Alla Nazimova (1879-1945) was a silent movie star, broadway legend, director and producer. The lavish parties she threw at her Hollywood estate would have given Jay Gatsby a run for his money.
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Hello, from Wonder Media Network I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Our woman of the day was a silent movie star, broadway legend, director and producer. The lavish parties she threw at her Hollywood estate would have given Jay Gatsby a run for his money.
Let’s talk about the fabulous, Alla Nazimova.
Alla Nazimova was born Miriam Edez Adelaida Leventon on June 4, 1879 in Yalta, Crimea -- then part of Czarist Russia. Alla’s homelife was disrupted at an early age when her parents divorced. She spent the next several years bouncing between family members and in-and-out of boarding schools. At seven, she began learning the violin. She later enrolled in the Philharmonic School in Moscow but pivoted her artistic pursuits after she discovered acting.
At the age of 17, Alla joined the Stanislavsky Moscow Art Theater company. It was there that she developed her stage name: Alla Nazimova. In 1899, Alla married fellow actor, Seryozha Golovin. Soon after they married, Alla started up an affair with another star of Moscow’s theater scene, Pavel Orlenev. Alla and Pavel started their own theater company and were soon touring around Europe to much acclaim.
Riding off this success, Alla and Pavel made the leap to the United States. In 1905 Alla debuted on Broadway in a reprisal of “The Chosen People.” The following year, in 1906, Alla struck out on her own and signed a contract with famed Broadway producer Lee Shubert. She starred in a production of Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler''. Alla is hailed as one of the best actresses to have ever performed the titular role.
Alla spent the next few years starring in iconic Ibsen and Chekhov plays on Broadway. Her big leap to film came in 1916 when she starred in the silent film, “War Brides”. From there, her career in silent films took off. Her performance as a prostitute in the 1918 film, “Revelation” along with her portrayal of a suicidal woman in “Toys of Fate” that same year, made her a Hollywood darling. Alla signed a contract with Metro Pictures where she earned $13,000 a week. In today’s dollars, that would be nearly $230,000 a week.
But Alla did more than just star in her films. She also started her own production company, Nazimova Productions. At a time when women were often kept out of such leadership roles, Alla wrote, directed and produced much of her own work. However, she had to do so sneakily. Many of her screenplays were written under the name Peter M. Winters. The films she directed were using the name Charles Bryant.
In actuality, Charles Bryant was a British actor that Alla often referred to as her husband -- although technically Alla was still married to her first husband, who she’d left back in Russia. Much like her first marriage, this union also proved to be a bit of a sham. While the two kept up pretenses for many years, Charles eventually married someone else and Alla’s true sexuality was revealed.
This revelation developed in tandem with Alla’s reputation for being very generous to up-and-coming actresses. The control she had over her films allowed her to feature young women she felt were talented. This also proved fruitful for Alla’s dating life. She struck up romantic affairs with many actresses, including Jean Acker [Ahh-ker], Anna May Wong and Eva Le Gallienne.
Alla eventually found a long-term partner in actress Glesca Marshall. Together, the two created a lasting part of Alla’s legacy: the Garden of Allah.
The Garden of Allah was a three-acre property on the corner of Crescent Heights and Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. The Garden was a safe space for Alla, Glesca and their lesbian community. It was also the site of lavish parties for the Hollywood Elite.
In 1927, Alla converted the gardens into a resort. It included twenty-five bungalows, and lush foliage surrounding a pool shaped like the Black Sea. The opening party for the resort raged on for eighteen hours and included stars like Marlene Dietrich, John Barrymore and Jack Dempsey. Other A-list celebrities of the time, like Ginger Rogers, Greta Garbo and F. Scott Fitzgerald spent time at the Garden of Allah. Tallulah Bankhead, who we featured earlier this month, could often be found skinny dipping in the pool.
Alla’s rise to the top eventually hit a snag. After a series of flops, her production company was forced to close. The production that put her over the edge was an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s, “Salome”. This extremely expensive film was opulent, full of over-the-top performances and devoid of plot. Everything about the film flew in the face of Hollywood’s rigid morality codes and it is alleged that the entire cast and crew for the film was gay.
Her film career derailed, Alla returned to Broadway. She continued to have a successful stage career for many years and did return to film as a co-star in some of the first-ever “talkies”. But Alla’s star power and financial standing had significantly fallen.
In 1941, Alla returned to the Garden of Allah and rented Bungalow 24. She remained there until her death a few years later, in 1945, when she passed away from coronary thrombosis. She was 66 years old.
The film that bankrupted Alla and derailed her career, Salome, was screened in Alla’s honor at the final party ever thrown at the Garden of Allah in 1959. “Salome” is now seen in a new light. In 2000, it was hailed as an experimental tour de force and added to the National Film Registry.
Alla received her star on the Hollywood walk of fame in 1960.
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