Film star genealogies?

Question:

Film star genealogies?

I recently learned from my mom (in her 70s) that we are somehow related to a former silent film star named Pola Negri, through my maternal grandmother's family. The info is word-of-mouth but it's possible, since we have pretty well-documented Polish ancestry on that side, but we're obviously not direct descendents so the actress is off on a "branch" somewhere if she's indeed a relative.

I know nothing about geneaological research and this is my first question in this section, so please forgive any naivete, but I am curious whether there is a resource for film star genealogies? Like most, her bio gives dates and places of birth/death and her parents' names, but nothing other than that. I just wondered if, with family info about someone fairly prominent, we could then work forward rather than backward to fill in the gaps between our known family history and hers?

It has us intrigued, and any suggestions are welcome.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Genealogy.com has trees for many of the modern stars. But Pola Negri is pretty obscure by their standards. However, since we know where and when she was born in Poland, and since you have your family tree already documented, it wouldn't be hard to match them up if it's within a generation or two of a common ancestor.

Since you haven't done genealogy before, and since researching in Poland has a few challenges attached, I'd be glad to see what we can find together. She was Pomeranian (the province of Poland where she was born) and those records haven't been transcribed and put on the internet...and probably won't be for several years. They did survive all the turmoil in Europe, though, because that wasn't a major population center. We'd start with figuring out if your family even had ties to Pomerania and go from there.

If you want to email me through my profile, I can take a look at what you know about your family and can help you order the records from the Mormon Family History Center nearest you that will help you figure this out.

It's actually the most interesting question I think we've ever had on this board all year. You'd have to find your parents and grandparents and grat grandparents until you got back to Poland in the late 1800's, then see if your ancestors and hers matched. If not, you'd have to go back another generation on both sides to see if they matched, and repeat.

It would be tough, since Poland is a flat coutry between two agressive ones, and every time Russia and Germany came to blows, lots of records went up in smoke.