Alla Nazimova

Nazimova was born Marem-Ides Leventon (Russian name: Adelaida Yakovlevna Leventon) in the resort town of Yalta, in Crimea, Russian Empire. Her accepted birth year is 1879, but other sources have mentioned 1876 as a possible birth year. Her stage name Alla Nazimova was a combination of Alla (a diminutive of Adelaida) and the surname of Nadezhda Nazimova, the heroine of the Russian novel Children of the Streets. She was widely known as just Nazimova. Her name was sometimes transcribed as Alia Nasimoff. The youngest of three children born to Jewish parents Yakov Abramovich Leventon, a pharmacist, and Sarah Leivievna Gorowitz (later known as Sofia or Sophie Lvovna Gorovitz/Horovitz/Herowitz), who moved to Yalta in 1870 from Kishinev, Nazimova grew up in a dysfunctional family. After her parents divorced when she was eight, she was shuffled among boarding schools, foster homes and relatives. As a teenager, she began to pursue an interest in the theatre and took acting lessons at the Academy of Acting in Moscow. She joined Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre using the name of Alla Nazimova for the first time. She studied with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, co-founder of the Moscow Art Theater. ==Career==

Nazimova's theater career blossomed early, and by 1903, she was a major star in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. She toured Europe, including London and Berlin, with her boyfriend Pavel Orlenev, She was signed by the American producer Henry Miller and made her Broadway debut in New York City in 1906 to critical and popular success. Her English-language premiere in November 1906 was in the title role of Hedda Gabler. She reportedly learned English in five months. She quickly became extremely popular (Nazimova's 39th Street Theatre was named after her) and remained a major Broadway star, often starring in works by Ibsen and Chekhov. Dorothy Parker described her as the finest Hedda Gabler she had ever seen. Nazimova's film career began when she was 37 years old. Due to her notoriety in a 35-minute 1915 play entitled War Brides, Nazimova made her silent film debut in 1916 in the filmed version of the play, which was produced by Lewis J. Selznick. She was paid $1,000 per day, and the film was a success. A young actor with a bit part in the movie was Richard Barthelmess, whose mother, Caroline W. Harris, had taught Nazimova English. Nazimova had encouraged him to try out for movies and he later became a star. In 1917, she negotiated a contract with Metro Pictures, a precursor to MGM, that included a weekly salary of $13,000. She moved from New York to Hollywood, where she made a number of highly successful films for Metro that earned her considerable money. She created and worked under Nazimova Productions from 1917 to 1921. She filled many roles in film production, outside of acting. She served as a director, producer, editor, and lighting designer, and received credit for costume design for the 1918 film Revelation. She collaborated closely with designer Natacha Rambova to create a distinctive modernist aesthetic marked by stylized sets, symbolic costuming, and fantasy staging. Nazimova wrote screenplays under the pseudonym Peter M. Winters. She directed films credited to the name of her partner Charles Bryant. In 1927, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Left with few options in Hollywood, she returned to New York to perform on Broadway, notably starring as Natalya Petrovna in Rouben Mamoulian's 1930 New York production of Turgenev's A Month in the Country and having an acclaimed performance as Mrs. Alving in Ibsen's Ghosts. Critic Pauline Kael described this as the greatest performance she had ever seen on the American stage. In the early 1940s, Nazimova returned to films, 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 preserves Nazimova and her art on sound film. ==Personal life==

Marriages in 1912 In 1899, she married Sergei Golovin, a fellow actor. a British-born actor. To bolster this arrangement with Bryant, Nazimova kept her marriage to Golovin secret from the press, her fans, and even her friends. In 1923, she arranged to divorce Golovin without traveling to the Soviet Union. Her divorce papers, which arrived in the United States that summer, stated that on May 11, 1923, the marriage of "citizeness Leventon Alla Alexandrovna" and Sergius Arkadyevitch Golovin, "consummated between them in the City Church of Boruysk June 20, 1899", had been officially dissolved. A little over two years later, on November 16, 1925, Charles Bryant, then 43, surprised the press, Nazimova's fans, and Nazimova herself by marrying Marjorie Gilhooley, 23, in Connecticut. When the press uncovered the fact that Charles had listed his current marital status as "single" on his marriage license, the revelation that the marriage between Alla and Charles had been a sham from the beginning embroiled Nazimova in a scandal that damaged her career. Relationships with women From 1917 to 1922, Nazimova wielded considerable influence and power in Hollywood. Nevertheless, there were rumors that Nazimova and Rambova were involved in a lesbian affair, but those rumors have never been confirmed. The list of those Nazimova is confirmed to have been romantically involved with includes actress Eva Le Gallienne, film director Dorothy Arzner, writer Mercedes de Acosta, and Oscar Wilde's niece Dolly Wilde. Bridget Bate Tichenor, a Magic Realist artist and Surrealist painter, was rumored to be one of Nazimova's favored lovers in Hollywood during 1940–1942. The two had been introduced by the poet and art collector Edward James, and according to Tichenor, their intimate relationship angered Nazimova's longtime companion Glesca Marshall., 1916It is believed that Nazimova coined the phrase "sewing circle" as code to refer to lesbian or bisexual actresses of her day who concealed their true sexuality. Nazimova lived together with Glesca Marshall from 1929 until Nazimova's death in 1945. She was also the aunt of American film producer Val Lewton. Garden of Alla Nazimova's private lifestyle gave rise to widespread rumors of outlandish and allegedly debauched parties at her mansion on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California, known as The Garden of Alla, which she leased in 1918 and bought outright the next year. Facing near-bankruptcy in 1926, she converted the 2.5-acre estate into a hotel by building 25 villas on the property. The Garden of Alla Hotel opened in January 1927. But Nazimova was ill-equipped to run a hotel and eventually sold it and returned to Broadway and theatrical tours. By 1930, the hotel had been purchased by Central Holding Corporation, which changed the name to the Garden of Allah Hotel. When Nazimova moved back to Hollywood in 1938, she rented Villa 24 at the hotel and lived there until her death. ==Death and memorials==

On July 13, 1945, Nazimova died of a coronary thrombosis, at age 66, in the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. ==Legacy==

Her contributions to the film industry have been recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Nazimova has been depicted a number of times in film and onstage. The first two were biographical films about Rudolph Valentino: The Legend of Valentino (1975), in which she was portrayed by Alicia Bond; and Valentino (1977), in which she was portrayed by Leslie Caron. She was featured in two 2013 silent films about Hollywood's silent movie era: Return to Babylon, in which she was played by Laura Harring, and Silent Life, based on the life of Rudolph Valentino, where she was played by Sherilyn Fenn. The character of Nazimova also appears in Dominick Argento's opera Dream of Valentino, in which she also played the violin. Nazimova was also featured in make-up artist Kevyn Aucoin's 2004 book Face Forward, in which he made up Isabella Rossellini to resemble her, particularly as posed in a certain photograph. Actress Romy Nordlinger first portrayed Alla Nazimova in The Society for the Preservation of Theatrical History production of Stage Struck: From Kemble to Kate staged at the Snapple Theater Center in New York City in December 2013. In Fall 2016, PLACES, a multimedia solo show about Alla Nazimova, supported by the League of Professional Theatre Women's Heritage Program, written and performed by Romy Nordlinger debuted at Playhouse Theatre for a limited run. The Garden of Allah cabaret was an influential LGBTQ+ cabaret venue in the mid-20th century that took its name and inspiration from Nazimova's original Garden of Alla. Nazimova also appears in ''Medusa's Web'', a novel by fantasy-fiction writer Tim Powers. ==Filmography==