Alla Nazimova

Alla Nazimova was born Mariam Edez Adelaida Leventon in Yalta, Crimea, to a middle-class Jewish family. After her parents divorced, she spent her youth with a foster family in Switzerland; she also was educated at a boarding school in Odessa. Nazimova (the Russian stage name she adopted) studied acting at the Moscow Philharmonic Society’s Dramatic School before spending a season with Konstantin Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre. After touring Europe for a few years, she joined Paul Orleneff’s troupe and found herself in New York City performing The Chosen People (1905) after the tsarist censors shuttered its St. Petersburg production, in 1904. Nazimova made her Broadway debut in the titular role of Hedda Gabler in 1906 in English. She was regarded as a highly expressive, versatile method actor. During World War I she transitioned to the silver screen with an adaptation of War Brides (1916). In 1917, after signing a contract with Metro Pictures for $13,000 a week, Nazimova moved to Los Angeles, where she became a silent film star and socialite known for her parties at her Sunset Boulevard mansion. A figure of considerable influence in early Hollywood, Nazimova also has a notable place in the history of gay life in America. Maintaining romantic relationships with other notable women in the Hollywood scene with some degree of openness, and credited with coining the term sewing circle as a code word for the world of lesbian and bisexual artists, writers, and actors of which she was a part, Nazimova lived with fellow actress Catherine Glesca Marshall for the last sixteen years of her life.