Pola Negri

Pola Negri
Birth Name: Barbara Apollonia Chalupiec
Born: Jan 3, 1897
Janowa, Poland
Career: 1918-1964
Countries: Germany
USA
Genre/Type: Drama
Born Appolonia Chalupek, she was brought up by a single mother in a Warsaw slum. As a teenager, she trained at the Imperial Ballet School, debuted with the Imperial Ballet as a cygnet in Swan Lake, and danced in lead roles. She quit dancing after a bout with tuberculosis, then took up acting, which she studied at the Imperial Academy of Dramatic Arts in Warsaw. In 1913 she made her stage debut as an actress, and within a year she appeared in her first film. Soon she was a top screen star in Poland, prompting director Max Reinhardt to invite her to appear in his stage play Sumurun in Berlin; she remained there for five years, becoming internationally famous as the star of a number of major German films. Flooded with contract offers from Hollywood, she moved to America in 1923 and signed with Paramount for $3000 a week; she thus became Hollywood's first imported star. Her exotic, mysterious, passionate qualities caught on with American audiences, and she made numerous popular films; eventually her salary went up to $10,000 a week. She attracted a great deal of publicity for her offscreen romances and her long-term feud with rival Gloria Swanson. She divorced her husband, a Polish count, and made headlines with an engagement to Charlie Chaplin; she broke with Chaplin and took up with Rudolph Valentino, enhancing her sex-siren image. Valentino's death in 1926 marked the beginning of her slip in popularity with the American public, which grew bored with her flamboyant exploits. With the advent of the sound era, she returned to Europe. From 1927-31 she was married to a Russian prince; she divorced him because he mismanaged her investments during the stock market crash. She became popular again in Germany after starring in several films there; she was ordered barred from films because she was thought to be part Jewish, but Adolf Hitler personally overruled this decision due to his fondness for the mother-love film Mazurka (1935), which he reportedly watched once a week for its tearjerking effects on him. It was rumored that she and Hitler were romantically linked, but she successfully sued the French magazine that began the rumor. She settled on the French Riviera, then returned to the U.S. in 1941 after the Germans invaded France. In 1951 she became a U.S. citizen. After 1941 she appeared in only two additional films. She lived out the rest of her long life in well-off seclusion. She authored an autobiography, Pola Negri: Memoirs of a Star.
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Filmography

Movie/Film Released Rating Role Buy
The Moon-Spinners 1964 Actor [Starring]
Hi Diddle Diddle 1943 Actor [Starring]
Madame Bovary 1937 Actor [Starring]
Tango Notturno 1937 Actor [Starring]
Mazurka 1936 Actor [Starring]
Moscow Shanghai 1936 Actor [Starring]
Fanatisme 1934 Actor [Starring]
A Woman Commands 1932 Actor [Starring]
The Woman He Scorned 1930 Actor [Starring]
The Way of Lost Souls 1929 Actor [Starring]
Loves of an Actress 1928 Actor [Starring]
The Secret Hour 1928 Actor [Starring]
Three Sinners 1928 Actor [Starring]
Woman from Moscow 1928 Actor [Starring]
Barbed Wire 1927 Actor [Starring]
Hotel Imperial 1927 Actor [Starring]
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All these couples and partners made their mark on the history of cinema. They were fascinating, fiery and always in the limelight... more | add synopsis
Lubitsch came first, arriving in America on Christmas Eve of 1921 to direct Mary Pickford’s film Rosita (1923), a beautifully-composed, European-style costume film—and an excellent picture, regardless of what America’s Sweetheart would have...
Pola Negri, a Hollywood star of the silent movie era, was born and baptized Apolonia Chalupec in Lipno (near Toruń – several other places have the same name) in Poland, which was under Russian control then. Contrary to other dates in a vari...

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