Pola Negri: Hollywood's First Femme Fatale

Foreword

ix Foreword When Mariusz Kotowski approached me in 2006 about showing his documentary , Pola Negri: Life Is a Dream in Cinema, at the Museum of Modern Art, I was well aware (as a film historian) of Negri’s place as one of the major stars of the silent period. I came to be surprised, however, by the fact that she seemed to have been forgotten by so many people. This made the showing of Mariusz’s film and a small Negri retrospective seem all the more urgent. The story Mariusz tells in his film and in this biography is so full of twists and turns and surprises that it would probably have been rejected as the basis for a film or a novel as too implausible. Born Barbara Apolonia Chałupec, Negri rose from humble Polish origins to wed nobility and become world famous. First becoming a film star in Poland and then in Berlin, Negri fell under the tutelage of Max Reinhardt’s protégé Ernst Lubitsch, one of cinema’s most creative directors in the period encompassing the two world wars. She was brought to Hollywood, blazing a trail for later European imports such as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. She had affairs with Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino, two of Hollywood’s most illustrious personalities. With the advent of talking pictures , when the sound of her Polish accent caused a crisis in her career, she returned to Europe. Eventually, she resurfaced in Germany. The Third Reich had seen to it that all her Jewish friends and colleagues were gone, and Hitler himself, reportedly, was her biggest fan after seeing her first German talkie, Mazurka, in 1935. She managed to escape Germany before America’s entry into World War II and, improbably, spent the rest of her life deep in the heart of Texas. She was able to squeeze in a few novelty roles in American films and write an autobiography before her passing. Negri’s life was one of contradiction and possibly even confusion. She flourished as a glamorous vamp in many of her major roles, but she aspired to the kind of artistic recognition afforded to Chaplin and Garbo. Her Svengali, Lubitsch, made only one Hollywood film with her, Forbidden Paradise, gravitating to actresses with a more subtle touch than Negri: actresses like Marie Prevost, a former Mack Sennett bathing beauty, and Irene Rich, who played x Foreword naturalistic roles opposite Will Rogers. Negri played Catherine the Great in Forbidden Paradise, but her performance was co-opted and eclipsed a decade later by Dietrich in Josef Von Sternberg’s masterpiece The Scarlet Empress. Throughout the 1920s Negri was generally directed by second-raters like George Fitzmaurice and Dimitri Buchowetzki. Her brand of exotica began to wear thin, despite occasional flashes of a truly accomplished actress. It is hard to know what direction Negri’s career might have taken if the microphone had not intruded. I was personally amazed by Mariusz Kotowski’s exuberance and energy in the cause of reviving Negri’s memory. The Polish cultural community in New York is very active, and Mariusz managed to galvanize this group into supporting two overflow screenings of his documentary at the museum. The event was covered by Polish television, which interviewed me, and I experienced , in Andy Warhol’s phrase, my fifteen minutes of fame. Polish cable television stations all over North America broadcast the report, and I begin to receive phone calls from unlikely places asking how to contact Mr. Kotowski. I now have many Polish friends. I am personally highly gratified that Mariusz Kotowski’s film has received so much attention and that Pola Negri is being celebrated in her native country. Charles Silver Associate Curator, Department of Film The Museum of Modern Art, New York City ...