Arguably Hollywood’s first femme fatale, Polish actress Pola Negri was a darling of the silent cinema era. Her career spanned half a century, during which she appeared in some 65 films, working too as a recording artist and a dancer. Now, though, few outside cult cinema circles know her name – an oversight that a new biopic aims to set to rights.
For 14 years, screenwriter Yvonne Potter has been working on a project to resurrect Pola Negri’s memory. Now, with Lea Sellers, she has written the script for a film – Pola – based on the actress’s colourful life. The movie has already attracted the attention of Poland’s Buksfilm.
New York based Yvonne – born to a British father and Polish mother – said in an interview for the Polish language UK portal Tydzień Polski, that it was sad that Pola Negri had been all but forgotten.
“Her popularity lies in the fact that she received more than 1,000 letters a week from her fans, from virtually all corners of the globe,” explained Yvonne. “She was undoubtedly an icon of her time, so I decided that I needed to bring her story to contemporary audiences”.
Pola Negri, born Apolonia Chalupec in 1897, began her career at the age of 17 in the Alexander Hertz production Niewolnica Zmysłów (Slave of the Senses). This was the year that the First World War began, a time when Poland did not exist on any map (having spent more than a century as part of Prussia, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian empire), but equally an era when Poles felt, through their language, culture and art, a strong sense of national identity.
Before the war was over, Pola Negri had already become a name in German cinema. She already had 23 films under her belt – in Polish and German – before Madame Dubarry was released in the US as Passion and brought her to the attention of Hollywood.
“Within a week,” said Yvonne, “It had been watched by more than 100,000 people”.
Heading to America in search of a career may have been daunting for many daughters of a newly reborn Poland. But she took it in her stride and made it work for her.
“Pola was not afraid of challenges. She took challenging roles and handled them very well, and for several years, as the star of Paramount Pictures, she had handsome earnings. In today’s money, she made about $3.5 million per year,” said Yvonne.
From 1923 to 1928, Pola Negri made 21 films with Paramount. It was then that she decided to retire, but for a woman who had been a star of the silent screen, stepping back when cinema was on the cusp of sound must have been an impossible ask. She made her comeback just a year later, with her final silent film The Woman He Scorned, and in 1932 cinemagoers heard her voice on screen for the first time, in the British production A Woman Commands. Pola continued her work in the talkies, with French and German firms, ending her career as a screen actress in 1964 in Walt Disney’s The Moon-spinners.
So, Pola Negri’s professional CV was impressive to say the least; her private life was material for a film in itself.
“Suffice it to say,” said Yvonne, “that she had many affairs, including with Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino”.
They weren’t the only ones. Negri had romances with actor Rod La Rocque and singer Russ Columbo. That was aside from her two marriages, to the Polish Count Eugeniusz Dąmbski and the Georgian aristocrat Serge Mdivani. A French magazine even put it about that Negri had a dalliance with Adolf Hitler – a rumour the actress laid to rest in court, very much at the magazine’s expense.
Pola Negri remained in great demand even after her formal – and final – retirement. But ill health kept her from accepting offers, and on August 1 1987, she died of pneumonia in Texas at the age of 90. Despite having her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, this actress who burst from a Poland rekindling onto the international scene seemed, until Yvonne and Lea’s film, to be becoming little more than a footnote in mainstream cinematic history. The film Pola, which Yvonne hopes will be finished next year, could well change all that. Certainly, the potential fan base is out there, and with Paramount even now working on a remastering of Pola’s 1924 hit Forbidden Paradise, there’s every chance that this Polish darling of the big screen is about to come out of retirement – albeit posthumously – yet again.
Yvonne said: “It is worth noting that, nine years ago, I started a Facebook page dedicated to Pola, which now has more than 17,000 page views per month. Every day I added pictures, old and modern newspaper clippings, and invitations to film screenings. And fans share these materials on their profiles. I feel like Pola’s PR agent, and I admit that I cannot – or rather do not – want to stop”.
With thanks to Yvonne Potter for permission to use translated extracts of her original interview. You can read the full article, in Polish, here.
Pictures: Top – Pola Negri; Centre – Lea Sellers, Yvonne Potter, and Raf Buks of Buksfilm.
