Pola Negri’s Star Persona in America of the 1920s

Agata Frymus

Abstract This chapter looks at the construction of Pola Negri’s persona by discussing her films, as well as her off-screen antics. Negri’s figure was emblematic of a representation of an exotic and threatening foreign woman, the association which inevitably incapacitated her career in the American movie industry. Firstly, I position the iconography of the vamp in the cultural context of the era. The figure of a pagan, earthy female sexuality had been popularised at the end of the nineteenth century by symbolist painters and consequently re-invented in the America of the 1920s to mobilise fears surrounding the growing economic independence of women and to reflect concerns linked to the new wave of immigration. I will analyse the ways in which Negri’s movies re-enacted those anxieties through their gender portrayal. The femme fatale crosses the boundaries of patriarchal norms, class and ethnicity, and produces a threat. In films such as Spanish Dancer,1 Negri not only personified a threat to the status quo, questioning rigid limitations of sexuality, but above all represented an ethnic hazard. Her exotic otherness threatened to undermine the existing cultural order, making Negri a unique symbol of the possibility of foreign invasion. From the outset of the star’s relationship with American media, the press insisted on seeing her mainly through the prism of her European otherness. Many articles contained deliberate misspelling to convey Negri’s Eastern European accent. By the late twenties the representational scheme Negri was widely associated with fell out of fashion, marking a turning point in her career. The fact she could not escape the typecasting (nor dismiss the threatening characteristics of the vamp figure) contributed to her demise as an artist.

Key Words: Film history, star studies, Pola Negri, silent cinema, vamp, Hollywood, gender, femme fatale, ethnicity, American cinema.

*****

Pola Negri came into prominence by playing roles of seductive, passionate women in German film productions. That typecasting continued after she embarked on her career in the US in 1922. This chapter explores the construction of her star persona by discussing both her films and her off-screen antics. In situating Negri in the wider cultural context of 1920s America, I will draw a connection between her image and the issues of gender and ethnicity that underlie the concept of the vamp. I argue that Negri was a watershed figure in the representation of the exotic and threatening foreign woman, an association which inevitably relegated her to the side-lines of the movie industry by the late 1920s. It

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi �0.��63/97890043508�6_003 22 Pola Negri’s Star Persona in America of the 1920s ______was not unusual for Hollywood studios to invite a European movie star to America and deliberately re-package her or him as a product reinvented for the new market. Andrew Higson and Richard Maltby point out that the policy of acquiring raw continental talent worked on many levels, not only appropriating the attractions of the old world within the American market but also selling them back to Europeans.2 European sensibility, with its connotations of high society and theatre, was of particular appeal to the American audience in the 1920s. Whilst cinema was still struggling to achieve the status of an art medium, this international exchange validated a more favourable view of American cinema as producing features of cultural value. In the long-standing dichotomy between European ‘high’ culture and the ‘low’ output of American film, Hollywood producers tried to correspond to the former by taking European actors and directors on board for their productions.3 At the dawn of the roaring twenties Adolph Zukor, the executive of both Famous-Players Lasky and Paramount arranged to bring Pola Negri and Ernst Lubitsch stateside in late 1922. Stephen Gundle and Clino Castelli argue that all of the most influential Big Five studios used the association between Europe and refinement in its promotional practices. Paramount, however, was original in balancing continental decadence with ‘a predominant emphasis on optimism, democracy, the mass market, social mobility, individual aspiration and the possibilities for self-transformation.’4 In order to encourage a more cultured image of the movies, Zukor’s promotional tactic relied on three basic principles: first, hiring established stars (and adopting the star system pre-existent in theatre); secondly, using the association between theatre and Europe; and thirdly, promoting expensive, opulent film features. As a flamboyant Polish import, Negri was emblematic of refined taste and bohemia, which made her quite a lure for American spectators. The media used her exoticism to drive the public’s interest, frequently referencing Negri’s European, or even alleged gypsy, heritage. A caption underneath a stylised picture of the actress published by Motion Picture Magazine in September 1921 described Negri as ‘bringing a Continental flavour to the shadow-screen.’5 A short account written by none other than Charlie Chaplin for Photoplay praised Negri’s beauty and acting talent in equal measure, stating that the star is about to come to America to make moving pictures where ‘she will be a revelation.’6 Nearly all press releases promoted a fierce star figure whose obscure background added to the sense of all- encompassing enigma. The reoccurring theme of inscrutability corresponded to the idea of an essential Negri behind the film roles: the idea of a star that remained constant throughout her performances. To understand the implications of Negri’s persona, her image has to be situated in the flux of newly emerging concepts relating to women and immigration. The femme fatale, as a motif, migrated to America in the early twentieth century and was ‘an amalgam of cultural fears and preoccupations, at once threatening and fascinating the artists and writers.’ European actresses were imbued with