Helen's Blog /

From April 7th, 2010 and for the next week, Cinematheque Francaise will host a retro of Pola Negri films.

The week of Pola Negri movies is part of an even longer three-month series entitled "Tournages: Berlin-Paris-Hollywood". Pola's week will run April 7-12, 2010, and will feature the recent 2006 Pola Negri documentary and thirteen Pola Negri movies from "Bestia " (1915) to "Tango Notturno " (1937).

Born Barbara Appolonia Chalupek in Janowa, Poland on December 31st, 1894, she witnessed her father, a furrier, being arrested by the Russians and sent to a Siberian prison camp, where he died.

Without any money, Pola, nevertheless planned on being a a ballerina, but lack of funds and poor health led her to act instead. Studying at the Warsaw Imperial Academy of Dramatic Arts she began acting in "Sodom's End", written by Herman Sudermann and then moved on to the Imperial Theater in Warsaw where Max Reinhardt discovered her.Her expressive eyes led to success in theatre and the silents.

At the time of the German occupation, she left for Germany to act in films for Ernst Lubitsch. Then on to Hollywood in 1922, where she became an exotic attraction to Americans on the movie screen in various flamboyant roles for Paramount.Her flambouyant personal life attracted attention to with her affairs with Charles Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino among others.

Among her films are "Madame DuBarry " (1919), "The Spanish Dancer " (1923), "Forbidden Paradise " (1924), "A Woman of the World " (1925), and "Hotel Imperial " (1927).

Unfortunately, her heavy accent, which clashed and her hemming in by the Hays Code, which did not leave her much scope as a vamp, coupled with the spectacle she made of herself at Valentino's funeral more or less, ended her American film career in one fell swoop.

Back in Europe a success was "The Woman He Scorned " (1929), in which Pola sang. Uncomfortable Nazis wooing, she decided to return to the USA.

There she acted in 1943 in "Hi Diddle Diddle " with Adolphe Menjou, and Disney's 1964's "The Moonspinners ", with Hayley Mills.

Somewhere in between, she managed to net one prince and two counts as hustands, divorcing two times.

After retiring, she spent a pleasant existance devoted to travelling, horses and poetry while documenting her work. Pola Negri died of pneumonia on August 1st, 1987 in San Antonio, Texas, over ninety years of age.