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Immigrant Stardom in Imperial America: Pola Negri and the Problem of Typology

Immigrant Stardom in Imperial America: Pola Negri and the Problem of Typology Historically positioned as she was between the passive, pure ideal woman of the late 1800s and the New Woman of the 1920s, the vamp of Hollywood silent film has ties to both stereotypes. In this article I briefly consider these relationships and then examine the career of Pola Negri — one of the actresses most associated with vamping — for the evidence it may provide about the images and understandings of transgressive ethnic femininity in turn-ofthe-century American culture. Negri’s American career was not congruent with what might be called the “golden era” of the vamp (1915–19), launched when Theda Bara appeared in A Fool There Was (dir. Frank Powell, Copyright © 2001 by Camera Obscura Camera Obscura 48, Volume 16, Number 3 Published by Duke University Press 159 Camera Obscura 1915). Although Negri was making films at that time (and principally ones in which she starred as an exotic, threatening woman), these films were made in Poland and Germany, and Negri did not come to be known to the American moviegoing public until the early 1920s. I want to consider critically the standard account that Pola Negri simply resuscitated Bara’s persona, in order to argue both that it http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Camera Obscura Duke University Press

Immigrant Stardom in Imperial America: Pola Negri and the Problem of Typology

Negra, Diane
Camera Obscura , Volume 16 (3 48) – Jan 1, 2001
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References (33)

Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2001 by Camera Obscura
ISSN
1529-1510
eISSN
1529-1510
DOI
10.1215/02705346-16-3_48-159
Publisher site
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Abstract

Historically positioned as she was between the passive, pure ideal woman of the late 1800s and the New Woman of the 1920s, the vamp of Hollywood silent film has ties to both stereotypes. In this article I briefly consider these relationships and then examine the career of Pola Negri — one of the actresses most associated with vamping — for the evidence it may provide about the images and understandings of transgressive ethnic femininity in turn-ofthe-century American culture. Negri’s American career was not congruent with what might be called the “golden era” of the vamp (1915–19), launched when Theda Bara appeared in A Fool There Was (dir. Frank Powell, Copyright © 2001 by Camera Obscura Camera Obscura 48, Volume 16, Number 3 Published by Duke University Press 159 Camera Obscura 1915). Although Negri was making films at that time (and principally ones in which she starred as an exotic, threatening woman), these films were made in Poland and Germany, and Negri did not come to be known to the American moviegoing public until the early 1920s. I want to consider critically the standard account that Pola Negri simply resuscitated Bara’s persona, in order to argue both that it

Journal

Camera Obscura – Duke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2001

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