Born: December 31, 1895, Lipno, Russian partition of Poland (presently Poland)
Died: August 2, 1987, San Antonio, Texas, USA
Early days. Father- Jerzy , an immigrant from Slovakia of Slovak-Roma background, worked as a tinsmith, mother- Eleonora Kielczewska. Pola's father was arrested for participation in anti-Russian conspiracy and send to Siberia when she was a child. She and her mother moved to Warsaw, where she spent her childhood and early teens in poverty. In 1902, with the advice of neighbors, Helena and Jerzy Kosinski, Pola auditioned for and was accepted into the Imperial Ballet, where she was a promising ballerina until the threat of tuberculosis cut 1908 her career short. Desperate to avoid the poverty of her youth, under the guidance of her mother's friend, Kazimierz Hulewicz, she auditioned for and was accepted into the Warsaw Imperial Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Acting career: theater. By 15 she debuted in “Sluby Panienskie”(Maiden Vows) as Aniela. By 17, she was a star on the stage in Warsaw. Her triumphant debut as Hedwig in Ibsen's “The Wild Duck” brought her to the attention of the prestigious and daring Teatr Maly (Little Theater). After a brief stay, Pola moved on to Rozmaitosci, the national theater of Poland. Director Ryszard Ordynski worked in Berlin’s Deutsches Theater together with the famous experimenter Max Reinhardt. He came to Warsaw to stage Reinhardt’s pantomime „Sumurum”. Thanks to a role in it Negri gained fame.
Acting career: silent film. By now, Negri became a popular and well-known actress in Warsaw, but the outbreak of World War I left her and her mother in dire financial straits. By then Negri had signed with the Polish film company Sphinx, and starred on 25 December 1914 in her first motion picture role, “Niewolnica zmyslow” (Slave of Sin) where she had success in the role of the slave girl and already personified the vamp type which made her famous. She acted in eight Polish films but Wieslawa Czapinska, a researcher of Negri’s career claims that all those films were very naïve, without artistic merit even though her partners were outstanding Polish actors: Kazimierz Junosza-Stepowski, Jozef Wegrzyn and Wladyslaw Grabowski. In 1915 she starred in one last role for Sphinx, “Zolty paszport” (Yellow Pass). After some more Polish films she went thanks to Ordynski to Germany in 1917, and achieved there first glorious triumphs. UFA company signed a contract with Negri. During the years 1917-1922 she appeared in 23 German films. But after 1918 revolution in Germany the nationalists started getting the upper hand. The daily rightwing newspaper "Berliner Volkszeitung" wrote: „German film must contribute to supporting everywhere abroad the understanding for German economy and culture and destroy the erroneous conviction of the predominance of the Romance and English culture.” In one of the scenes of the film “The Wild Cat” Negri slaps in the face one of the Austrian officers. In 1921 during the opening night this scene outraged the audience. “A Slave can not slap Germans in the face- wrote the rightwing press- this lady has nothing has nothing to do here.” In 1919 she had a short-lived marriage to count Eugeniusz Dambski. In the same year Negri made her way to Hollywood through the German director Ernst Lubitsch, who staged her in the films “Madame DuBarry”, and “Gypsy Blood”. These films established her as a popular star in Europe, and eventually gained the attention of Paramount. In 1923, she signed a contract with Paramount, with a weekly salary of $3,000. Negri arrived to New York in January 1923. She was greeted by the chiefs of Paramount Jesse Lasky and Adolph Zukor. In Chicago Negri laid a wreath under a monument of Kosciuszko. Audiences loved her vamp roles, and soon, her salary was raised to $10,000. Paramount made her the star of celebrated films such as “Forbidden Paradise”(1924), recognized by the reviewers as one of the best films of 1924, and “Hotel Imperial” (1927). During the period 1923-1928 she earned 6 million dollars and became the wealthiest woman in Hollywood. She bought a palace in Normandy (France) where she had 20 servants. She learned foreign languages and knew six well. At the height of her stardom, she was considered a rival to the popular actress Gloria Swanson and at one time was supposedly even engaged to Charlie Chaplin and later to Rudolph Valentino. At Mr. Valentino's funeral she passed out and many thought it was a pretentious action that Negri used to attain attention. Even though her film “Barbed Wire” (1927) received good reviews, the funeral affected the potential this movie could've had on her acting career, and greatly damaged its box-office income.
Advent of sound movies. The biggest factor, however, that forever doomed Negri from Hollywood was the coming of sound films. By the late twenties, silent films were greatly in decline and talkies were replacing them. By this time, Negri had become so unpopular that Paramount refused to use her name in advertisement. Her thick European accent was also a great obstacle which Negri was never able to overcome. In 1927, she married the Georgian Prince Serge Mdivani, who she divorced in 1931. In 1928 they moved to her palace in Normandy. In 1929 she lost her fortune during the stock market. She had to sell her Normandy place and bought a modest villa on Cap Ferrat (near Nice). She made two films in France and England. but in 1935 she returned to Germany, again making films for UFA, now under the direction of the Nazis. In 1935 she was successful again in Germany with "Mazurka" produced by Arnold Pressburger ans Gregor Rabinowicz. This film was one of the most money making films in the III Reich. Hitler- Pola Negri’s great fan- was delighted with it. During the 1935-1938 period Negri made six movies in Germany, among those: "Madame Bovary" (1937), "Tango Notturno" (1937) and "Die Nacht der Entscheidung" (1938). In 1938 the UFA producers proposed Negri a scenario with anti_Polish tint. She refused. When the Germans occupied France Negri left for the USA. Her mother stayed in Cap Ferrat. After the war Negri brought her mother to USA. They sold the villa in France. In 1943 she made the movie “Hi Diddle Diddle” and became an American citizen in 1951. Her next and last movie was “The Moon-Spinners” (1964). She eventually retired from show business in 1964, living in San Antonio until her death. In 1973 Steven Spielberg asked her to act in his “Sugarland Express”. She refused:- „I appeared in 63 films that’s enough.” She donated her personal library to Trinity University in San Antonio and gave a large collection of memorabilia, including several rare prints of her early films, to St. Mary's University there. She also left a large portion of her estate to St. Mary's, which established a scholarship in her name. Negri also founded Our Lady of Czestochowa church in West Adams.
Sources.
Pola Negri Bella Donna
Spartacus
Cyranos
Pola Negri Apprteciation Site
Pola Negri (in Polish)
imdb-filmography
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