri to appear as Norma Desmond in the film Sunset Boulevard (1950), after Mae Murray
Mae Murray
Mae Murray was an American actress, dancer, film producer, and screenwriter. Murray rose to fame during the silent film era and was known as "The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips" and "The Gardenia of the Screen"....
, Mae West
Mae West
Mae West was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades....
, and Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
declined the role. Negri also declined the role because she felt that the screenplay was not ready and that Montgomery Clift
Montgomery Clift
Edward Montgomery Clift was an American film and stage actor. The New York Times’ obituary noted his portrayal of "moody, sensitive young men"....
, who was slated to play the Joe Gillis character at the time, was not a good choice for the character. The role of Joe Gillis eventually went to William Holden
William Holden
William Holden was an American actor. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1954 and the Emmy Award for Best Actor in 1974...
, and Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson was an American actress, singer and producer. She was one of the most prominent stars during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille, made dozens of silents and was nominated for the first Academy Award in the...
, Negri's former "rival" at Paramount, accepted the Norma Desmond role.
Negri came out of retirement once to appear in the Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
film The Moon-Spinners
The Moon-Spinners
The Moon-Spinners is a 1964 American Walt Disney Productions feature film starring Hayley Mills in a story about a jewel thief hiding on the island of Crete. The film was based upon a suspense novel by Mary Stewart and was directed by James Neilson...
(1964), which starred Hayley Mills
Hayley Mills
Hayley Mills is an English actress. The daughter of John Mills and Mary Hayley Bell, and sister of actress Juliet Mills, Mills began her acting career as a child and was hailed as a promising newcomer, winning the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer for Tiger Bay , the Academy Juvenile Award...
and Eli Wallach
Eli Wallach
Eli Herschel Wallach is an American film, television and stage actor, who gained fame in the late 1950s. For his performance in Baby Doll he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and a Golden Globe nomination. One of his most famous roles is that of Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...
. Negri's appearance in the film as eccentric jewel collector Madame Habib was shot over the course of two weeks. During the time that Negri was filming The Moon-Spinners in London, she made a sensation by appearing before the London press at her hotel in the company of a feisty cheetah on a steel chain leash.
After West's death, Negri moved out of the home she had shared with West into a townhome located at 7707 Broadway in San Antonio. She spent the remainder of her years there, largely out of the public eye. In 1964, Negri received an honorary award from the German film industry for her film work, followed by a Hemis-Film award in San Antonio in 1968. In 1970 she published her autobiography, Memoirs of a Star, which was published by Doubleday.
Negri made an appearance at The Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
on April 30, 1970, for a screening event in her honor, which featured her film A Woman of the World (1925) and selections from her films. Negri was also guest of honor at a 1972 screening of Carmen held at the Witte Museum
Witte Museum
The Witte Museum, established in 1926 under the charter of the San Antonio Museum Association, is located adjacent to Brackenridge Park in San Antonio, Texas, on the banks of the source of the San Antonio River. It is dedicated to the history, science, and culture of the region. Nearby is the San...
in San Antonio.
In 1975, director Vincente Minnelli
Vincente Minnelli
Vincente Minnelli was an American stage director and film director, famous for directing such classic movie musicals as Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris. In addition to having directed some of the most famous and well-remembered musicals of his time, Minnelli made...
approached Negri to appear as the Contessa Sanziani in his film A Matter of Time
A Matter of Time (1976 film)
A Matter of Time is a 1976 American/Italian musical fantasy film directed by Vincente Minnelli. The screenplay by John Gay is based on the novel Film of Memory by Maurice Druon...
, but Negri was unable to accept the part due to poor health. The role ended up going to Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...
instead.
In 1978, Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
directed the film Fedora
Fedora (film)
Fedora is a 1978 American drama film directed by Billy Wilder. The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is based on a novella by Tom Tryon included in his collection Crowned Heads, published in 1976.-Plot:...
; although Negri does not appear in the film, the title character is based largely on her.
Negri's final high-profile coverage in her lifetime was for a "Where Are They Now?" feature on silent film stars, which appeared in Life magazine in 1980.
Death and legacy
Pola Negri died on 1 August 1987, at the age of 90. Her death was caused by pneumoniaPneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
, however she was also suffering from a brain tumor
Brain tumor
A brain tumor is an intracranial solid neoplasm, a tumor within the brain or the central spinal canal.Brain tumors include all tumors inside the cranium or in the central spinal canal...
(for which she had refused treatment). At her wake at the Porter Loring Funeral Home in San Antonio, her body was placed on view wearing a yellow golden chiffon dress with a golden turban to match. Negri's death received extensive coverage in her hometown newspapers San Antonio Light, and San Antonio Express-News, and in publications such as Los Angeles Times New York Times, and Variety magazine.
Negri was interred in Calvary Cemetery, East Los Angeles
Calvary Cemetery, East Los Angeles
The Calvary Cemetery is a Roman Catholic cemetery operated by the Los Angeles Archdiocese, located at 4201 Whittier Boulevard in Los Angeles, California...
next to her mother, Eleonora. Since she had no children, she left most of her estate to St. Mary's University
St. Mary's University, Texas
St. Mary's University is a Catholic and Marianist liberal arts institution located on northwest of downtown San Antonio, Texas, United States. St. Mary’s is a nationally recognized master’s level school ranked among the top colleges in the west for best value and academic reputation by U.S. News...
in Texas, including several rare prints of her films. In addition, a generous portion of her estate was given to the Polish nuns of the Seraphic Order; a large black and white portrait hangs in the small chapel next to Poland's patron, Our Lady of Częstochowa
Czestochowa
Częstochowa is a city in south Poland on the Warta River with 240,027 inhabitants . It has been situated in the Silesian Voivodeship since 1999, and was previously the capital of Częstochowa Voivodeship...
, in San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States of America and the second-largest city within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011,...
.
Pola Negri donated her collection of memorabilia to St. Mary's University in San Antonio, who also set up a scholarship in her name. The Polish Film Festival of Los Angeles remembers Negri with a Pola Negri Award given to outstanding film artists, and the Pola Negri Museum in Lipno gives a Polita award for outstanding artist achievement.
Pola Negri has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
for her contribution to Motion Pictures at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard. She was the 11th star in Hollywood history to place her hand and foot prints in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre
Grauman's Chinese Theatre
Grauman's Chinese Theatre is a movie theater at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. It is on the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame.The Chinese Theatre was commissioned following the success of the nearby Grauman's Egyptian Theatre which opened in 1922...
. She has also received, along with Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."...
, a star in Poland's Walk of Fame in Łódź. The Polish post office issued a Stamp honoring Negri in 1996.
In 2006, a feature-length documentary about Negri's life, directed by Mariusz Kotowski
Mariusz Kotowski
Mariusz Kotowski is a Polish-born film director and producer. He has gained a reputation for cinematic portrayals that are atypical of both Hollywood and independent film styles and that cleverly mix different film approaches into a cohesive whole....
and entitled Pola Negri: Life is a Dream in Cinema
Pola Negri: Life is a Dream in Cinema
Pola Negri: Life is a Dream in Cinema is a feature-length biographical documentary film by Polish-American director Mariusz Kotowski released in 2006...
, premiered at the Seventh Annual Polish Film Festival of Los Angeles. The documentary is notable for its in-depth interviews with film stars Hayley Mills
Hayley Mills
Hayley Mills is an English actress. The daughter of John Mills and Mary Hayley Bell, and sister of actress Juliet Mills, Mills began her acting career as a child and was hailed as a promising newcomer, winning the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer for Tiger Bay , the Academy Juvenile Award...
and Eli Wallach
Eli Wallach
Eli Herschel Wallach is an American film, television and stage actor, who gained fame in the late 1950s. For his performance in Baby Doll he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and a Golden Globe nomination. One of his most famous roles is that of Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...
, who were starring actress and supporting actor respectively in the Walt Disney film
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
The Moon-Spinners
The Moon-Spinners
The Moon-Spinners is a 1964 American Walt Disney Productions feature film starring Hayley Mills in a story about a jewel thief hiding on the island of Crete. The film was based upon a suspense novel by Mary Stewart and was directed by James Neilson...
(1964), Pola Negri's final film. Pola Negri: Life is a Dream in Cinema
Pola Negri: Life is a Dream in Cinema
Pola Negri: Life is a Dream in Cinema is a feature-length biographical documentary film by Polish-American director Mariusz Kotowski released in 2006...
has played at Pola Negri retrospective screenings in The United States and Europe, most notably at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in New York and La Cinémathèque Française
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films from around the world.-History:...
in Paris. Kotowski also authored a Polish-language biography of Pola Negri entitled Pola Negri: Legenda Hollywood (English title: Pola Negri: Hollywood Legend), which was released in Poland on February 24, 2011, and produced a 3-DVD compilation of early Pola Negri films entitled Pola Negri, The Iconic Collection: The Early Years (2011).
Polish Period
| Year | Film | Director | Company | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1914 | Niewolnica zmysłow | Alexander Hertz | Sphinx Company | Alternate Titles: The Polish Dancer (US release title), Der Sklave der Sinne, Slave of Sin Poland's first feature film |
| 1915 | Żona | Alexander Hertz | Sphinx Company | English title translation: Wife |
| 1915 | Czarna ksiązka | Alexander Hertz | Sphinx Company | English title translation: The Yellow Pass An early version of Dear Gelbe Schein (The Yellow Ticket) |
| 1916 | Studenci | Alexander Hertz | Sphinx Company | English title translation: Students |
| 1916 | Bestia | Alexander Hertz | Sphinx Company | English title translation: Beast, Bad Girl |
| 1917 | Tajemnica alei Ujazdowskich | Alexander Hertz | Sphinx Company | English title translation: Mystery of Uyazdovsky Lane Part of the Tajemince Warszawy (Mysteries of Warsaw) serial. |
| 1917 | Pókoj Nr. 13 | Alexander Hertz | Sphinx Company | English title translation: Room #13 Part of the Tajemince Warszawy (Mysteries of Warsaw) serial. |
| 1917 | Arabella | Alexander Hertz | Sphinx Company | |
| 1917 | Jego ostatni czyn | Alexander Hertz | Sphinx Company | English title translation: His Last Gesture |
German Silent Period
| Year | Film | Director | Company | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1917 | Nicht lange täuschte mich das Glück | Kurt Matull? | Saturn-Film AG | Negri plays a dual supporting role as a nun and a cabaret dancer. |
| 1917 | Zügelloses Blut | ? | Saturn-Film AG | |
| 1917 | Küsse, die man stiehlt im Dunkeln | ? | Saturn-Film AG | |
| 1917 | Die toten Augen | ? | Saturn-Film AG | |
| 1917 | Wenn das Herz in Haß erglüht | Kurt Matull | Saturn-Film AG | English title translation: When the Heart Burns With Hate This film survives and has been shown at La Cinémathèque Francaise in Paris Paris Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region... , France France The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France... , and at the Museum of Cinematography in Łodz, Poland Poland Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north... . |
| 1918 | Rosen, die der Sturm entblättert | ? | Saturn-Film AG | |
| 1918 | Mania | Eugen Illés | UFA | Set design by Paul Leni Paul Leni Paul Leni born Paul Josef Levi was a German filmmaker and a key figure in German Expressionist filmmaking, making Backstairs and Waxworks in Germany, and The Cat and the Canary , The Chinese Parrot , The Man Who Laughs , and The Last Warning in... Full title: Mania, Die Geschichte einer Zigarettenarbeiterin (Mania: The Story of a Cigarette Girl). |
| 1918 | Die Augen der Mumie Mâ | Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his... |
UFA | Co-stars: Harry Leidtke, Emil Jannings Emil Jannings Emil Jannings was a German actor. He was not only the first actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, but also the first person to be presented an Oscar... Alternate title: The Eyes of the Mummy Ma (U.S. release) First Negri/Lubitsch collaboration |
| 1918 | Der gelbe Schein | Victor Janson and Eugen Illés | UFA | Co-stars: Harry Liedtke, Victor Janson Alternate title: The Yellow Ticket |
| 1918 | Carmen | Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his... |
UFA | Co-star: Harry Liedtke Alternate title: Gypsy Blood (U.S. release) |
| 1919 | Das Karussell des Lebens | Georg Jacoby | UFA | Co-star: Harry Leidtke English title translation: The Carousel of Life; Alternate title: The Last Payment (U.S. release) |
| 1919 | Vendetta | Georg Jacoby | UFA | Co-stars: Emil Jannings Emil Jannings Emil Jannings was a German actor. He was not only the first actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, but also the first person to be presented an Oscar... , Harry Liedtke Alternate title: Blutrache (Blood Revenge) |
| 1919 | Dämmerung des Todes | Georg Jacoby | UFA | |
| 1919 | Kreuziget sie! | Georg Jacoby | UFA | Co-stars: Harry Liedtke, Victor Janson |
| 1919 | Madame Dubarry Madame Du Barry (1919 film) Madame Du Barry was a 1919 German silent film on the life of Madame Du Barry. It was directed by Ernst Lubitsch, written by Norbert Falk and Hanns Kräly and its cast included Alexander Ekert, with the title role taken by Pola Negri and Louis XV played by Emil Jannings.... |
Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his... |
UFA | Co-stars: Emil Jannings, Harry Liedtke Alternate title: Passion (U.S. release) |
| 1919 | Komtesse Doddy | Georg Jacoby | UFA | Co-stars: Harry Liedtke, Victor Janson Alternate title: Komtesse Dolly |
| 1920 | Die Marchesa d'Arminiani | Alfred Halm | UFA | English title translation: The Marquise of Armiani |
| 1920 | Sumurun Sumurun Sumurun is a 1920 German silent film directed by Ernst Lubitsch.- Cast :*Paul Wegener as the Old Sheikh*Carl Clewing as the Young Sheikh*Jenny Hasseqvist as Sumurun*Aud Egede Nissen as Haidee, a Servant... |
Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his... |
UFA | Co-stars: Ernst Lubitsch, Paul Wegener, Harry Liedtke, Jenny Hasselqvist Alternate title: One Arabian night (U.S. release) A film remake of the Max Reinhardt Max Reinhardt ----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:... theater production, which also featured Negri and Lubitsch in the same respective roles, this is the only time the two appeared on screen together and is the last time the Lubitsch would appear on-screen as an actor. |
| 1920 | Das Martyrium | Paul Ludwig Stein | UFA | |
| 1920 | Die geschlossene Kette | Paul Ludwig Stein | UFA | English title translation: The Closed Chain; Alternate title: Intrigue (U.S. release) |
| 1920 | Arme Violetta | Paul Ludwig Stein | UFA | |
| 1921 | Die Bergkatze The Wild Cat (1921 film) The Wild Cat is a 1921 German silent comedy film directed by Ernst Lubitsch.- Cast :*Victor Janson as commander of Fort Tossenstein*Marge Köhler as his wife*Edith Meller as Lilli, their daughter... |
Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his... |
UFA | Co-stars: Victor Janson, Paul Heidemann English title translation: The Mountain Cat; Alternate title: The Wildcat A German Expressionist comedy and parody of the Expressionist film genre. |
| 1921 | Sappho | Dimitri Buchowetzki Dimitri Buchowetzki Dimitri Buchowetzki was a Russian film director, screenwriter and actor.-Selected filmography:Director* Lily of the Dust * The Swan * Valencia * The Crown of Lies... |
UFA | Co-stars: Alfred Abel Alfred Abel Alfred Abel was a German film actor, director, and producer. He appeared in over 140 silent and sound films between 1913 and 1938... , Johannes Riemann Alternate title: Mad Love (U.S. release) |
| 1922 | Die Flamme | Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his... |
Ernst Lubitsch Film GmbH | Co-stars: Alfred Abel Alfred Abel Alfred Abel was a German film actor, director, and producer. He appeared in over 140 silent and sound films between 1913 and 1938... , Hermann Thimig Alternate title: Montmarte (U.S. Release) Ernst Lubitsch's Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his... final German film. |
Paramount Period
| Year | Film | Director | Company | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1923 | Bella Donna | George Fitzmaurice George Fitzmaurice George Fitzmaurice was a film director and producer. Fitzmaurice's career first started as a set designer on stage... |
Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount | Co-stars: Conway Tearle, Conrad Nagel Conrad Nagel Conrad Nagel was an American screen actor and matinee idol of the silent film era and beyond. He was also a well-known television actor and radio performer.-Biography:... , Adolphe Menjou Adolphe Menjou Adolphe Jean Menjou was an American actor. His career spanned both silent films and talkies, appearing in such films as The Sheik, A Woman of Paris, Morocco, and A Star is Born... Remake of the 1915 film starring Pauline Frederick Pauline Frederick Pauline Frederick was a leading Broadway actress who later became known for her motion picture work.-Early years:... . |
| 1923 | The Cheat | George Fitzmaurice George Fitzmaurice George Fitzmaurice was a film director and producer. Fitzmaurice's career first started as a set designer on stage... |
Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount | Co-stars: Jack Holt Jack Holt Jack Holt may refer to:*Jack Holt *Jack Holt *Jack Holt , Australian horse racing trainer*Jack Holt, character in Outcasts... , Charles de Roche Remake of the 1915 film The Cheat The Cheat (film) The Cheat is a drama film directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Fannie Ward, Sessue Hayakawa, and Jack Dean, Ward's real-life husband. The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.-Plot:... starring Fannie Ward Fannie Ward Fannie Ward was an American actress of stage and screen, known for comedic roles as well as The Cheat, a sexually–charged 1915 silent film directed by Cecil B. DeMille.... and Sessue Hayakawa Sessue Hayakawa was a Japanese and American Issei actor who starred in American, Japanese, French, German, and British films. Hayakawa was the first and one of the few Asian actors to find stardom in the United States as well as Europe. Between the mid-1910s and the late 1920s, he was as well known as actors... . |
| 1923 | Hollywood Hollywood (1923 film) Hollywood was a silent comedy film directed by James Cruze, co-written by Frank Condon and Thomas J. Geraghty, and released by Paramount Pictures.The film has become famous as having featured cameos of more than thirty famous Hollywood stars... |
James Cruze James Cruze James Cruze was a silent film actor and film director.-Life:Cruze was born as Jens Vera Cruz Bosen. The Vera Cruz middle name came from the battle of Vera Cruz. He was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but did not practice the religion after his teenage years... |
Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount | Negri plays a cameo role in this film, which features guest appearances from many other Hollywood stars from the period. |
| 1923 | The Spanish Dancer The Spanish Dancer (1923 film) The Spanish Dancer is a 1923 silent costume epic starring Pola Negri as a gypsy fortune teller, Antonio Moreno as a romantic count, and Wallace Beery as the king of Spain... |
Herbert Brenon | Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount | Co-stars: Antonio Moreno Antonio Moreno Antonio "Tony" Moreno was a notable Spanish-born American actor and film director of the silent film era and through the 1950s.- Biography :... , Wallace Beery Wallace Beery Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, as Long John Silver in Treasure Island, as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa!, and his titular role in The Champ, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor... , Adolphe Menjou Adolphe Menjou Adolphe Jean Menjou was an American actor. His career spanned both silent films and talkies, appearing in such films as The Sheik, A Woman of Paris, Morocco, and A Star is Born... |
| 1924 | Shadows of Paris | Herbert Brenon | Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount | Co-stars: Charles de Roche, Adolphe Menjou Adolphe Menjou Adolphe Jean Menjou was an American actor. His career spanned both silent films and talkies, appearing in such films as The Sheik, A Woman of Paris, Morocco, and A Star is Born... , George O’Brien |
| 1924 | Men | Dimitri Buchowetzki Dimitri Buchowetzki Dimitri Buchowetzki was a Russian film director, screenwriter and actor.-Selected filmography:Director* Lily of the Dust * The Swan * Valencia * The Crown of Lies... |
Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount | |
| 1924 | Lily of the Dust Lily of the Dust Lily of the Dust is a 1924 silent drama film produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. This movie is based on the novel Das Hohe Lied by Hermann Sudermann and it's spawn, the Broadway play The Song of Songs by Edward Sheldon. It is a remake of a previous silent film... |
Dimitri Buchowetzki Dimitri Buchowetzki Dimitri Buchowetzki was a Russian film director, screenwriter and actor.-Selected filmography:Director* Lily of the Dust * The Swan * Valencia * The Crown of Lies... |
Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount | Co-stars: Ben Lyon Ben Lyon Ben Lyon was an American film actor and a 20th Century Fox studio executive.-Life:Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Lyon entered films in 1918 after a successful appearance on Broadway opposite Jeanne Eagels. He attracted attention in the highly successful film Flaming Youth , and steadily developed into... , Noah Beery, Raymond Griffith Raymond Griffith Raymond Griffith was one of the great silent movie comedians.Griffith was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He lost his voice at an early age, causing him to speak for the rest of his life in a hoarse whisper... |
| 1924 | Forbidden Paradise Forbidden Paradise Forbidden Paradise is a 1924 American silent drama film produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by German film director Ernst Lubitsch, a recent immigrant to the United States. The film is based on a 1922 Broadway play, The Czarina, by Edward Sheldon... |
Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his... |
Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount | Co-stars: Rod La Rocque Rod La Rocque -Biography:He was born Roderick La Rocque in Chicago, Illinois. He began appearing in stock theater at the age of seven and eventually ended up at the Essanay Studios in Chicago where he found steady work until the studios closed. He then moved to New York City and worked on the stage until he was... , Adolphe Menjou Adolphe Menjou Adolphe Jean Menjou was an American actor. His career spanned both silent films and talkies, appearing in such films as The Sheik, A Woman of Paris, Morocco, and A Star is Born... , Pauline Starke Pauline Starke Pauline Starke was an American silent-film actress born in Joplin, Missouri.She made her acting debut appearing as a dance extra in D.W. Griffith's film Intolerance... , Clark Gable Clark Gable William Clark Gable , known as Clark Gable, was an American film actor most famous for his role as Rhett Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh... (in a bit role). Only American Lubitsch/Negri collaboration and their final film together |
| 1925 | East of Suez | Raoul Walsh Raoul Walsh Raoul Walsh was an American film director, actor, founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the brother of silent screen actor George Walsh... |
Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount | Co-stars: Edmund Lowe Edmund Lowe Edmund Dantes Lowe was an American actor. His formative experience began in vaudeville and silent film. He was born in San Jose, California.-Film career:... , Noah Beery Negri's only film directed by Raoul Walsh Raoul Walsh Raoul Walsh was an American film director, actor, founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the brother of silent screen actor George Walsh... |
| 1925 | The Charmer | Sidney Olcott | Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount | |
| 1925 | Flower of the Night | Paul Bern | Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount | Co-stars: Warner Oland Warner Oland Warner Oland was a Swedish American actor most remembered for his screen role as the detective Charlie Chan.-Biography:He was born Johan Verner Ölund in the village of Nyby, Bjurholm Municipality,... , Gustav von Seyffertitz Gustav von Seyffertitz Gustav von Seyffertitz was a German film actor and director. He appeared in 118 films between 1917 and 1939.He was born in Haimhausen, Bavaria and died in Los Angeles, California, aged 81.-Selected filmography:... |
| 1925 | A Woman of the World A Woman of the World A Woman of the World is a 1925 silent drama starring Pola Negri. It was directed by Mal St. Clair, produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by their parent company Paramount Pictures.-Synopsis:... |
Malcom St. Clair Malcolm St. Clair (filmmaker) Malcolm St. Clair was a Hollywood film director, writer, producer and actor, he was sometimes credited as Mal St Clair. A disciple of Mack Sennett, St. Clair was an actor in many films primarily comedies. At 6'7" he can be seen in such Sennett films as Yankee Doodle in Berlin, towering over the... |
Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount | Co-stars: Charles Emmett Mack Charles Emmett Mack Charles Emmett Mack , was an American film actor during the silent film era. He appeared in 17 films between 1916 and 1927. Born Charles Emmett McNerney in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Mack was a protégé of pioneering film director D. W... , Holmes Herbert Holmes Herbert Holmes Herbert was an English character actor who appeared in Hollywood films from 1915 to 1952.Born as 'Horace Jenner', Holmes Herbert emigrated to the United States in 1912. He was the first son of Ned Herbert , who worked as and actor/comedian in the English Theatre... , Chester Conklin Chester Conklin Chester Cooper Conklin was an American comedian and actor. He appeared in over 280 films, about half of them in the silent era.-Early life:... |
| 1925 | The Crown of Lies | Dimitri Buchowetzki Dimitri Buchowetzki Dimitri Buchowetzki was a Russian film director, screenwriter and actor.-Selected filmography:Director* Lily of the Dust * The Swan * Valencia * The Crown of Lies... |
Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount | |
| 1926 | Good and Naughty Good and Naughty (film) Good and Naughty is an American silent film directed by Malcolm St. Clair and starring Pola Negri and Tom Moore. It was based on the play Naughty Cinderella by Henry Falk René Peter... |
Malcom St. Clair Malcolm St. Clair (filmmaker) Malcolm St. Clair was a Hollywood film director, writer, producer and actor, he was sometimes credited as Mal St Clair. A disciple of Mack Sennett, St. Clair was an actor in many films primarily comedies. At 6'7" he can be seen in such Sennett films as Yankee Doodle in Berlin, towering over the... |
Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount | co-stars: Ford Sterling Ford Sterling Ford Sterling was an American comedian and actor best known for his work with Keystone Studios. One of the 'Big 4' he was the original chief of the Keystone Cops.-Biography:... , Miss Du Pont |
| 1927 | Hotel Imperial Hotel Imperial (film) Hotel Imperial is a 1927 American silent film directed by Mauritz Stiller, set in World War I and starring Pola Negri as a hotel chambermaid... |
Mauritz Stiller Mauritz Stiller Mauritz Stiller was a Finnish-Swedish actor, screenwriter and silent film director, who was mostly active in Sweden.-Life:... |
Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount | Co-stars: James Hall James Hall -Actors, Entertainment, Broadcasting:* James Hall , American actor* Jamie Hall , Canadian TV producer-Authors:* James Hall , American academic* James Baker Hall , American author... , George Siegmann, Max Davidson |
| 1927 | Barbed Wire | Rowland V. Lee Rowland V. Lee Rowland Vance Lee was a U.S. film director, writer, and producer.... , Mauritz Stiller Mauritz Stiller Mauritz Stiller was a Finnish-Swedish actor, screenwriter and silent film director, who was mostly active in Sweden.-Life:... |
Paramount | Co-stars: Clive Brook, Einer Hanson, Gustav von Seyffertitz Gustav von Seyffertitz Gustav von Seyffertitz was a German film actor and director. He appeared in 118 films between 1917 and 1939.He was born in Haimhausen, Bavaria and died in Los Angeles, California, aged 81.-Selected filmography:... Mauritz Stiller Mauritz Stiller Mauritz Stiller was a Finnish-Swedish actor, screenwriter and silent film director, who was mostly active in Sweden.-Life:... started the film, but was replaced with Rowland V. Lee early on in the film |
| 1927 | The Woman On Trial | Mauritz Stiller Mauritz Stiller Mauritz Stiller was a Finnish-Swedish actor, screenwriter and silent film director, who was mostly active in Sweden.-Life:... |
Paramount | |
| 1928 | The Secret Hour | Rowland V. Lee | Paramount | |
| 1928 | Three Sinners Three Sinners Three Sinners is a 1928 silent film directed by Rowland V. Lee and starring Pola Negri and co-starring Warner Baxter, Olga Baclanova and Paul Lukas. the film was produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It is based on a play Das Zweite Leben by Rudolf Bernauer and... |
Rowland V. Lee Rowland V. Lee Rowland Vance Lee was a U.S. film director, writer, and producer.... |
Paramount | Co-stars: Warner Baxter Warner Baxter Warner Leroy Baxter was an American actor, known for his role as The Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona , for which he won the second Academy Award for Best Actor in the 1928–1929 Academy Awards. Warner Baxter started his movie career in silent movies... , Paul Lukas Paul Lukas Paul Lukas was an Austrian-Hungarian-born actor.-Biography:Born Pál Lukács in Budapest, he arrived in Hollywood in 1927 after a successful stage and film career in Hungary, Germany and Austria where he worked with Max Reinhardt. He made his stage debut in Budapest in 1916 and his film debut in 1917... , Olga Baclanova Olga Baclanova Olga Vladimirovna Baclanova, or Baklanova, was a Russian-born actress, who achieved prominence during the silent film era. She was billed as the Russian Tigress and remains most noted by modern audiences for portraying the leading lady in Tod Browning's unique horror movie Freaks , which features... |
| 1928 | Loves of an Actress | Ludwig Berger Ludwig Berger (director) Ludwig Berger was a German film director, screenwriter and cinematographer. He directed 36 films between 1920 and 1969... |
Paramount | Co-stars: Nils Asther, Paul Lukas Silent film with soundtrack |
| 1928 | The Woman From Moscow | Ludwig Berger | Paramount | Co-stars: Norman Kerry Norman Kerry Norman Kerry was an American actor whose career spanned over twenty-five years in the motion picture industry beginning in the silent era at the end of World War I.-Biography:... , Paul Lukas, Otto Matiesen Alternate title: Rachel Silent film with soundtrack |
International Period (Includes German Sound Period)
| Year | Film | Director | Company | Country | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1929 | The Woman He Scorned | Paul Czinner Paul Czinner Paul Czinner was a writer, film director, and producer.Czinner was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary. After studying literature and philosophy at the University of Vienna, he worked as a journalist. From 1919 onward, he dedicated himself to work for the filming industry as writer, director and... |
Charles Whittaker Productions UK (Distributed By Warners UK) | United Kingdom United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages... |
Co-stars: Hans Rehmann, Warwick Ward Alternate Titles: The Way of Lost Souls, Street of Abandoned Children Silent film with soundtrack. Pola Negri's final silent film. |
| 1932 | A Woman Commands | George Fitzmaurice | RKO | USA | Co-stars: Basil Rathbone Basil Rathbone Sir Basil Rathbone, KBE, MC, Kt was an English actor. He rose to prominence in England as a Shakespearean stage actor and went on to appear in over 70 films, primarily costume dramas, swashbucklers, and, occasionally, horror films... , Roland Young Roland Young Roland Young was an English actor.-Early life and career:Born in London, England, Young was educated at Sherborne School, Dorset and the University of London before being accepted into Royal Academy of Dramatic Art... , H.B. Warner Alternate title: Maria Draga Negri's first sound film; features the songs “Paradise”, “I Wanna Be Kissed”, “Promise You Will Remember Me”. “Paradise” was a major hit and a went on to become a standard for many years; it was covered by Russ Colombo and Louis Prima Louis Prima Louis Prima was a Sicilian American singer, actor, songwriter, and trumpeter. Prima rode the musical trends of his time, starting with his seven-piece New Orleans style jazz band in the 1920s, then successively leading a swing combo in the 1930s, a big band in the 1940s, a Vegas lounge act in the... , featured in the television show Adventures in Paradise, and used as soundtrack music for other films from the time. |
| 1934 | Fanatisme | Tony Lekain, Gaston Ravel | Pathé | France France The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France... |
Negri's only French film; features her singing three songs |
| 1935 | Mazurka Mazurka (film) Mazurka is a 1935 German drama film directed by Willi Forst and starring Pola Negri, Albrecht Schoenhals and Ingeborg Theek. A woman is put on trial for murdering a dancer who ruined her marriage. It takes its name from The Mazurka.-Cast:... |
Willi Forst | Cine-Allianz/Tobis-Klangfilm | Germany Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate... |
Co-stars: Ingeborg Theek, Paul Hartmann, Albrecht Schoenhals Features the songs “Je sens en moi”, “Mazurka”, and “Nur Eine Stunde”. Remade in 1937 by Warner Brothers as Confession starring Kay Francis Kay Francis Kay Francis was an American stage and film actress. After a brief period on Broadway in the late 1920s, she moved to film and achieved her greatest success between 1930 and 1936, when she was the number one female star at the Warner Brothers studio, and the highest paid American film actress... and directed by German director Joe May Joe May Joe May , born Julius Otto Mandl, was a film director and film producer born in Austria and one of the pioneers of German cinema.... |
| 1936 | Moskau-Shanghai | Paul Wegener Paul Wegener Paul Wegener was a German actor, writer and film director known for his pioneering role in German expressionist cinema.-Stage and early film career:... |
UFA | Germany Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate... |
Co-star: Gustav Diessl Alternate Titles: Von Moskau der Shanghai, Der Weg nach Shanghai, Begenung in Shanghai, Zwuischen Moskau und Shanghai Features the song "Mein Herz hat Heimweh..." |
| 1937 | Madame Bovary | Gerhard Lamprecht Gerhard Lamprecht Gerhard Lamprecht was a German film director and screenwriter. He directed 63 films between 1920 and 1958. He also wrote for 26 films between 1918 and 1958... |
UFA | Germany Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate... |
Pola Negri's only German sound film to be shown in the United States. |
| 1937 | Tango Notturno | Fritz Kirchoff | UFA | Germany Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate... |
Co-star: Albrecht Schoenhals Features the songs "Ich Hab an Dich Gedacht" and "Kommt das Glück nicht Heut? Dann kommt Es Morgen" |
| 1937 | Die fromme Lüge | Nunzio Malasomma | UFA | Germany Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate... |
Co-star: Hermann Braun |
| 1938 | Die Nacht der Entscheidung | Nunzio Malasomma | UFA | Germany Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate... |
Co-star: Iván Petrovich Features the songs "Siehst Du die Sterne am Himmel" and "Zeig' der Welt nicht Dein Herz" |
Last Films (USA)
| Year | Film | Director | Company | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1943 | Hi Diddle Diddle Hi Diddle Diddle Hi Diddle Diddle is a black-and-white American comedy film made in 1943 directed by Andrew L. Stone and starring Adolphe Menjou, Martha Scott, Dennis O'Keefe, June Havoc, Billie Burke, and Pola Negri.... |
Andrew L. Stone | Andrew L. Stone Productions (Distributed by United Artists) | Co-stars: Adolphe Menjou Adolphe Menjou Adolphe Jean Menjou was an American actor. His career spanned both silent films and talkies, appearing in such films as The Sheik, A Woman of Paris, Morocco, and A Star is Born... , Martha Scott Martha Scott Martha Ellen Scott was an American actress best known for her roles as mother of the lead character in numerous films and television shows.-Early life:... , Billie Burke Billie Burke Mary William Ethelbert Appleton "Billie" Burke was an American actress. She is primarily known to modern audiences as Glinda the Good Witch of the North in the musical film The Wizard of Oz. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as Emily Kilbourne in Merrily We Live... , Dennis O’Keefe, June Havoc June Havoc June Havoc was a Canadian-born American actress, dancer, writer, and theater director. Havoc was a child Vaudeville performer under the tutelage of her mother. She later acted on Broadway and in Hollywood and stage directed . She last appeared on television in 1990 on General Hospital... |
| 1964 | The Moon-Spinners The Moon-Spinners The Moon-Spinners is a 1964 American Walt Disney Productions feature film starring Hayley Mills in a story about a jewel thief hiding on the island of Crete. The film was based upon a suspense novel by Mary Stewart and was directed by James Neilson... |
James Nielson | Walt Disney Productions | Co-stars: Hayley Mills Hayley Mills Hayley Mills is an English actress. The daughter of John Mills and Mary Hayley Bell, and sister of actress Juliet Mills, Mills began her acting career as a child and was hailed as a promising newcomer, winning the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer for Tiger Bay , the Academy Juvenile Award... , Eli Wallach Eli Wallach Eli Herschel Wallach is an American film, television and stage actor, who gained fame in the late 1950s. For his performance in Baby Doll he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and a Golden Globe nomination. One of his most famous roles is that of Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly... |
Discography
Pola Negri released a total of ten 78 rpm singles. In 1931, she recorded seven gypsy folk songs in London accompanied by guitars and chorus, six of which were released as the sides of three records on Victor's His Master's Voice imprint. She recorded a French-language version of "Paradise" in Paris in 1933 with "Mes Nuits sont Morts" as its flip side. (Sheet music was released for the English-language version, but the recorded version only appeared in the 1932 film A Woman Commands and was never released as a record.) The remainder of Negri's recordings, cut from 1935 to 1938, centered around songs that she sang in her German sound films.| Matrix No. | Single No. | Label | Song Title | Time and Place of Recording | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OB-641 | HMV EK-114 | His Master's Voice | Ve Chantasni (The Hour of Longing) | Small Queen's Hall, London, March 12, 1931. | Accompanied by Boris Golovka and two others on guitar, with chorus. |
| OB-642 | HMV EK-114 | His Master's Voice | Sto nam gore? (Why Are You Sorry?) | same | same |
| OB-643 | (Not Released) | His Master's Voice | Os sho tass | same | same |
| OB-647 | HMV B-3820 | His Master's Voice | Ochye Tchornye (Dark Eyes) | Small Queen's Hall, London, March 13, 1931. | same |
| OB-648 | HMV EK-115 | His Master's Voice | Why Fall in Love? | same | same |
| OB-649 | HMV B-3820 | His Master's Voice | Adieu (Farewell, My Gypsy Camp) | same | same |
| OB-650 | HMV EK-114 | His Master's Voice | Two Guitars (aka "Gyspy, Sing!") | same | same; dedicated to Pola Negri by Boris Golovka. |
| P 76523 | AP 989 | Ultraphone | Mes Nuits sont Mortes | Paris, July 1933. | |
| P 76524 | AP 989 | Ultraphone | Paradis | Paris, July 1933. | French language version of "Paradise"; A-side of single AP 989 |
| P Be 10937-3 | 0-4723 | Odéon | Je sans en moi | Berlin, April 8, 1935. | Song from the film Mazurka Mazurka (film) Mazurka is a 1935 German drama film directed by Willi Forst and starring Pola Negri, Albrecht Schoenhals and Ingeborg Theek. A woman is put on trial for murdering a dancer who ruined her marriage. It takes its name from The Mazurka.-Cast:... (1935); orchestra arr. by Peter Kreuder. |
| P Be 10938-3 | 0-4723 | Odéon | Nur eine Stunde | Berlin, April 8, 1935. | Song from the film Mazurka Mazurka (film) Mazurka is a 1935 German drama film directed by Willi Forst and starring Pola Negri, Albrecht Schoenhals and Ingeborg Theek. A woman is put on trial for murdering a dancer who ruined her marriage. It takes its name from The Mazurka.-Cast:... (1935); orchestra arr. by Peter Kreuder. |
| 128338 | R 2271 | Parlophone | For That One Hour | Berlin, c. early 1936. | English language version of "Nur eine Stunde." Original version from the film Mazurka Mazurka (film) Mazurka is a 1935 German drama film directed by Willi Forst and starring Pola Negri, Albrecht Schoenhals and Ingeborg Theek. A woman is put on trial for murdering a dancer who ruined her marriage. It takes its name from The Mazurka.-Cast:... . |
| 128397 | R 2271 | Parlophone | Stay Close to Me | Berlin, c. early 1936. | English language version of "Je sans en moi." Original version from the film Mazurka Mazurka (film) Mazurka is a 1935 German drama film directed by Willi Forst and starring Pola Negri, Albrecht Schoenhals and Ingeborg Theek. A woman is put on trial for murdering a dancer who ruined her marriage. It takes its name from The Mazurka.-Cast:... . |
| P Be 11241 | 0-4736 | Odéon | Vergiss deine Sehnsucht | Berlin, March 17, 1936. | Orchestra arranged by W. Schmidt-Boelcke. |
| P Be 11242 | 0-4736 | Odéon | Wenn die Sonne hinter den Dach Versinkt | Berlin, March 17, 1936. | Orchestra arranged by W. Schmidt-Boelcke. |
| P Be 11432-2 | 0-4742 | Odéon | Mein Herz hat Heimweh... | Berlin, September 2, 1936. | Song from the film Moskau-Shanghai (1936). Orchestra arranged by Hans-Otto Borgmann. |
| P Be 11433 | 0-4742 | Odéon | Ich Mochte Einmal nur mein ganzes Herz Verschwenden | Berlin, September 2, 1936. | Orchestra arranged by Hans-Otto Borgmann. |
| P Be 11891 | 0-4765 | Odéon | Ich hab an Dich Gedacht | Berlin, December 15, 1937. | Song from the film Tango Notturno (1937). Orchestra arranged by Hans-Otto Borgmann. |
| P Be 11892 | 0-4765 | Odéon | Kommt das Gluck nicht Heut? Dann kommt es Morgen | Berlin, December 15, 1937. | Song from the film Tango Notturno (1937). Orchestra arranged by Hans-Otto Borgmann. |
| P Be 12171 | 0 288233 | Odéon | Zeig der Welt nicht dein Herz | Berlin, December 30, 1938. | Song from the film Die Nacht der Entscheidung (1938). Orchestra arranged by Lothar Bruhne. |
| P Be 12172 | 0 288233 | Odéon | Siehst du die Sterne | Berlin, December 30, 1938. | Song from the film Die Nacht der Entscheidung (1938). Orchestra arranged by Lothar Bruhne. |
Additional references and Bibliography
- Barry, Iris. Let's Go to the Movies. Payson & Clarke, Ltd., 1926.
- Basinger, Jeanine. Silent Stars. Alfred a Knoff, 2000.
- Botham, Noel, and Peter Donnelly. Valentino: The Love God. Everest Books, Ltd., 1976.
- Cawthorne, Nigel. Sex Lives of the Hollywood Idols. Prion Books, Ltd., 1997.
- Chaplin, Charles. My Trip Abroad. Harper & Brothers, 1921.
- Clarke, David. Location: Cornwall. Bossiney Books, 1990.
- Guiles, Fred Lawrence. Marion Davies. McGraw-Hill, 1972.
- Hake, Sabine. Passions And Decptions: The Early Films of Ernest Lubitsch. Princeton University Press, 1992.
- Endres, Stacey, and Robert Cschman. Hollywood At Your Feet:The Story of the World-Famous Chinese Theatre. Pomegranate Press, 1992.
- Everson, William K. American Silent Film. Da Capo Press, 1998.
- Eyman, Scott. Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter in Paradise. Simon & Schuster, 1993.
- Keylin, Arleen, and Suri Fleischer. Hollywood Album. Arno Press, 1977.
- Kreimeier, Klaus. The UFA Story: A Story of Germany's Greatest Film Company 1918-1945. University of California Press, 1999.
- Lamparski, Richard. Whatever Became Of? Crown Publishers, Inc., 1967.
- Lanza, Joseph and Dennis Penna. Russ Columbo and the Crooner Mystique. Feral House, 2002.
- Oberfirst, Robert. Rudolph Valentino:The Man Behind The Myth. The Citadel Press, 1962.
- Parish, James Robert. The Hollywood Scandals. McGraw-Hill, 2004.
- Leider, Emily W. Dark Lover:The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino. Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 2003.
- Swanson, Gloria. Swanson On Swanson. Random House, 1980.
- Villecco, Tony. Silent Stars Speak. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2001.
- Zumaya, Evelyn, Affairs Valentino. The Rudolph Valentino Society and Publishing LLC, 2011. ISBN 978-0982770955
- (Polish/German) Legenda Kina: Pola Negri: Eine Kinilegende Muzeum Kinematografii w Lodzi, 2007.
- (Polish/English) Legenda Kina: Pola Negri: A Cinema Legend Muzeum Kinematografii w Lodzi, 2008.
- (Polish)
- (Polish) Jerzy Nowakowski "Boska Pola i inni" wyd. TO MY, Warszawa, 2005
- (Polish) Kotowski, Mariusz. Pola Negri: Legenda Hollywood. Proszynski Media, 2011.
External links
- Polanegri.com – The Pola Negri Appreciation Site
- Polanegri.pl – Homepage of Pola Negri Film Festival in Poland (pl.Polish languagePolish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
) - Pola Negri at Bright Shining City Productions
- Virtual History – Tobacco cards