Pola Negri

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Pola Negri (born Apolonia Chalupec, 3 January 1897 – 1 August 1987) was a Polish stage and film actress and singer who rose to international prominence in Hollywood and European film during the silent and golden eras of Hollywood and European cinema for her tragico and femme fatale roles. Negri's childhood was marked by many personal challenges: After her father was taken to Siberia, she was raised by her single mother in poverty, and she developed tuberculosis as a teenager.

Negri recovered and went on to study ballet and acting in Warsaw, becoming a well-known stage actor there.

She moved to Germany in 1917, where she first appeared in silent films for the Berlin-based UFA studio.

Hollywood executives at Paramount Pictures, who gave her a film contract, were attracted by her film appearances for UFA. In 1922, Negri became the first European actress to be signed in Hollywood.

She spent much of the 1920s in the United States, appearing in dozens of Paramount films, establishing herself as one of the most popular actresses in American silent film.

Negri returned to Europe in the 1930s, when sound film's debut, and she also started a career as a recording artist.

She made only two films after 1940, with her last film appearance in Walt Disney's The Moon-Spinners (1964). Negri spent her remaining years outside of the public sphere.

She became a naturalized US citizen in 1951 and spent the remainder of her life in San Antonio, Texas, where she died of pneumonia secondary to a brain tumor for which she refused treatment in 1987, age 90.

Early life

Negri was born in Lipno, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, on January 3rd, 1897, the sole living child (of three) of a Polish mother, Eleonora Kiewska (died 24 August 1954). According to Negri, her mother came from impoverished Polish nobility, and her family lost their fortune over her ardent support for Napoléon Bonaparte. Juraj Chalupec, the Negri's father (Polish transcription Jerzy Chapec or Chapupiec), died in 1920, was an itinerant Romani-Slovak tinsmith from Neslu'a. After her father was detained by the Russian authorities for revolutionary projects and sent to Siberia, she and her mother went to Warsaw, where they lived in poverty and their mother aided them by serving as a cook.

Chalupec was raised Catholic by her mother, who was a lifelong Catholic. Chalupec was accepted into the Imperial Ballet Academy in Warsaw as a child. In Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, she appeared in the danse des petits cygnes; she progressed to a solo role in the Saint-Léon ballet Coppélia. However, a bout of tuberculosis compelled her to stop dancing; she was later admitted to a sanatorium in Zakopane to recover. During her three-month convalescence, she adopted the pseudonym Pola Negri after Italian novelist and writer Ada Negri; "Pola" was short for her own name, Apolonia (sometimes spelled Apollonia).

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Career

After Negri's return from the sanatorium, she auditioned for the Warsaw Imperial Academy of Dramatic Arts. She took private classes outside with renowned Polish stage actress and professor Honorata Leszczyska alongside her formal training at the academy. On October 2nd 1912, she made her dramatic debut before her graduation at The Small Theatre in Warsaw.

She made her stage debut in 1913 in Warsaw, Germany, and then returned the following year in her first film, Niewolnica zmysiów. While finishing her studies at the academy, she continued to do well, graduating in 1914. Her graduating performance was as Hedwig in Ibsen's The Wild Duck, which resulted in invitations to join a number of Warsaw's most popular theatres.

Negri had established herself as a well-known stage actress by the time of World War I. She appeared at the Grand Theatre in Sumurun, as well as in the Small Theatre (Aleksander Fredro's luby panieskie), and at the Summer Theatre in the Saxon Garden. In 1914, she appeared in film in Slave to her Sens (Niewolnica zmysi). Bestia (Beast), which was released in the United States as The Polish Dancer), Room No. 91 she appeared in a number of Warsaw film productions, including Bestia (Beast), Room No. (Pokój 13) - His Last Gesture (Jego ostatni czyn), Education (Studenci), and The Wife (Pokój nr 13): 13 (Pokój nr 13) nr 13 (Pokój nr 13), Prussia (Kayn), 13 (Pokój nr 13), (British) and The Wife (Pokój n n) ni ni ni nr ni ot n)

Negri's fame in Poland gave her the opportunity to travel to Berlin, Germany, in 1917, to appear as the dancing girl in Max Reinhardt's revival of Sumurun. Ernst Lubitsch, who at the time was directing comedies for the German film studio UFA, was included in this film. Negri was first signed to Saturn Films, releasing six films with them, including Wenn das Herz in Haß erglüht (1917). She then signed to UFA's roster, and Mania (1918), Der Gelbe Schein (The Yellow Ticket, 1918), and Komtesse Doddy (1919).

Lubitsch convinced UFA to allow him to produce a large-scale film starring Negri as the central protagonist in 1918. The result, Die Augen Mumie Ma (The Eyes of the Mummy Ma, 1918), which was a huge success and resulted in a series of Lubitsch/Negri collaborations, each larger in size than the previous film. Carmen (1918, first published in the United States in 1921 as Gypsy Blood), was followed by Madame DuBarry (19191919) and Passion (Purity). Madame DuBarry became a worldwide celebrity, pulled down the American embargo on German films, and launched a campaign that briefly threatened to destabilize Hollywood's dominant position in the international film market. Negri and Lubitsch made three German films together after this, Sumurun (aka One Arabian Night, 1921), Die Bergkatze (aka The Wildcat, 1921), and Die Flamme (1922), and UFA employed Negri for films with other directors, including Vendetta (1919) and Sappho (1921), many of which were bought by American distributors and seen in the United States.

Hollywood retaliated against this emerging threat by acquiring key German talent, starting with the acquisition of Lubitsch and Negri's services. Lubitsch was the first film to be brought to Hollywood, with Mary Pickford requesting his assistance in her costume film Rosita (1923). Jesse Lasky, a Paramount Pictures mogul, attended Madame DuBarry's premiere in Berlin in 1919, and Paramount invited Negri to visit Hollywood in 1921. On September 12, 1922, she signed a $3,000 a week contract with Paraphrasedoutput: She landed in New York in a flurry of publicity. Negri became Hollywood's first-ever Continental actress, setting a tone for imported European actors like Vilma Bánky, Greta Garbo, and Marlene Dietrich, among other things. Negri's real name, according to the Hot Dog, a Cleveland monthly magazine, was Paula Schwartz, and she was Jewish, which was completely inaccurate.

Negri made a name for herself as one of the hottest Hollywood actresses of the period, and certainly the most important woman of the film industry at the time, living in a mansion in Los Angeles modeled after the White House. While in Hollywood, she initiated several ladies' fashion styles, some of which are now fashion staples, such as red painted toenails, fur boots, and turbans. Negri was a frequent photography subject of Hollywood portrait photographer Eugene Robert Richee's, and several photographs of her were taken during this period.

Bella Donna (1923) and The Cheat (1923), two of Negri's first two Paramount films, were directed by George Fitzmaurice and were remakes of Paramount films from 1915. Herbert Brenon-directed The Spanish Dancer (1923), based on Victor Hugo's book Don César de Bazan, was her first spectacle film. Before Rudolph Valentino left Paramount and was reworked for Negri, the initial screenplay was intended as a tool for him. The film Rosita, Lubitsch's film, was released the same year and was based on Don César de Bazan. "Critics had a field day comparing the two countries," the book Paramount Pictures and the People Who Made It." The general consensus was that the Pickford film was more polished, but that the Negri film was more amusing."

As they had done with Gloria Swanson and staged an unfolding feud between the two actresses, which actor Charlie Chaplin characterized as "a mixture of cooked-up jealousies and quarrels" in his autobiography. Negri was concerned that Paramount was mishandling her career and image, and she had hired Ernst Lubitsch, her former director, to direct her in the critically acclaimed Forbidden Paradise (1924). It was the first time the two actors had collaborated in a film together. Negri's on-screen continental opulence was starting to wear thin with some segments of the American audience, a situation parodied in the Mal St. Clair-directed comedy A Woman of the World (1925), in which Negri appeared.

Negri appeared in The Crown of Lies and Good and Naughty in 1926, the former of which received an unfavorable review in a Photoplay magazine, who characterized it as a "impossible Pola Negri vehicle." If you have nothing else to do, try this and suffer with Pola." The following year, Paraphrasedoutput: In an apparent effort to give her a more realistic, relatable image, Paraphrasedoutput: Paraphrasedoutput: Negri was cast in international pesant roles in films such as the Mauritz Stiller-directed and Erich Pommer-produced Hotel Imperial (1927). Although Hotel Imperial did not fare well at the box office, Rowland V. Lee's next film Barbed Wire (1927), directed by Rowland V. Lee, and a number of subsequent films did not fare well, though her sequel to Georgian Prince Serge Mdivani did not succeed internationally, although her films continued to do well internationally. "It's difficult for a foreigner coming to America...I'd been told so much what not to do." Negri defended herself. Being a Slav, it was particularly difficult for me. To Americans, my emotion seemed exaggerated. I can't believe that I haven't heard a word of Anglo-Saxon restraint and tact."

Negri was making her last film for Paramount Pictures, The Woman from Moscow, with Norman Kerry, in 1928 and was earning $10,000 a week, and was directed by Rowland V. Lee in three films (The Unknown Hour, Three Sinners, and Loves of an Actress). Negri claimed in her autobiography that she did not renew her Paraphrasedoutput: Negri wrote about her decision not to renew her Paraphrasedoutput: Negri said in her autobiography that she did not renew her Paraphrasedoutput: Negri said she did not renew her Paraphrasedoutput: Negri's decision to turn away from films and live as a wife at the Château de Rueraincourt, near Vigny, where she grew up and where she had married her second husband at the Château de C La Vie et Le Rêve au Cinéma (lit. ), the same year as her short book La Vie et Le Rêve au Cinéma, which included reflections on art and film. (Life and Dreams of the Cinema), edited by Albin Michel, was published in England. She had reportedly earned $5 million by 1929, according to reports.

Negri's initial 1928 retirement was short-lived. Negri miscarried her pregnancy and later learned that her husband was investing her money away on speculative ventures that strained their marriage. She returned to acting when an independent production company offered her work in a British film film that was to be distributed by Gaumont-British. The film was supposed to be a filmed recreation of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, but Shaw offered to rewrite the script to suit the film. When the rights were too expensive, the company decided on an original story and recruited German Kammerspielfilm director Paul Czinner to direct. The Way of Lost Souls (also known as The Woman He Scorned) was released in 1929, Negri's last silent film.

In 1931, Negri returned to Hollywood to begin filming her first talking film, A Woman Commands (1932). The film's version of the film was poorly received, but Negri's interpretation of the song "Paradise," the film's centerpiece, became a big hit in the sheet music genre. The song was a minor key to many other artists, including Russ Columbo, Louis Prima, and Keely Smith, and was covered by several others. To advertise the album, Negri went on a fruitful vaindeville tour. She then appeared in the leading role of the touring theatre performance A Trip to Pressburg, which premiered at the Shubert Theatre in New York. However, she collapsed after the final curtain at the production's stop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, due to gallbladder inflammation, and was unable to finish the tour. Negri returned to France to appear in Fanatisme (Fanaticism, 1934), a historical costume film about Napoleon III. Tony Lekain and Gaston Ravel's directorial team produced the film, which was released by Pathé. It was her first French film.

After this, actor-director Willi Forst brought Negri to Germany in the film Mazurka (1935). The film was deemed "artistically valuable" by the Reichsfilmkammer (German: künstlerischer wertvoll). Mazurka's success in Germany and abroad made it one of Adolf Hitler's favorite films, despite the fact that, alongside her admiring remarks about frustration in the German film industry, gave rise to a suspicion that Negri had an affair with Hitler in 1937. Negri sued Pour Vous, the French magazine that had circulated the news, for libel and triumph. Confession (1937), starring Kay Francis, was remade (almost shot-for-shot) in the United States.

Negri has been re-signed by Negri's former studio, the now Joseph Goebbels-controlled UFA, after the success of Mazurka, Negri's former studio, has signed Negri to a new deal. When Negri was living in France, he made five films with the company: Moscow–Shanghai (1936), Madame Bovary, Tango Notturno (1937), Die Nacht der Entscheidung ("The Night of Decision") 1938).

After the Nazis took over France, Negri returned to the United States. She spent some days in Portugal on her flight. Between the 28 June and the 30th of June 1940, she lived in Monte Estoril, at the Hotel Atlântico. She then travelled to Hotel Palácio in Estoril. She came from Lisbon, Portugal, and began selling off jewelry. Genya Smetana, the temperamental opera singer, was recruited to assist with the 1943 film Hi Diddle Diddle. Following the success of this film, Negri was offered several roles that were essentially rehashes of her appearance in Hi Diddle Diddle, none of which she turned down as derivative. Negri was hired by booking agent Miles Ingalls in 1944 for a national vaudeville tour. She appeared in a Boston supper club performance in 1945 for a collection centered around the song "Paradise" and then resigned from the entertainment industry entirely, according to her autobiography.

After Mae Murray, Mae West, Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, and Mary Pickford who did not appear in the film Sunset Boulevard (1950), director Billy Wilder approached Negri to play Norma Desmond in the film Sunset Boulevard (1950). According to reports, Negri left the role because the screenplay was not appropriate and that Montgomery Clift, who was supposed to play the Joe Gillis character at the time, was not a good idea for the role. Gillis' role as a child was eventually handed over to William Holden, and Gloria Swanson accepted the role of Norma Desmond.

Negri came out of retirement to appear in the Walt Disney film The Moon-Spinners (1964), which starred Hayley Mills and Eli Wallach. The film starring Negri was shot in London over the course of two weeks as eccentric jewel collector Madame Habib. When filming The Moon-Spinners, she made a splash by appearing in front of the London press at her hotel in the company of a feisty cheetah on a steel chain leash. She received an honorary award from the German film industry for her film career the same year, as well as a prestigious award in San Antonio in 1968. Übungen of a Star, a 1970 work by Doubleday, she released her autobiography Memoirs of a Star. On April 30, 1970, she attended the Museum of Modern Art for a screening event in her honor, which featured her film A Woman of the World (1925) and selections from her films. At the 1972 screening of Carmen held at the Witte Museum in San Antonio, Negri was a guest of honor.

In 1975, director Vincente Minnelli pleaded with Negri to appear as the Contessa Sanziani in A Matter of Time, but Negri refused to accept due to his inability. Billy Wilder produced Fedora in 1978, and although Negri does not appear in the film, the title character was based largely on her. "Where Are They Now?" was her last high-profile coverage of her lifetime. The film star's silent film stars were included in a Life magazine feature in 1980.

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