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Pola Negri

Pola Negri
Pola Negri 1923.jpg
Negri in 1923
Born Apolonia Chalupec
(1897-01-03)3 January 1897
Lipno, Kingdom of Poland
Died 1 August 1987(1987-08-01) (aged 90)
San Antonio, Texas, U.S.
Cause of death Pneumonia (immediate); brain tumor (secondary)
Resting place Calvary Cemetery, Los Angeles
Occupation Actress, singer
Years active 1914–1964
Spouse(s) Count Eugeniusz Dąmbski (m. 1919; div. 1922)
Prince Serge Mdivani (m. 1927; div. 1931)

Pola Negri (born Apolonia Chalupec 3 January 1897 – 1 August 1987) was a Polish stage and film actress who achieved worldwide fame during the silent and golden eras of Hollywood and European film for her tragedienne and femme fatale roles.

She was the first European film star to be invited to Hollywood, and became one of the most popular actresses in American silent film. Her varied career included work as an actress in theater and vaudeville, as a recording artist, as a ballerina, and as an author.

Negri was born Apolonia Chalupec on 3 January 1897 in Lipno, Congress Poland, Russian Empire (present-day Lipno, Poland), the only surviving child (of three) of a Polish mother, Eleonora Kiełczewska (died 24 August 1954), who, according to Negri, came from impoverished Polish nobility, and Juraj Chalupec (died 1920), an itinerant Romani-Slovakian tinsmith from Nesluša. After her father was arrested by the Russian authorities for revolutionary activities and sent to Siberia, she and her mother moved to Warsaw, where they lived in poverty.

Young Apolonia was accepted into Warsaw's Imperial Ballet Academy. Her first dance performance was in the chorus of baby swans in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake; she worked her way up to a solo role in the Saint-Léon ballet Coppélia. However, a bout with tuberculosis forced her to stop dancing; she was sent to a sanatorium to recover, and during that time, she adopted the pseudonym Pola Negri, after the Italian novelist and poet Ada Negri; "Pola" was short for her own middle name, Apolonia (sometimes spelled Apollonia).


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