P-O-L-A, Pola

She was a siren of the silent silver screen and hailed as being the first actress to bring sex to the celluloid universe, a feat the actress herself gave admission to in the now infamous quote 'Yes, I was correctly quoted in saying I introduced sex into films in the 20's, but it was sex in good taste and left a great deal to one's imagination.'  Pola Negri was born  Barbara Apolonia Chalupiec in late-19th century Poland that was at the time a part of the Russian Empire, (it would remain so until the year 1917 ) her birth year has been a subject of debate whether or not being from the year 1897 or 1899. As a repercussion of her father's imprisonment at a Siberian Prison Camp, where he later died, Pola and her mother were left adrift and penniless in Lipno. Pola had deep aspirations of becoming a prima ballerina from a precocious age, but was stricken with tuberculosis, the illness that curtailed her dreams of dance.

She would however enlist in Warsaw's Academy of Dramatic Arts , immediately adroit an actress who would get the notice of  legendary Max Reinhardt, the same Reinhardt who helped catapult the careers of fellow emigres Fritz Lang and Peter Lorre. Negri was involved in pantomime theater for a few years until the Germans would occupy in 1916, giving Negri little choice but to defect to Germany where she would ultimately cross paths with the inimitable Ernst Lubitsch, who would cast her as Yannaia in his silent film Sumurun in 1920, Lubitsch would also star in this production as Yeggar the beggar.

My Funny Valentino, Rudolph and Pola torrid and true.

The following years would not come without their fair share of heartache for the actress, they would include two dysfunctional marriages, both cases to nobleman, the first of which was Count Eugenius Damski and her second husband Prince Serge Mdivani (of the famed 'Marrying Mdivanis) who forsake Pola during the time she lost her assets during 1929's Market Crash and took up with the famous soprano Mary McCormic. Negri would have high profile affairs beginning with fellow philanderer Charlie Chaplin whom was willing in the end to marry his mistress Pola, albeit she would emphatically decline Chaplin's offer, afterall she was cozying up to a certain Casanova named Rudolph Valentino. Valentino was believed to be the only man that truly won the Slavic starlet's heart, but whose life would come to a tragic halt at the age of 31 in 1926 due to a fatal bout of pleurisy. Pola's famously unusual behavior which entailed several fainting spells at Valentino's New York funeral, where she appointed herself chief mourner;  would be an act that  would consequently compromise her reputation.

The woman from Lipno, is the Woman From Moscow too (Negri in 1928)

One thing was however certain, Negri was still the pride and joy of Paramount, in her five year span between 1923 and 1928, Miss Negri would turn out twenty memorable performances, the first being the George Fitzmaurice silent The Cheat (1923) where Negri lead the pack as an Argentinian spitfire Carmelita de Cordoba. Her last film for Paramount The Woman From Moscow (1928) would be another fine hour for the silent siren where she would portray Princess Fedora with sheer gumption.

And what would be in the cards next for Pola?

Theda wasn't just Baranoid, Negri was Hollywood's new vamp in town.

And this was the age of the vamp, and it could not be more apposite for Negri; who was irrefutably the absolute heart and soul of this era, and how could this not be so, with her beguiling eyes of green and natural come hither, a few bats of her eyelashes and Theda Bara was officially yesterday's papers.



 Miss Negri returned to a now Nazi Germany in the 1930's where she soon would be unfairly barred from film-making by Joseph Goebells for the suspicion of having Jewish origins in her lineage; she was also rumored to be Adolph Hitler's favorite actress and for this, the dictator made an exception and personally lifted the ban.

In fine fettle, Flaubert style -  Madame Bovary (1937)

Following this debacle Pola briefly returned to UFA studios but decamped to France while continuously starring, however begrudgingly in German films, the actress grew weary as the Nazi regime intensified, prompting her exit - now off to to Portugal where she would ship out with scores of other defectors and make a safe return to America's shores once more.


Negri would star in her penultimate film, a 1943 comedy Hi Diddle Diddle, directed by Andrew Stone; opposite Adolphe Menjou, and it would be more than two decades until she was to star in a film again, albeit her last film; a nominal part in a forgotten Disney family adventure film The Moon-Spinners (1964)

Negri's last film ironically - A Disney production - with Hayley Mills and company.

It has been said that Pola would suffer bouts of severe depression for most of her adult life, she would make headline after headline for her antics and histrionics and while this is true, she was also a devastatingly brilliant actress from her start on the Polish stage through the prolific years at Paramount, with her unflinching determinant spirit, she was historically the first European actress that was imported to that certain hooray for place - and she was the first of the femme-fatales and the last of her kind, for there was and could only ever be one Pola Negri.