click to enlarge Paramount Pictures
Hollywood star Pola Negri, who retired to San Antonio in 1957, stars in Hotel Imperial.
After her successful career in the silent and golden film eras of Hollywood, Polish stage and screen star Pola Negri settled down in San Antonio in 1957 where she lived the remainder of her life.
When she died in 1987 at the age of 90, she left most of her estate to St. Mary’s University.
Best known for her femme fatale roles, Negri played against character in the 1927 silent war drama
Hotel Imperial. In the film, she plays Anna Sedlak, a Russian chambermaid who hides a trapped Austrian lieutenant (James Hall) in her hotel during World War I.
Before the screening of
Hotel Imperial, Bernadette Hamilton-Brady, an associate professor of drama at St. Mary’s, will hold a conversation about Negri’s life and the impact her career had on Hollywood.
Hamilton-Brady began researching Negri in the late ’90s, and in 2003, the prof wrote and starred in a one-woman production called
His Polita.
A 1924 portrait of Negri is currently on exhibit at the San Antonio Museum of Art. The piece was painted by artist Tadé Styka and is a part of the museum’s permanent collection.
That exhibition, “40 Years, 40 Stories” will run through Jan. 2.
The screening will take place outdoor in the museum’s West Courtyard, weather permitting.
Free, 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 22, San Antonio Museum of Art, 200 W. Jones Ave., (210) 978-8100, samuseum.org.
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