SAN ANTONIO -- Pola Negri, the exotic silent screen star who outlived her industry but not her 'great love' for Rudolph Valentino, died in the city for which she had forsaken Hollywood. She was 87.
Reknowned for her portrayal of the legendary vamp -- the dark haired, smoky-eyed beauty enticing men to their ruin in film after film - she died in her sleep of pneumonia Saturday at Northeast Baptist Hospital in San Antonio.
A respected star of Europe, the Polish actress was lured to this country to join the ranks of Gloria Swanson, Cecil B. DeMille, Charlie Chaplin and her beloved Valentino in the glamorous era of Hollywood in the 1920s.
Services were scheduled for 3 p.m. Wednesday at Our Lady of Bright Hope Catholic Church in Los Angeles. Burial was to be at Chapel of Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles. A rosary was planned for 7 p.m. Monday at Porter Loring Funeral Home Chapel.
Negri lived her last years a near recluse, surrounded by her many mementos of Valentino, said Gilbert Denman, her close friend and attorney since she moved to San Antonio 30 years ago.
'He was the great love of her life,' Denman said Sunday he was often told by the silent screen queen.
Helena Merek, a member of a Polish order of Roman Catholic nuns in San Antonio, said she met frequently with Negri to translate letters sent to her by fans in Poland. Their last meeting was last week, she said.
'She (Negri) never told me about Valentino,' Merek said. 'Maybe it was because I was a sister.'
Negri, whose real name was Apollonia Chapulek, twice married wealthy men and had been romantically linked with Chaplin and other stars, but Valentino was the one she talked about the most.
She and the idolized star of 'The Sheik' were in the midst of their love affair when he suddenly died in 1926 at the age of 31.
Moments before he died, he told his doctor, 'Pola, if she does not come in time, tell her I'll think of her,' Negri learned from a note by the physician given to her by actress Mary Pickford.
'I will never forget,' Negri wrote in her autobiography 44 years later.
Others would speculate she was the mysterious 'woman in black' who visited Valentino's tomb each year, but Denman said Negri denied it.
Negri was immensely proud of her movie career, said Denman, who recalled her occasional flair for the dramatic. 'Two or three months ago she was in the hospital and I found her a substitute doctor because her personal doctor could not be found. He looked like a teenager. She had put on her form for occupation: retired actress. He obviously did not know her,' Denman said.
'She raised up in her bed and cried out, 'I was the greatest film actress in the world,'' he said.
Denman said she was still beautiful in her last years.
'She was always quite vain about her looks, even at her decrepit old age,' he said.
'If I was late, she could make me wait for 20 minutes while she put her fake eyelashes on.'
Negri liked to she say 'was the last baby of the century,' born New Year's Eve in 1899, but Denman doubted that.
'That might have been a little dramatic, since there were reports as long back as 1894, (but) we've always celebrated (her birthday on) New Year's Eve,' he said. 'She was first and foremost an actress in every moment of her existence,' Denman said.
Europe produced more films than America before World War I, and Negri, a native of Poland, became the most famous star of German films following a career on stage that began in 1913. American Director Adolph Zukor lured her to Paramount in 1921.
Among her nearly 20 movies between 1921 and 1928 were: 'Mad Love', 'Hotel Imperial,' 'The Flame,' 'Forbidden Paradise,' and 'Carmen.'
But she was fondest of her work in Europe.
'All this vamp business, she didn't like it. She liked the serious role,' Denman said.
She visited San Antonio for the first time in 1957 and decided to move there. 'There were parties and parades, and a pervasive atmosphere of festivities,' she wrote in the book 'Pola Negri: Memoirs of a Star.'
In 1963, she emerged briefly from retirement to play a cameo role in the Walt Disney film, 'The Moonspinners.' ---
She spent the rest of her days corresponding with friends and donating generously to arts and higher education in San Antonio. She reveled in the German Film Prize, awarded in 1964 for her achievements. A deeply religious Roman Catholic, she also supported an order of Polish nuns in downtown San Antonio.
Their shrine to Our Lady of Czestochowa -- Poland's patron saint - shelters Negri's portrait alongside one of the saint. Nuns placed a black sash over the portrait after learning of her death.
Negri always despaired of the false, studio-born rumors of a feud with Gloria Swanson.
Swanson, another silent screen star who has outlived most of her peers, was planning a trip to Texas just before her death in 1983.
'One of the things she had requested was a visit with Pola Negri. They were planning their reunion at the time Gloria Swanson died,' Denman said.
