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  • Restoring The Spanish Dancer (1923)
  • Rob Byrne (bio)

Pola Takes the Stage

Pola Negri was already an international star when she arrived in Hollywood in 1922. The Polish actress boasted a brilliant résumé, having starred in five features by German director Ernst Lubitsch, most notably the sensational Madame DuBarry (1919), released in 1920 in the United States as Passion. Regardless, her first American productions, Bella Donna (1923) and The Cheat (1923), both directed by George Fitzmaurice, met with only lukewarm success, sending Famous-Players in search of a stronger vehicle for its exotic actress. The studio settled on an adaptation of Don César de Bazan, a novel by Adolphe Philippe Dennery and Philippe François Pinel, which had been originally purchased as a vehicle for Rudolph Valentino. However, the Sheik’s legal dispute with the studio precluded his participation in the project, leaving the studio with the property on their hands. Writers Beulah Marie Dix and June Mathis reworked the story, transforming the gypsy dancer Maritana into the central focus, and cast Negri in the role. The star hoped for a reunion with the recently imported Ernst Lubitsch, with whom she had so successfully conquered Europe, but the studio had already loaned the director to Mary Pickford for Rosita (1923), a film based on the very same novel. Famous-Players instead assigned Herbert Brenon to direct Negri in their version, titled The Spanish Dancer.

The photoplay for The Spanish Dancer features Pola Negri as Maritana, a gypsy dancer in love with Don César de Bazan, a penniless nobleman played by Antonio Moreno. Intrigue in the Spanish court arises when the king (Wallace Beery) must decide whether to sign a treaty with France. His wife, Queen Isabel (Kathlyn Williams), advocates in favor but is opposed by courtier Don Salluste (Adolphe Menjou), who conspires to sow discord between the royal couple. Don César is arrested in violation of the king’s edict against dueling and is sentenced to the firing squad. Maritana pleads with the queen to spare Don César, but the king has designs on the “gypsy wench” and delays the pardon. The plot reaches its climax when the king dupes Maritana into a rendezvous at his hunting lodge, while Don César escapes and attempts Maritana’s rescue and the queen arrives to confront her husband with his infidelity.

Principal photography for The Spanish Dancer began June 4, 1923, and concluded two months later, on August 2. According to Glendon Allvine, 75,000 feet of film were exposed, which Hector Turnbull edited into a nine-reel release length of 8,434 feet.1 The film premiered in New York on October 7, only one month after Mary Pickford’s Rosita. Photoplay proclaimed Negri’s performance “magnificent,” observing that “after being wasted in ‘Bella Donna’ and ‘The Cheat,’ Pola Negri comes back to her own in this picture.”2 Comparing her performance to Mary Pickford’s Rosita, the Tribune characterized Negri’s performance as “more colorful, more vigorous, more dazzling, and [a] gaudier one,” while the San Antonio Express described the production as “not only spectacular, but is dramatic in its small moments,” adding that “Negri comes back and is again the Negri that so electrified the world in ‘Passion.’”3 Taking [End Page 161] a more reserved stance, Film Daily described The Spanish Dancer as a “nicely staged story” but added that the “picture runs too long.”4


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Coming attraction advertising slide for The Spanish Dancer. Author’s collection.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Archive

Ninety years later, attitudes toward The Spanish Dancer could be described as indifferent at best. Most who have seen a print describe it as an illogical and overly wrought costume drama. Only two 35mm prints of The Spanish Dancer are known to exist, both of which are fragmentary and incomplete foreign-translation prints, and what can usually be found of the American version are copies of the 1930s Kodascope Library 16mm abridgement.5 Edited for brevity, the artlessly reduced Kodascope version omits key plot elements, including the treaty dispute that sets the narrative in motion. In the United States...

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