Pola NegriFilmography

Hi Diddle Diddle

Actors: Dennis O'Keefe, Martha Scott, Adolphe Menjou, Billie Burke, Pola Negri

Synopsis: In the tradition of Hellzapoppin', Hi Diddle Diddle is an all-stops-out "screwball comedy" populated by certifiable zanies. Billie Burke plays Mrs. Prescott, the featherbrained mother of bride-to-be Janie Prescott (Martha Scott). When Mrs. P is swindled out of her life savings, Colonel Phyffe (Adolphe Menjou Read More

Madame Bovary

Actors: Pola Negri, Ferdinand Marian

Synopsis: This German adaptation of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary seldom appears in the standard movie source books (certainly never as often as the 1949 Vincente Minnelli version!), but it might well be worth seeing again. This time, the magnificent Pola Negri is cast as Emma Bovary, the unhappy bride Read More

Tango Notturno

Moscow Shanghai

Actors: Pola Negri, Gustav Diessl

Synopsis: In this romantic melodrama, a widowed Russian noblewoman finds her torn asunder by the 1917 revolution. Just before she is to return home, she attends a grand ball. There she encounters a handsome young officer. Following the dance, she leaves her 7-year old with her maid and leaves in the company Read More

Mazurka

Actors: Pola Negri

Synopsis: Absent from the screen since 1932, Pola Negri made the first of several comebacks in the German melodrama Mazurka. Negri is cast as a famous opera star, married to a powerful military officer. While hubby's off to war, she has "one too many" and ends up sleeping with another man. When she becomes Read More

Fanatisme

Actors: Pola Negri, Jean Yonnel

A Woman Commands

Actors: Pola Negri, Roland Young, Basil Rathbone, H.B. Warner, Anthony Bushell

Synopsis: A Woman Commands is often cited as silent screen star Pola Negri's first talking picture. Actually, it was her first American talkie and almost her last, posting a $265,000 loss for RKO Radio. Ordered to marry Serbian king Alexander (Roland Young), noblewoman Maria Draga (Negri) does what Read More

The Woman He Scorned

Actors: Pola Negri, Warwick Ward

Synopsis: Considered washed up in Hollywood, silent-screen queen Pola Negri made her talkie debut in the British The Woman He Scorned. The plot concerns a lighthouse keeper (Warwick Ward) who heads into town to purchase a new telescope lens. While taking in the sights, he finds himself in a nightclub where Read More

The Way of Lost Souls

Synopsis: In this drama, a young lighthouse keeper must row to town after he accidentally breaks one of the lenses of his light. While in town he finds himself tempted by several streetwalkers. When one of them is hit by another fellow, the lighthouse keeper rushes to her aid. She is grateful. She decides Read More

Woman from Moscow

Actors: Pola Negri, Norman Kerry, Paul Lukas, Otto Matiesen, Lawrence Grant

Synopsis: Victorien Sardou's 1882 stage play Fedora was transformed by future director John Farrow into the Pola Negri vehicle The Woman from Moscow. The star plays White Russian princess Fedora, who harbors a seemingly hopeless love for dashing Boris Ipanoff (Norman Kerry). Kept separated throughout the Read More

Three Sinners

Actors: Pola Negri, Warner Baxter, Paul Lukas, Tullio Carminatti

Synopsis: Baroness Gerda Wallentin (Pola Negri) walks out on her philandering husband Count Dietrich (Paul Lukas) and heads to Vienna. En route, she meets musician Raoul Stanislaw (Tullio Carminatti) and agrees to a romantic rendezvous during a stopover at a small village. In the throes of passion, Gerda Read More

Loves of an Actress

Actors: Pola Negri, Nils Asther, Mary McAlister, Richard Tucker, Philip Strange

The Secret Hour

Actors: Pola Negri, Jean Hersholt, Ken Thomson

Synopsis: The Secret Hour was the first of three screen versions of Sidney Howard's Pulitzer Prize-winning play They Knew What They Wanted. The owner of a prosperous California orange grove, Italian-born Tony (Jean Hersholt) decides that he lacks romance in his life. Spotting waitress Amy (Pola Negri) at a Read More

The Woman on Trial

Actors: Pola Negri, Einar Hansen, Arnold Kent

Synopsis: Pola Negri and director Mauritz Stiller fail to make much of this somber and unoriginal melodrama, which was based on the play by Ernest Vajda. Julie, a model of the Paris studios (Negri), is on trial for murder. On the stand, she relates her story, and in the style of Madame X, the film is told Read More

Hotel Imperial

Actors: Pola Negri, James Hall, George Siegmann, Max Davidson, Michael Vavitch

Synopsis: Based on a Hungarian play by Lajos Biro, Hotel Imperial stars Pola Negri as a chambermaid in a small Gallacian hotel. When World War I erupts, the town in which Pola lives is alternately occupied by both the Russians and the Austrians. As the film's various intrigues play themselves out, we learn Read More

Barbed Wire

Actors: Pola Negri, Clive Brook

Synopsis: Barbed Wire was based on The Woman of Knockaloe, an antiwar novel by Sir Hall Caine. The original novel dealt with the deleterious WWI-era policy of shipping German-born British citizens back to their "homeland" at the outbreak of the war, no matter how long they'd lived in England. The hero Read More

Crown of Lies

Actors: Pola Negri, Noah Beery, Sr., Robert Ames, Charles A. Post, Arthur Hoyt

Synopsis: Pola Negri is her usual overstated self in the outlandish comedy-melodrama Crown of Lies. Negri plays Olga, an immigrant girl who finds work as a domestic in a New York theatrical boarding house. Aspiring to become an actress herself, Olga studies the various boarders and mimics their behavior. Read More

Good and Naughty

Actors: Pola Negri, Tom Moore, Miss Du Pont, Ford Sterling, Stuart Holmes

Synopsis: Mal St. Clair, one of the best of the many imitation Lubitsches of the 1920s, called the shots on Good and Naughty. Pola Negri stars as wealthy and beautiful Germaine Morris, who loses out on a job with a prestigious decorating firm. It seems that the firm's owner, Gerald Gray (Tom Moore) has a Read More

The Charmer

Actors: Pola Negri, Wallace MacDonald, Robert W. Frazer, Trixie Friganza, Cesare Gravina

Synopsis: Mariposa (Pola Negri) is a dancer in a Spanish café who is discovered by theatrical manager Señor Sprotti (Cesare Gravina) around the same time that Ralph Bayne, a wealthy American (Wallace MacDonald), sees her. Bayne falls in love with her immediately, as does his chauffeur, Dan Murray (Robert W. Fraser Read More

East of Suez

Actors: Pola Negri, Edmund Lowe, Rockliffe Fellowes, Noah Beery, Sr.

Synopsis: The exotic Pola Negri is given the role of a half-English, half-Chinese girl in this drama based on W. Somerset Maugham's play and directed by Raoul Walsh. In spite of the illustrious names attached to this production, however, it was a weak film which did justice to none of them. When Daisy Read More

Woman of the World

Actors: Pola Negri, Charles Emmett Mack, Holmes Herbert, Blanche Mehaffey, Chester Conklin

Synopsis: This sophisticated and well-made comedy-drama was one of Pola Negri's best vehicles for Paramount. More often than not, the studio seemed at a loss with what to do with the exotic European star. By placing her in the completely incongruous setting of a small American town (and having Malcolm St. Read More

Flower of Night

Actors: Pola Negri, Joseph J. Dowling, Youcca Troubetzkoy, Warner Oland, Edwin J. Brady

Synopsis: According to the Paramount publicity mill, Joseph Hergesheimer wrote this unoriginal tale of California's early days especially for Pola Negri. Like all too many of Negri's Paramount vehicles, this drama was not worthy of her talents. Don Geraldo y Villalon (Joseph Dowling) hates Americans because Read More

Men

Actors: Pola Negri, Robert W. Frazer, Robert Edeson, Josef Swickard, Monte Collins

Synopsis: After her brilliant career in Europe, Pola Negri, came to America to make films for Paramount. Her first few pictures for the studio were disappointing, so they imported Russian director Dmitri Buchowetzki to work with her again (the two had made films together overseas). Buchowetzki wrote the Read More

Lily of the Dust

Actors: Pola Negri, Ben Lyon, Noah Beery, Sr., Raymond Griffith, William J. Kelly

Synopsis: Silent star Pola Negri and director Dmitri Buchowetzki had worked together in Europe, and Negri's American studio, Paramount, sent for Buchowetzki to direct her again. Like their prior Paramount picture, Men, this drama carries a Continental flavor. After her mother goes insane, Lily Czepanek (Negri Read More

Forbidden Paradise

Actors: Pola Negri, Rod La Rocque, Adolphe Menjou, Pauline Starke, Fred Malatesta

Synopsis: Star Pola Negri and director Ernst Lubitsch, who created an international sensation with the German superproduction DuBarry, Woman of Passion, were reunited in the frothy Hollywood comedy/drama Forbidden Paradise. Negri is cast as Catherine, the Czarina of an unnamed but very Russian-looking Read More

Montmartre

Actors: Pola Negri

Synopsis: It's a mystery why Paramount released this terrible film. Actress Pola Negri had filmed it years before in Europe and it was neither a credit to her nor to the director Ernst Lubitsch, who she has collaborated with on other, truly stunning films. The setting is Paris in the 1860s. Yvette (Negri) Read More

Cheat

Actors: Pola Negri, Jack Holt, Charles de Roche, Dorothy Cumming, Robert Schable

Synopsis: Paramount brought the exotic Pola Negri over from Europe, and then it seemed like they didn't know what to do with her. Bella Donna proved to be a disappointment; nevertheless, the studio teamed their new star with the same director, George Fitzmaurice, for this melodrama, a remake of the 1915 Read More

Bella Donna

Actors: Pola Negri, Conway Tearle, Conrad Nagel, Adolphe Menjou, Claude King

Synopsis: In her autobiography, Pola Negri claims she felt dubious about playing the lead role in this exotic drama based on the novel by Robert Hichens; as her first role in an American production, Negri felt it would typecast her as a vamp. In spite of her doubts, critics felt that the role of Ruby Read More

Hollywood

Actors: Luke Cosgrave, George K. Arthur, Ruby Lafayette, Eleanor Lawson

Synopsis: The premise is clichéd -- it's the usual tale of a pretty girl from the sticks trying to break into movies -- but this satire gives it a number of unexpected turns. In addition, just about every star in Hollywood -- not just those at Paramount, the releasing studio -- has a cameo at one point or Read More

Mad Love

Actors: Pola Negri

Synopsis: This melodrama was the last German-made film starring Pola Negri to be released in the United States. By the time it came out, Negri was already at Paramount and creating headlines over her romance with comedian Charles Chaplin. Her first American-made film, Bella Donna, would be out only a few Read More

Spanish Dancer

Actors: Pola Negri, Antonio Moreno, Wallace Beery, Kathlyn Williams, Gareth Hughes

Synopsis: The rights to Don Cesar, the novel by Vicente Blasco-Ibanez, were originally purchased by Paramount as a vehicle for Rudolph Valentino. When he and the studio had a parting of the ways, the story was rewritten for Pola Negri, with Gypsy dancer Maritana as the lead. This was Negri's third film for Read More

Arme Violetta

Actors: Pola Negri

Synopsis: Although her excellent work for German studio UFA got Pola Negri a Hollywood movie contract, not all the films she made overseas were winners. Case in point: this slow-moving, sex-laden melodrama which was basically a modern take on Camille (ironically, Negri had also shot her own version of the Read More

The Eyes of the Mummy

Actors: Pola Negri, Emil Jannings

Synopsis: Considering the poor quality of this UFA-produced melodrama starring Pola Negri and Emil Jannings, it's quite likely the two actors played in it before doing Passion and One Arabian Night (known in Germany as Madame DuBarry and Sumurun respectively). Negri plays Marah, the high priestess of Read More

Devil's Pawn

Actors: Pola Negri, Adolph Edgar Licho, Harry Liedtke

Synopsis: Hollywood actors who were tied to studio contracts often complained loudly about the quality of material they were given. They should have felt fortunate, however, compared to Pola Negri who -- when she wasn't being directed by {$Ernst Lubistsch -- made some really awful dramas for Germany's UFA. Read More

Die Bergkatze

Actors: Pola Negri, Victor Janson, Paul Heidemann

Synopsis: The free-spirited daughter of a dangerous bandit falls for a handsome lieutenant in director Ernst Lubitsch's classic 1921 military satire. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide Read More

Last Payment

Actors: Pola Negri, Leopold Von Ledebur, Harry Liedtke, Reinhold Schünzel

Synopsis: As a star in Germany Pola Negri became known for her costume dramas. This picture was only the second time she was placed in a modern setting. The plot however, was dated -- it was the Theda Bara type of vamping that had been popular during the 1910s, but which seemed overly dramatic and tiresome Read More

Sumurun

Actors: Pola Negri, Ernst Lubitsch

Synopsis: One Arabian Night is the inadequate American title bestowed upon director Ernst Lubitsch's brilliant German drama Sumurun. In what turned out to be his last on-camera appearance (he was a former slapstick comedian), Lubitsch stars as Yeggar, a hunchbacked clown who works with a travelling Read More

Vendetta

Actors: Pola Negri, Magnus Stifter, Harry Liedtke

Synopsis: When this German-produced film reached the U.S., it was touted as the first Pola Negri film that wasn't a costume drama. In spite of this, Negri plays the same type of passionate character she did in her period films (something she was very good at, too). A longer version of it was released in Read More

Madame Du Barry

Actors: Emil Jannings

Synopsis: Before he became world-famous for his sophisticated sex farces, Ernst Lubitsch was primarily a director of outsized German "spectaculars." One such was Madame Du Barry, an operatic version of the life, loves and death of the legendary 18th-century French courtesan. Pola Negri plays DuBarry, who Read More

Gypsy Blood

Synopsis: The Ernst Lubitsch/Pola Negri version of Prosper Merimee's Carmen was filmed in Germany in 1918, but not released in the U.S. until the Spring of 1921. It sticks closely to the novel's plot -- La Camencita, a cigarette girl and smuggler (Negri), is loved by soldier Don Jose Navarro (Harry Read More

Carmen

Synopsis: World-renowned European actress Marguerite Sylva joined the legions of top female personalities who played Merimee's tragic gypsy heroine Carmen on the silver screen in the pre-1920 era. Less star-driven than the recent American versions of Carmen, this Italian production concentrates primarily on Read More