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Alla Nazimova (Russian: Алла Назимова),
born Mariam Edez Adelaida Leventon (Мириам Эдес Аделаида Левентон;
May 22, 1879 – July 14, 1945) was a Russian/American theater and
film actress, scriptwriter, and producer. She is often known as just
Nazimova, and was also known as Alia Nasimoff.[1]
 Nazimova
was one of three children of Yakov Leventon and Sonya Horowitz.
Nazimova in the 1911 Broadway play The MarionettesNazimova'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, a flamboyant actor and
producer. In 1905, they moved to New York City and founded a Russian
language theater on the Lower East Side. The venture was
unsuccessful and Orlenev returned to Russia while Nazimova stayed in
New York.
She was signed up by the American producer Henry Miller and made her
Broadway debut in 1906 to critical and popular success. She quickly
became extremely popular (a theater was named after her) and
remained a major Broadway star for years, often acting in the plays
of Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov.
Nazimova made her silent film debut in 1916, due to her notoriety in
a 35-minute 1915 play entitled War Brides. This brought her to the
attention of Lewis J. Selznick. Over the next few years, she made a
number of highly successful films that earned her a considerable
amount of money. By 1917, she was earning as much as $30,000 per
film, with a $1,000 per day bonus for every day of filming. She was
also given a $13,000 per week contract. At the time, actress Mary
Pickford was on a $3,000 per week contract.
In 1918, at age 39, Nazimova felt confident enough in her abilities
that she began producing and writing films in which she also
starred. In her film adaptations of works by such notable writers as
Oscar Wilde and Ibsen, she developed her own film making techniques,
which were considered daring at the time. Her projects, including A
Doll's House (1922) based on Ibsen, and Salomé (1923) based on
Wilde, met with little popular success and lost a great deal of
money.
By 1925, she could no longer afford to invest in more films and
financial backers withdrew their support. Left with few options, she
gave up on the film industry, returning to perform on Broadway until
the early 1940s when she appeared in a few more films, presumably in
need of money. Two of her best known roles today is that of Robert
Taylor's mother in Escape (1940) and as Tyrone Power's mother in the
film Blood and Sand (1941). |
