Personal life
Negri's first marriage was with Count Eugeniusz Dąbski, and proved to be short-lived. Negri married Dąbski in St Mary's Assumption Church in Sosnowiec on 5 November 1919, thus becoming Countess Apolonia Dąbska-Chałupec. After a long separation period, Negri and Dąbski's union was dissolved in 1922.
After she began working in the United States, she made headlines and gossip columns with a string of celebrity love affairs, most notably with film stars Charlie Chaplin, Rod La Rocque, and Rudolph Valentino. Negri had met Chaplin while in Germany, and what began as a platonic relationship became a well-publicized affair and marriage speculation which received the headline "The Queen of Tragedy to Wed the King of Comedy." The relationship soured, and Negri became involved for a time with actor Rod La Rocque, who appeared as her leading man in Forbidden Paradise (1924). Negri met Rudolph Valentino at a costume party held by Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst at the San Simeon estate and was reportedly Valentino's lover until his death in 1926. She caused a media sensation at his New York funeral on 24 August 1926, at which she "fainted" several times, and according to actor Ben Lyon, arranged for a large floral arrangement that spelled "P-O-L-A" to be placed on Valentino's coffin. The press dismissed her actions as a publicity stunt. At the time of his death and for the remainder of her life, Negri claimed Valentino was the love of her life.
Just before the Wall Street crash of 1929, The New York Times estimated Negri's personal worth at $5 million.
Negri soon married again, to the Georgian self-styled "Prince" Serge Mdivani. This action caused public opinion in the United States to sour against her because it happened so quickly after Rudolph Valentino's death. Negri and Mdivani were married on 14 May 1927 (less than nine months after Valentino's death); shortly after she became pregnant, and Negri, who always wanted a child, started taking better care of her health and even considered retiring from movies in order to be a housewife and mother. However, she reportedly suffered a miscarriage. She grieved the loss of her child for the rest of her life; she and Mdivani divorced on 2 April 1931.
While residing at the Ambassador Hotel in New York in April 1932, Negri performed with Russ Columbo in George Jessel's variety revue at the Schubert Theatre and was briefly involved with Columbo. After her film A Woman Commands premiered in Hollywood, Columbo performed Negri's signature song "Paradise" with his orchestra and dedicated the song to her. Columbo also recorded and released the song as a 78 rpm single that year with slightly altered lyrics, and the single became a huge sensation with audiences across the country.
When Negri returned to the United States in the early 1940s, she became close friends with Margaret West, an oil heiress, former radio star and vaudeville actress, whom she had originally met in the 1930s. The two became housemates, sharing a beachfront home in Los Angeles with Negri's then-88-year-old mother and later in Bel Air. Negri, who remained a devout Catholic in her later life, spent her time raising funds for Catholic charities with both her mother and West. On 12 January 1951, Negri became a naturalized citizen of the United States. After the death of Negri's mother in 1954 of pancreatic cancer, in 1957, Negri and West relocated from Los Angeles to a suite in the Menger Hotel, San Antonio, Texas and later to a large home in Olmos Park, Texas. Negri lived with West until the latter's death of heart failure in 1963. Negri moved out of the home she had shared with West into a townhouse located at 7707 Broadway in San Antonio, where she spent the remainder of her years, largely out of the public eye.
Some scholars, such as Emily Leider, a Rudolph Valentino biographer, have suggested that Negri was bisexual, and that she and West, who lived together from 1948 to 1963 were romantic partners. Negri biographer Sergio Delgado contests this, though he notes in his 2016 book Pola Negri: Temptress of Silent Hollywood, that there is "strong anecdotal evidence" that Negri was bisexual.
