Alla Nazimova

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Alla Nazimova

Alla Nazimova ( Russian Алла Назимова , scientific. Transliteration Alla Nazimova , in German transcription Nasimowa , actually Mariam Ides Adelaida Leventon , Russian Мириам Идес Аделаида Левентон , May 22nd . Jul / 3. June  1879 greg. In Yalta , Crimea , then Russian Kaiserreich ; † July 13, 1945 in Los Angeles ) was an American actress and film producer of Russian origin. On stage, she was considered the most important Ibsen actress of her time. In silent film titles she usually appears as "Nazimova" without a first name.

Live and act

Youth and first stage successes

Alla Nazimova was the youngest of the three children of Yakov Leventon and Sonya Horowitz, a wealthy Jewish pharmacist couple of Spanish descent who separated after their family moved to Switzerland . Nazimova's childhood was shaped by stays with foster families and boarding schools (from 1885). She received violin lessons at the age of seven. In 1890 her father took her back to Russia. As a boarding school student , she studied music at the Odessa Conservatory from 1894 and, after her father's death (1895), went to the Drama Academy in Moscow for three years . She then continued her training at Konstantin Sergejewitsch Stanislawski's Moscow Art Theater. At the turn of the century she found her first engagements in Kostroma , Cherson , Vilnius and Saint Petersburg .

Alla Nazimova around 1908

At the end of 1904 Alla Nazimova went on tour and appeared in Berlin , London and New York with the pro-Zionist drama The Chosen People . After she and the play were a great success in New York, she rented a small theater on the Lower East Side in Manhattan and initially called it "Orleneff's Lyceum"; later the theater had its own name. The troupe made a name for themselves in the following years with world premieres of plays by Maxim Gorki , Anton Chekhov and August Strindberg . In addition to Russian-language works, the theater soon presented works in English, especially plays by Henrik Ibsen, in which Nazimova appeared with great success as the leading actress.

Film career

The first film Alla Nazimova starred in - War Brides (1916) - was the adaptation of a pacifist play by Marion Craig Wentworth , which her theater premiered in 1915 with great success. From 1917 to 1920 she was with the Metro Pictures Corporation, the later MGM , under contract, which she brought out in numerous feature films as the actress of self-confident and revealing exotic women who are struck by strokes of fate. At that time Nazimova was known as "Metro's woman of 1000 moods".

At this point, she was already a well-known and famous stage actress. Her eccentric presentation style and her profound reluctance to submit to Hollywood conventions predestined her for conspicuous, unusual female film characters and made her one of the first film stars in the USA, where feature films were still something unusual . Repeatedly she appeared in double roles. In the colportage film The Red Lantern, set against the background of the Boxer Rebellion , for example, she was seen in the double role of two half-sisters, one of whom stands between cultures because her mother was Chinese. The young Anna May Wong also appeared in a supporting role in this film .

From 1918 onwards, Nazimova produced some of her films herself - which allowed her greater artistic freedom but brought in little money - such as the Dumas film adaptation of Camille (1921), in which she herself appeared as the camellia lady and Rudolph Valentino as Armand Duval. What was unusual about this film, which is usually staged in historical decorations and costumes, was the ultra-modern setting. In 1922 she stood next to Alan Hale and Nigel de Brulier as Nora Helma in the Ibsen adaptation A Doll's House . She owned an important property on Sunset Boulevard , to which she gave the name "Garden of Allah", and her private life has always been the starting point of more or less valid rumors, especially about her suspected homosexuality . In 1922/23 she produced what is probably her most famous film: Salome , the strictly text-based adaptation of Oscar Wilde 's play of the same name . It was publicized that the film had been produced with a consistently homosexual crew and cast as a homage to the author. The film impressed the audience above all with its opulent sets and costumes created by Natacha Rambova , the wife of Rudolph Valentino, and is considered the first art film in the USA. However, commercially it was a failure that forced Nazimova to retire from her career as an independent filmmaker.

Return to the theater and final screen appearances

Alla Nazimova took part in three more films until 1925, but then returned entirely to the theater and appeared with the ensemble of the French Grand Guignol Theater and in vaudeville sketches. In 1927, she acquired American citizenship. In 1928 she worked in London, appeared on Broadway in Chekhov's play The Cherry Orchard and joined the ensemble of Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theater in New York. In 1930 she starred in Turgenev's play A Month in the Country on Broadway under director Rouben Mamoulian . In 1931 she played Christine in Eugene O'Neill's brand new drama Mourning Electra . Her stage career reached a climax when she appeared as Helene Alving in Ibsen's play Ghosts in 1935 .

In 1940, Alla Nazimova returned to the big screen for her second round of anti-German propaganda with a substantial supporting role in Mervyn LeRoy's Escape , the film adaptation of a popular novel. The film is set in Germany and uses Nazimova as the mother of Robert Taylor . He saves her from great need and is supported by Norma Shearer , Conrad Veidt's lover . In 1941 she appeared in Rouben Mamoulian's bullfighting drama King of the Toreros as the widow of a matador who died in the arena, and she has to watch her son emulate his father's career. The main roles were played by Tyrone Power , Linda Darnell and Rita Hayworth . The actress made one of the last appearances in 1944 in David O. Selznick's home front strip When you said goodbye . Nazimova, who took on the role at the personal request of Selznick, who knew her from her first films, played a Russian emigrant whose young son died before she could get to the United States.

Private life

Alla Nazimova was briefly married in 1899 to the actor Sergei Golovin and from 1904 to the actor Paul Orleneff , with whom she had the son Richard. A marriage with the actor Charles Bryant , whom Nazimova passed off as her husband for a long time, is just as little documented as the suspected love affairs with Natascha Rambova, Mercedes de Acosta, Eva Le Gallienne and others. After Nazimova had previously had breast cancer, she died of a heart attack at the age of 66. She is buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale , California.

Alla Nazimova was the godmother of the future American First Lady Nancy Reagan . Her sister Nina Leventon was the mother of the film director Val Lewton .

reception

At the height of her career, Alla Nazimova was one of the screen's most popular vamps alongside Theda Bara and Dagmar Godovsky . The way of announcing them based on the Duse and Sarah Bernhardt using only their last names was later adopted by Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich .

A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6140 Hollywood Boulevard commemorates the actress.

Filmography

Alla Nazimova; Caricature by Ralph Barton
  • 1916: Was Brides
  • 1918: A Woman of France (short film)
  • 1918: Revelation
  • 1918: Toys of Fate
  • 1918: Eye for Eye
  • 1919: Out of the Fog
  • 1919: The Red Lantern
  • 1919: The Brat
  • 1920: Stronger Than Death
  • 1920: The Heart of a Child
  • 1920: Madame Peacock
  • 1920: Billions
  • 1921: Camille
  • 1922: A Doll's House
  • 1923: Salome
  • 1924: Madonna of the Streets
  • 1925: The Redeeming Sin
  • 1925: My Son
  • 1940: Escape
  • 1941: King of the Toreros ( Blood and Sand )
  • 1944: In Our Time
  • 1944: The Bridge of San Luis Rey
  • 1944: Since You Went Away ( Since You Went Away )

literature

  • Paul Werner : Alla Nazimova. The excessive artist. In: Paul Werner, Uta van Steen: Rebel in Hollywood. 13 portraits of obstinacy. Tende, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-88633-061-3 , pp. 41-55.
  • Lucy Olga Lewton: Alla Nazimova, my Aunt. A personal memoir. Minuteman Press, Ventura CA 1988. (English).
  • Gavin Lambert : Nazimova. A biography. Alfred A. Knopf, New York NY 1997, ISBN 0-679-40721-9 (English).
  • Eve Golden: Golden Images. 41 Essays on Silent Film Stars. McFarland & Company, Jefferson NC et al. ISBN 0-7864-0834-0 (English).
  • Patricia White: Nazimova 'Veils. Salome at the Intersection of Film Histories. In: Jennifer M. Bean, Diane Negra (Eds.): A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema. Duke University Press, Durham NC et al. 2002, ISBN 0-8223-3025-3 , pp. 60-87, (English).

Film about Alla Nazimova

  • Alla Nazimova and Rudolph Valentino (France 2000, directed by Laurent Preyale; 26-minute documentary)

Web links

Commons : Alla Nazimova  - album with pictures, videos and audio files


personal data
SURNAME Nazimova, Alla
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mariam Edez Adelaida Leventon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-american actress
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Yalta , Crimea , then the Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 1945
Place of death los Angeles