“The actor should not play a part. Like the Aeolian harps that used to be hung in the trees to be played only by the breeze, the actor should be an instrument played upon by the character he depicts.” - Alla Nazimova
At one point billed as “The World’s Greatest Actress”, Alla Nazimova, who was also for a time the highest paid actress in the film industry, is somehow a name that is still relatively unknown to most. Despite the pioneering work she did in both movies and onstage, including being the first woman to start her own film production company in the 1910s, the majority of Nazimova’s career has been lost to history, as almost all of her films were never preserved. Additionally, having bedded some of the most famous queer women in the entertainment industry and coining the term “Sewing Circle”–referring to the community of lesbian and bisexual actresses and artists who concealed their true sexuality from the public–Nazimova was also an extremely pivotal but oft forgotten LGBTQ pioneer who is frequently considered the “Founding Mother of Sapphic Hollywood.”
Alla Nazimova was born Miriam Edez Adelaida Leventon in 1879 in Yalta, a resort city on the south coast of the Crimean Peninsula, in what is today considered part of Ukraine. She was the youngest of three children born to Jewish parents and her father, Yakov Abramovich Levnton, and her mother, Sarah Leivievna Gorowitz moved to Yalta in 1870 from Kishinev, a city known for several major pogroms in which hundreds of Jews were attacked. In 1882, fearing the arrival of more pogroms which had been sweeping across the region from Kyiv to Odessa, Yakov relocated his family to Switzerland.
Despite the migration towards safety, the early years of Alla’s life were sadly still marked by extreme physical and sexual violence, as she grew up in a dysfunctional family in which her father subjected both her and her mother to lashings and verbal abuse. Alla’s parents ultimately divorced when she was eight years old, and her father subsequently prohibited her from speaking about her mother. Additionally, Yakov hid from his children for many years the fact that they were Jewish, which left Alla ignorant as to the true reasons behind their relocation. After her parents separated, Alla was also briefly shuffled around numerous boarding schools, foster homes and relatives’ houses, traumatizing her further.
In 1888, ten-year-old Alla rejoined her remarried father back in Yalta. Yakov soon enrolled his daughter in violin lessons but forbade her from performing as Adelaida Leventon, lest she disgrace the family name. Determined to perform, Alla came up with a stage name, Alla Nazimova. Alla was a diminutive of Adelaida, while Nazimova was taken from the surname of Nadezhda Nazimova, a favorite heroine of hers from the Russian novel, Children of the Streets. The name stuck, and Nazimova went by it for the rest of her life.
Nazimova eventually found the violin to be too difficult for her, and as a teenager, began to take an interest in theater. At age seventeen, she moved to Moscow to study acting under director and dramaturge Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, who in 1898 founded the Moscow Art Theatre with his colleague, Konstantin Stanislavski. There she was introduced to Stanislavski’s famous acting method while it was still in its early stages of development, and she would draw from it throughout her career. As a student, Alla began using performance as a means of escape from her difficult childhood and showed a natural talent for the art form. In 1899, Nazimova left the Moscow Art Theatre to begin acting in the provinces. That same year, Nazimova also took her first step in what would become her dizzying personal life, when she married Sergei Golovin, a fellow penniless actor, at the age of twenty. The pair lived together as roommates, but Nazimova’s early acting career got off to a rough start and she resorted to prostitution to help make ends meet. She soon became the mistress to a wealthy admirer, whose financial generosity allowed her to focus more on building her acting career. Golovin, weary of playing the third wheel to him, moved out for good but never divorced Alla in the process.
Nazimova was then cast in Evgeny Chirikov’s play, The Chosen People, a daring production whose success ultimately led to a tour in New York City, with “Madame Nazimova” cast as the leading lady. By 1903, Nazimova’s career in theater was blossoming and she became a major star in both Moscow and Saint Petersburg. She began to tour through Europe with her then boyfriend Pavel Orlenev, a flamboyant actor and producer. Two years later, the pair moved to New York City where they co-founded a Russian-language theater on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The venture was ultimately unsuccessful, and Orlenev returned to Russia while Nazimova stayed behind.
In 1906, Nazimova’s decision to remain in New York paid off when she met the American producer Henry Miller, who recognized star-making qualities in her enigmatic, enthralling presence. Miller helped launch Nazimova’s career and she shortly thereafter signed a five-year contract with the Shubert family, who essentially founded New York’s burgeoning Broadway district. While simultaneously taking intensive English lessons, Nazimova made her Broadway debut in 1906 to both critical and popular acclaim. Nazimova reportedly learned English in merely five months and made her English-language premiere in the title role of Henrik Ibsen’s play, Hedda Gabler. American writer and critic Dorothy Parker described Nazimova as the finest Hedda Gabler she had ever seen. Meanwhile, an eighteen-year-old Eugene O’Neill, who would later go on to be one of the most famous playwrights of all time, saw the production ten times. He later recalled how the show opened “an entire new world of drama for me … of a modern theater where truth may live.”
Over the next couple of years, Nazimova debuted in several other plays by Ibsen, including A Doll’s House in 1906 and The Master Builder in 1907. Nazimova would soon be deemed an influential interpreter of Ibsen’s characters and played a key role in helping popularize the Norwegian playwright’s work in the States. Audiences became infatuated with the dangerous, seductive siren image that producers helped Nazimova cultivate, and her popularity soared. By 1910, the Shuberts named a newly constructed theater after her, called Nazimova's 39th Street Theatre. According to theater scholar Robert A. Schanke, however, the image curated for Nazimova by those who employed her was in part a front to help dispel the budding rumors of her possible bisexuality.
Schanke’s assessment could be the reason why within the year, Nazimova, tired of the Shuberts’ controlling methods, severed ties with the powerful family and turned down their offer to renew her contract. Nazimova's 39th Street Theatre quickly became just The 39th Street Theatre, and in 1911, the actress instead signed with the successful theater manager and producer, Charles Frohman. With Frohman by her side, Nazimova then starred in Bella Donna, playing an exotic vixen on Broadway for 72 performances. But in making enemies with the Shuberts, the drama that was unfolding behind the scenes began to damage Nazimova’s career on stage. According to Schanke, “Though her reputation had soared, her fame had turned to infamy…She wanted to be considered a great classic actress, but instead had become…a novelty who had lost the respect of the critics.”
Drama also ensued in Nazimova’s personal life when in 1912 she married the flamboyant British-born actor Charles Bryant in what would be considered a “lavender marriage.” In a daring move to help strengthen the believability of the union, Nazimova kept her still extant marriage to Sergei Golovin, who was residing back in the Soviet Union, a secret from the press, her fans, and even her close friends. Nazimova kept this audacious ruse up for eleven years, and in 1923 finally arranged to divorce Golovin, without ever traveling back to the Soviet Union to do so. Her divorce papers, which were mailed to her in the United States, finally stated that as of May 11, 1923, the marriage between "citizeness Leventon Alla Alexandrovna and Sergius Arkadyevitch Golovin, consummated between them in the City Church of Boruysk, June 20, 1899'' had been dissolved at last.
Meanwhile, frustrated with the direction of her career and left with few other options, Nazimova severed her Frohman contract and decided to venture out on her own, taking to the vaudeville circuit and starring in Marion Craig Wentworth’s bold pacifist drama, War Brides. Then in 1916, Nazimova pivoted towards film work and entered into the newly blossoming industry of Hollywood. Due to her notoriety in War Brides, Nazimova made her silent film debut in the movie version of the play that same year, which was produced by Lewis J. Selznick. Nazimova was paid handsomely for working on the film, earning one thousand dollars a day, plus another thousand for each day production went over schedule. Once again playing a feisty, indomitable leading lady, Nazimova’s place as a screen siren was immediately cemented when the film was a smashing success, raking in more than three hundred thousand dollars in profits.
Just a year later, Nazimova negotiated a contract with Metro Pictures, then a precursor to what would become MGM Studios, that included a whopping weekly salary of thirteen thousand dollars. The deal at the time made her the highest-paid film actress in the world. Nazimova then moved from New York to Hollywood where she made a number of highly successful films for Metro, including Out of the Fog (1919), The Red Lantern (1919), Madame Peacock (1920) and Billions (1920), among others. The films earned Nazimova a considerable amount of money and she started being billed as “The World’s Greatest Actress.”
Now wielding considerable power and influence in Hollywood–and despite still being wed to Charles Bryant–Alla Nazimova began feeling more comfortable publicly entering into affairs with women, which she would continue to do so for the rest of her life. She was allegedly involved with both of the celebrated actor Rudolph Valentino’s wives, Jean Acker and Natacha Rambova, and is responsible for helping jumpstart the careers of both women in Hollywood. Perhaps in an effort to make up for lost time, the list of prestigious women that Nazimova is confirmed to have been romantically involved with over the years is quite impressive and includes the likes of actress Eva Le Gallienne, film director Dorothy Arzner, writer Mercedes de Acosta, actress Anna May Wong, painter Bridget Bate Tichenor and Oscar Wilde's niece, Dolly Wilde. In fact, it is believed that Alla Nazimova was the one who coined the phrase “Sewing Circle”, a code word used for many decades thereafter to refer to the ring of lesbian or bisexual actresses and artists who concealed their true sexuality from the public. The “Sewing Circle” would go on to include legends such as Djuna Barnes, Marlene Dietrich, Tallulah Bankhead, Katherine Hepburn, and countless others. As a result of her influence, Nazimova received cult status in this regard and is often referred to as the “Founding Mother of Sapphic Hollywood.”
Nazimova’s newly adapted lifestyle of course gave rise to widespread rumors, particularly surrounding the outlandish and debaucherous parties she became known for throwing at her Sunset Boulevard mansion in Hollywood. Nazimova first leased the place beginning in 1918, before buying the 2.5-acre estate outright the following year. She began jokingly calling it “The Garden Of Alla”—a reference to her own name, and for years the estate became a gathering spot for Hollywood’s elites, or as one reporter at the time put it, “the best dressed and best undressed in the land.”
Nazimova also became a pioneering female in cinema when in 1917 she created and began working under her own production company, Nazimova Productions. Nazimova Productions lasted for four years, and during this time Alla filled many roles outside of acting, including serving as a director, producer, editor, and lighting designer on various films and even receiving credit for costume design for the film Revelation (1918). Nazimova also wrote screenplays under the pseudonym Peter M. Winters and directed several films that were ultimately only credited to the name of her male partner, Charles Bryant. During this period, Nazimova produced film adaptations of works by notable authors such as Oscar Wilde and Ibsen of course, and in doing so developed filmmaking techniques that were considered quite daring for the time.
The films Nazimova made during this period included Camille (1921), A Doll’s House (1922), and Salomé (1923), and all were considered critical and commercial failures at their releases. Over time, however, they became cult classics, with Salomé in particular hailed as one of the first American art films and regarded as a feminist milestone in movies. Nazimova’s Salomé contained an elaborate set and costumes, an allegedly all-gay cast, and a scene in which Alla performs a famous “Dance of Seven Veils”, which collectively contributed to the film’s legendary status in the LGBTQ cinema canon. When she was asked about her motivation behind the making of Salomé and Camille—two rather expensive flops—Alla coyly remarked, “I made them to please myself.” By 1925, however, Nazimova could no longer afford to invest in making more films, and her financial backers withdrew their support from her.
Seemingly down and out once again, Nazimova was struck another blow when on November 16, 1925, her “husband” Charles Bryant surprised both her and the press by marrying a woman named Marjorie Gilhooley. In doing so, the press revealed to the public that Bryant’s marital status on his wedding license stated he was “single” and that the marriage between him and Alla had been a sham all along. The news embroiled Nazimova in a defamatory scandal that only further damaged her reputation and career. Facing near-bankruptcy by 1926, Alla decided to put her estate to good use and converted her mansion into a hotel by building twenty-five villas on the property. She renamed it the Garden of Alla Hotel and held an opening party for it on January 9, 1927. Alla quickly realized, however, that being a hotel manager was not her strong suit and that her partners in the enterprise had screwed her over, only bankrupting her further. By 1928, Nazimova sold off her interest in the property, auctioned off most of her furniture and household items, and the new owners renamed the property the Garden of Allah Hotel, adding in the “H” to help normalize the spelling.
Giving up on both the film industry and hotel management, Alla returned to the place where she got her start: the stage. In 1928, Nazimova premiered in a critically acclaimed production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard for the Civic Repertory Theatre in Greenwich Village. She co-starred alongside its founding director, Eva Le Gallienne, with whom she’d had an affair ten years prior. Le Gallienne’s commitment to offering low ticket prices helped lay the groundwork for what would become Off-Broadway Theater and also helped save Alla’s career. While performing at the Repertory, Alla also struck gold in her personal life when she met a then nineteen-year-old superfan named Glesca Marshall, who would become her longest-lasting lover and lifetime companion.
In 1930, Nazimova made her return to Broadway, starring as Natalya Petrovna in Rouben Mamoulian's production of Turgenev's A Month in the Country. She then had an acclaimed performance playing the widow Helen Alving in Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts, which the highly influential critic Pauline Kael described as the greatest performance she had ever seen on the American stage. While her career was back on the upswing, Nazimova’s health, however, was on the decline. In 1936, less than a year after taking thirty-one curtain calls at a performance of Hedda Gabler on Broadway, Nazimova was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent a life-saving mastectomy, but the illness and the treatment slowed down her momentum indefinitely.
Three years later, Nazimova moved with Glesca Marshall into a bungalow called Villa 24 back at The Garden of Allah Hotel. By then, the Hotel had become a home to many celebrities and literary figures, and while living there Nazimova counted the likes of Frank Sinatra, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Orson Welles, and Sergei Rachmaninov among her more famous neighbors. She was also at this time paid a visit there by her goddaughter, the future Nancy Reagan. Nancy, herself the daughter of Broadway actress Edith Prescott Luckett, would later recall her impressions of the visit: “It was so small, nicely furnished but … how terrible it must [have been for Alla] after all that fame and glamor.”
Determined to continue working, Nazimova returned to film in the early 1940s after nearly fifteen years away from the industry, playing Robert Taylor's mother in Escape (1940) and Tyrone Power's mother in Blood and Sand (1941). This late return to motion pictures, fortunately, preserved Nazimova and her art on sound film, since all of her previous work on camera had been in silent movies, almost all of which were never preserved and are considered lost films. In 1944, Nazimova acted in what would be her final three films, Since You Went Away, In Our Time, and The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Within the year, Alla suffered from a series of heart attacks, and with Glesca by her side, was pronounced dead on July 13, 1945, at the age of sixty-six. Nazimova’s ashes were interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
After Nazimova’s passing, her legacy managed to live on in numerous ways. In 1946, one of the first gay-owned bars catering to the LGBT community in the United States opened in the basement of the Arlington Hotel in Seattle's Pioneer Square. It was called the Garden of Allah Cabaret, taking its name directly from Nazimova’s former estate, and featured both female and male impersonation acts. In 1960, Nazimova’s immense contributions to the film industry were recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She has also been depicted several times in both film and onstage, first portrayed by Alicia Bond in The Legend of Valentino (1975) and then by Leslie Caron in Valentino (1977). She was also featured in two 2013 films about Hollywood’s silent movie era: Return to Babylon, in which she was played by Laura Harring, and Silent Life, where she was played by Sherilyn Fenn. Nazimova's character has additionally popped up in various other media over the years as well, including operas, art shows, and even fantasy fiction novels.
Nevertheless, as impactful a career that Alla Nazimova had in both film and theater, she is far from being a household name today. And with such a captivating life story, given all its twists and turns in both career and personal life, it is hard to believe that Hollywood has yet to honor Nazimova with her own biopic. But Nazimova does live on with cult-like status among superfans like Martin Turnbull, a Hollywood historian who founded the Alla Nazimova Society alongside Jon Ponder. The Society is devoted to both the promotion and preservation of the memory of Alla, whose estate also inspired Turnbull’s Garden of Allah book series. Turnbull posits his own conjecture about why Alla faded into obscurity: “I think it’s a case of ‘you’re only as good as your last movie…Her last handful of movies were notorious flops, so she retreated to the theater, where fame is far more fleeting…Plus, her openly fluid sexuality made her a controversial and rather scandalous figure at the time.” Additionally, so much of Nazimova’s early and undoubtedly best work on film was never preserved, perhaps lost forever. Still, as recently as 2022, actress Romy Nordlinger debuted her one-woman show Garden of Alla at New York’s Theaterlab. Telling the groundbreaking story of Alla Nazimova’s life, the critically acclaimed show is currently touring the West Coast, and as Alla Nazimova once said, “An artist is only dead when the last person to remember them dies.”
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material
Barnes, Djuna. “Alla Nazimova.” The American Stage: Writing on Theater from Washington Irving to Tony Kushner, edited by Laurence Senelick, Library of America, 2010.
Horne, Jennifer. “Alla Nazimova.” In Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta, eds. Women Film Pioneers Project. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2013. https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-ws0b-qz98
Lambert, Gavin. Nazimova: A Biography. Lexington, University Press of Kentucky, 2021.
Mavromatis, Kally. “Alla Nazimova - Silent Star of February 1999.” Monash University, 1999. https://users.monash.edu/~pringle/silent/ssotm/Feb99/
McLellan, Diana. The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood. New York, LA Weekly Books, 2000.
Shokin, Samantha. “The Founding Mother of Sapphic Hollywood.” Tablet Magazine, 2022, June 1. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/alla-nazimova-sapphic-hollywood
Schanke, Robert A. and Kim Marra, Ed. Passing Performances: Queer Readings of Leading Players in American Theater History. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1998.
Tatna, Meher. “Forgotten Hollywood: Alla Nazimova and the Garden of Allah.” Golden Globe Awards, 2020. https://www.goldenglobes.com/articles/forgotten-hollywood-alla-nazimova-and-garden-allah