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The Mystery of Pola Negri
Harry Carr says Pola is mysterious because she dares to change her emotional clothes in public; consequently she is
THE mystery of Pola Negri isn't really so mysterious, after all. The truth is. Pola is a child of impulse. She is quite capable of kissing a cook or kicking a king — if the spirit so moves her.
Untamed Gypsy blood runs in her veins. She doesn't know the meaning of restraint.
It is Pola's nature to do exactly whatever she feels like doing. Sometimes she has a tenderness and a sweetness that is almost overwhelming. But if she feels ugly — well then, she's ugly.
When Pola has been crossed in love — which quite frequently happens — she doesn't tell the world that she is suffering from a headache due to eye-strain. She announces that she has been crossed in love and retires to mourn.
I have known Pola to snub a very distinguished celebrity of a foreign diplomatic corps before whom all Hollywood had prostrated itself in awe and humility. That in the morning ; and in the afternoon to waste an hour on a scared young girl, who strayed in from an Iowa town and said she yearned to be a movie actress.
Pola is cruel, condescending, overbearing, humble, contrite, generous, sweetly reasonable, gracious with a charm that would disarm an ogre, disagreeable, ungracious, winning, forbidding. In other words, Pola is every kind of woman — according to the mood of the moment.
The lovable and wonderful thing about Pola is that she sees thru herself.
'•I'm jus' a bloof," "Jus' a bloof! That's acting."
All of which explains the mystery of Pola
Overbearing
Humble
Disagreeable
Reasonable
Forbidding
Charming
Ruthless
Sympathetic
she the
says wav
in of
her charming voice, all actresses ; always
Why.
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Europe, she was one of the greatest actresses in the world ; came over here and — until Forbidden Paradise — wasn't the greatest actress in the world.
So long as Pola is herself : so long as she remains a creature of whims and moods and does what she feels like doing, she is marvelous. When she tries to stop and figure out what to do — the fire goes out.
When she first came over to America, somebody filled her up with a lot of nervous apprehension about American audiences. As tho we were a different kind of being altogether !
The result was, her first American pictures did not show the real Pola at all. They showed a stuffed doll that Pola nervously conjured up for the occasion.
They told her, if she would stand so and look so and turn her head this way and that, she would look very beautiful Also, she must be a maiden of lily-white purity ; so Pola attempted to be so refined that it was fairly suffocating.
The fruits of this harvest — as might have been expected — were a couple of very bad pictures. No one so cheerfully admits this as Pola herself.
It was very curious — t he way Pola worked at that time. One of her first American directors told me that Pola, suddenly called before the camera, would always go thru the scene once and do it with fire and genius. Then she'd always say : "Now I would like to do that again. I have figured out a way to do it better." And that second time, it was invariably bad. This is nearly always true of genius. When they "just do it," they are convincing and wonderful ; when they stop {Continued on page 108)
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