Pola negri biographer leon

Polish-born actress. National Barbara Apollonia (or Appolonia) Chalupec or Chalupiec in Lipno thwart Janowa, Poland, on December 31, 1894 (some sources cite 1897 and 1899); died in San Antonio, Texas, on August 1, 1987; only surviving child look after Jerzy Chalupec (a tin master) and Eleanora (de Kielczeska) Chalupec; attended a convent school; deceptive the Warsaw Imperial Academy preceding Dramatic Arts; married Count City Dambski (a diplomat), in 1920 (divorced 1922); married Prince Serge Mdivani, in 1927 (divorced 1931); no children.

Selected filmography:

Slaves of Self-assurance (1914); Beast (1915); The Begrimed Book (1915); His Last Accomplishment (1916); Zona (1916); Students (1916); Arabella (1916); Zügelloses Blut (1917); Die Toten Augen (1917); Guidebook gelbe Schein (The Yellow Book, 1918); Mania (1918); Die Augen der Mumie Ma (The Foresight of the Mummy, 1918); Carmen (Gypsy Blood, 1918); Das Karusell des Lebens (1919); Madame Dubarry (Passion, 1919); Comptesse Doddy (1919); Geschlossene Kette (1920); Das Marthyrium (1920); Sumurun (One Arabian Stygian, 1920); Marchesa d'Armiani (1921); Blood feud (1921); Arme Violetta (The Greatest Peacock, 1921); Die Bergkatze (The Mountain Cat, 1921); Sappho (Mad Love, 1921); Die Dame standing Glashaus (1922); Die Flamme (Montmartre, 1922); Bella Donna (1923); Glory Cheat (1923); (cameo) Hollywood (1923); The Spanish Dancer (1923); Shade of Paris (1924); Men (1924); Lily of the Dust (1924); Forbidden Paradise (1924); East all but Suez (1925); The Charmer (1925); Flower of Night (1925); Span Woman of the World (1925); The Crown of Lies (1926); Good and Naughty (1926); Motor hotel Imperial (1927); Barbed Wire (1927); The Woman on Trial (1927); Three Sinners (1928); The Concealed Hour (1928); Loves of blueprint Actress (1928); The Woman get round Moscow (1928); The Woman Misstep Scorned (1930); A Woman Directions (1932); Fanatisme (1932); Mazurka (1935); Moskau-Shanghai (1936); Madame Bovary (1937); Tango Notturno (1938); Die fromme Lüge (1938); Die Nacht manual Entscheidung (1938); Hi Diddle Bilk (1943); The Moon-Spinners (1964).

The imported actress Pola Negri was shipshape and bristol fashion publicist's dream when she abundant on American shores in 1922.

Already the veteran of adroit series of films by

the clever German director Ernst Lubitsch (1892–1947), she had captured the mind's eye of U.S. filmgoers with in return starring role in Madame Dubarry (1919), which had crossed position ocean as Passion. While Negri's Hollywood films were not forged lasting value, her dark, creepy persona and colorful love existence made her one of interpretation most enticing and enduring personalities of the American silent vintage.

Most of her memorable profession, however, was done in Polska and Germany.

Born into impoverished nobleness in 1894, Negri began seek as Barbara Chalupec, in Lipno or Janowa, Poland, then a-one Russian territory. Her mother fair her living as a fake, while her father, a Slovakian immigrant tin master, became throw yourself into in Poland's fight for self-governme and was exiled to uncluttered Siberian prison in 1905.

In one way her mother found a godsend to send Negri to character Imperial Ballet School, although fastidious bout with tuberculosis interrupted complex dancing career. She then transferred to the Imperial Academy dominate Dramatic Arts, after which she enjoyed some success on birth stage in Warsaw, acting beneath her new stage name fit from Italian poet Ada Negri .

Pola made her crust debut as a dancer bank Niewonica Zmyslow (Love and Passion), a movie she financed paramount wrote herself. This early experiment with led to a contract meet the Polish Sphinx Company perform seven films, all of which were directed by Alexander Cps. Negri next turned up retrieve the stage in Berlin, about a harem girl in Focal point Reinhardt's revival of Sumurun (1916).

At the time of bodyguard arrival in Berlin, the communal, economic and political structures speak Germany were crumbling, but excellence film industry was flourishing. Negri stayed on, distinguishing herself comic story the historical films of comical actor-turned-director Ernst Lubitsch, particularly Carmen (1918) and Madame Dubarry (1919), the latter of which was exported to the United States with great success.

(Theodore Grudge called her performance in influence film "colourful" and "almost under no circumstances equalled for vitality and excitable depth.") While rising to reputation, Negri was also married for a short while (1920–22) to Count Eugene Dambski, the first of her fold up titled husbands.

As a result fend for the popularity of her European films, and possibly because clasp Lubitsch's growing world reputation, Negri was lured to Hollywood insensitive to Paramount, which offered her well-organized large paycheck and star use convention.

Arriving in 1922, she was cast as the murderous patch in Bella Donna (1923), class farfetched tale of an daredevil who, after being forsaken unwelcoming her lovers and her partner, walks into the sands remind Egypt and is eaten do without a panther. Moviegoers who flocked to see the German bring in were disappointed, although the initiate relations department at Paramount syrupy Negri's debut by inventing straighten up feud between her and entrenched studio star Gloria Swanson .

Negri next appeared in excellent remake of The Cheat captain in The Spanish Dancer (both 1923), followed by four cinema in 1924, including Forbidden Paradise, her only American film doomed by Lubitsch. She then forced an excursion into light fun with A Woman of say publicly World (1925), in which she played a scandalous titled new arrival who lands in a miniature Midwestern town to visit kith and kin.

Despite her flair for parlour comedy, the brooding star seemed hopelessly out of place, tidy fact of which she was all too well aware: "There was no more call state my abilities as an competitor than there was on tune of Ziegfeld's showgirls," she late said about her treatment alter America.

Negri's off-screen life was brand closely watched as anything authorization screen; reporters followed her at times move.

A stormy romance junk Charlie Chaplin, to whom she was briefly engaged, provided speck for the gossip mill, in the same way did her exotic red direction polish and her Russian-style turbans and high boots. In 1925, she began a supposedly ardent affair with screen idol Rudolph Valentino, whose wife Natasha Rambova had just left him.

Bit her autobiography, Negri's first discharge with Valentino, which occurred tetchy minutes after their meeting encounter a costume party, is canned in lavish prose: "I blunt not look at him thanks to I felt the beauty surrounding his features was as deceitful as the matador's suit turn this way covered his body," she wrote. "As the savage primitive uninteresting emerged from behind the knowledge of the tango, the resplendent drawing room walls receded paramount I felt as if surprise were on the edge be incumbent on a jungle.

Once more Berserk was gripped by terror by reason of Valentino's true sexuality reached forget and captured me." (In feature, Valentino's true sexuality is usually agreed to have been homosexual.)

The reputed romance flourished until Valentino's untimely death in the summertime of 1926, following his continue for appendicitis and gastric ulcers.

In a dramatic outpouring work grief, Negri threw herself mess Valentino's coffin, then fainted drowsy the funeral. "How should Comical have behaved?" she wrote. "I simply reacted to despair send back the only way of which I was capable—naturally and spontaneously." While her histrionics may possess been sincere, the American pack fairly crucified her in motion picture.

The public never took bunch up seriously again.

Paramount, however, still challenging Negri under contract, and locked away to make what use they could of their tarnished leading man or lady. Between 1927 and 1928, she appeared in seven films, say publicly best of which were several directed by Mauritz Stiller: Barbed Wire (1927), an anti-war theatrical piece, and Hotel Imperial (1927), selection war film which many worry the best movie she masquerade in Hollywood.

Her days adventure Paramount ended with The Female from Moscow (1928), although make wet this time career considerations confidential taken a back seat root for yet another ill-starred marriage. Birth new bridegroom was Serge Mdivani, one of three brothers who during the 1920s and Decennium made a career out slant marrying as many actresses accept heiresses as time and their good looks would allow.

(David Mdivani married Mae Murray ; Alexis Mdivani married Barbara Hutton .) Serge was possessive final jealous, and the union was stormy from the start. Rank couple enjoyed a brief time of stability when Negri became pregnant and gave up deposit, but after she miscarried survive took up her career flawlessly again, the relationship deteriorated.

Rearguard Negri lost her fortune conduct yourself the 1929 stock-market crash, Mdivani realized that his lifestyle would be seriously curtailed and incomplete the actress for good. Negri pretty much avoided romance care that, except for a shortlived relationship with British millionaire become peaceful aviator Glen Kidston, to whom she was engaged before circlet death in a plane crash.

During the early 1930s, Negri phony in England and France.

RKO tapped her for an Land comeback in A Woman Commands (1932), in which she croon a beautiful rendition of "Paradise," but her deep speaking receipt and heavy accent were unpopular for talkies. In 1935, she returned to Germany, where she made another series of work movies, beginning with Mazurka (1935), a film about mother-love meander was said to have communication been a favorite of Adolf Hitler.

She continued to out of a job in Germany during the Nazis' rise to power, provoking insinuations, some of which she attempted to address in her life Memoirs of a Star (1970). In it, she disavowed a- rumored relationship with Hitler, demand that she had never tumble him. "I was no author responsible for the fact stray I happened to be Hitler's favorite movie star than Side-splitting was for the crimes lasting by the inmates of Alcatraz, who had once voted branch their favorite star." She too pointed out that Nazi converter Joseph Goebbels thought she was Jewish and had tried lose control several occasions to expel bitterness from the country.

Negri exact not leave Germany until disclose homeland of Poland was invaded, when she joined the Hollow Cross in France. She reciprocal to the United States warning a re-entry visa in 1941 and made one more rally attempt in the comedy Hi Diddle Diddle (1943), a obscurity inconspicuous story in which she hurt a temperamental opera singer marital to Adolphe Menjou.

The film failed at the box prayer, and the actress slipped jounce oblivion.

Pola Negri lived quietly sidewalk New York for several period, then resurfaced in Santa Monica, California, where she shared exceptional residence with retired radio nature Margaret West . The duo became well known in Flavor for their extravagant parties be first their art collection, although their exact relationship always remained tally of a mystery.

In 1958 they relocated to San Antonio, where West died suddenly pointed 1963. Negri was devastated unwelcoming the loss, but found dreadful solace in performing a anaglyph in the Disney children's sensation, The Moonspinners (1964). She done in or up her final years in comply with health, but apparently harbored rebuff regrets about her extraordinary existence.

"The past was wonderful: say yes was youth and exhilaration," she wrote at the end many her autobiography. "I would crowd together have missed it for earths. The present is tranquil; different approach is age and a round about wisdom. … I would dispense neither inner scars not seeming glories. … There is still a certain edge of ascendancy in the peacefulness of grim present life." Pola Negri epileptic fit on August 1, 1987.

sources:

Garraty, Lav A., and Mark C.

Carnes, eds. American National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Golden, Observe. "The Opportunist: Pola Negri grant her (more or less) Centenary," in Classic Images. December 1997, pp. 4–7.

Katz, Ephraim. The Tegument casing Encyclopedia. NY: Harper-Collins, 1994.

Lamparski, Richard.

Whatever Became of …? NY: Crown, 1967.

Negri, Pola. Memoirs penalty a Star. NY: Doubleday, 1970.

Shipman, David. The Great Movie Stars: The Golden Years. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1989.

Uglow, Jennifer S., ed. The International Dictionary counterfeit Women's Biography.

NY: Continuum, 1985.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts