Dictators' Friends

In 1935 hollow-eyed Pola Negri, oldtime cinemactress whose professional peak was reached in 1920 in Passion, found herself in serious difficulties with peppery little German Minister for Propaganda Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels. In the belief that Cinemactress Negri (real name: Appollonia Chalupec) was a Polish Jewess, Minister Goebbels refused her permission to act in Germany. Suddenly this order was overruled by the Fuehrer himself. "Investigation," read the official communique, "instituted by the Reichsfuehrer has established that Pola Negri is Polish and therefore Aryan" (TIME, Feb. 11, 1935). Pink with pleasure, Actress Negri cried: "The whole world knows that I am a Catholic. . . . Der Fuehrer must be a brilliant man. I haven't met him, but I would like to. You know, I have a lot of big men in my memories."

This episode brought Miss Negri much valuable publicity, several jobs, before she slipped into comparative obscurity again. Last week resting on the French Riviera after finishing a German version of Madame Bovary, Pola Negri had cause to be grateful to the name of Hitler once more. Acting on a tip from Paris, the wildly sensational London Sunday Referee printed a startling story: recently Actress Negri had admitted to her mother that she was having an affair with someone in Germany, and added, "I can say no more than that he is a very very famous person." In Berlin she had been seen several times at informal parties squired by the Fuehrer.

Spreading of these stories, plus the revival of the old one about Miss Negri's Jewish blood, caused Handsome Adolf to burst into tears. Sobbed he: "The slanderers! The slanderers!" Later he was reported to have sent secret agents to Poland to prove once and for all Pola Negri's Aryan ancestry.

When the story reached Poland, vanloads of police descended upon the offices of the Warsaw Kurjer Codzienny and of the Katowice Polonia, seized every copy of their editions rehashing the Referee's story of the Negri-Hitler affair.

Propped up in bed in Paris last week was Count Charles de Chambrun, retired French Ambassador to Rome recovering from a pistol shot in the groin, fired by sultry Madeleine de Fontanges who accused him of breaking up her romance with Benito Mussolini (TIME, March 29 et seq.). Cried the Count: "I swear I never in my life occupied myself with Mme de Fontanges' personal affairs."

Changing her own story last week, Mme de Fontanges claimed that it was the burning jealousy of white-thatched Joseph Paul-Boncour, former Premier of France, that really ended her glorious idyll with Il Duce.

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