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Alla Nazimova
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"Alla Nazimova" was a legend of the Russian and American stages in the early part of the century who went on to star in numerous Hollywood films. As a child, Nazimova studied music at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and at Odessa where she became an excellent violinist. Later she studied acting with Stanislavsky before emigrating to the U.S. in 1905 to work on Broadway where she became one of the best interpreter's of Ibsen's work. In 1916, Nazimova made her screen debut. Frequently she would produce and her husband would direct her films. Such collaborative efforts created bold and provocative films that bordered on surrealism.
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Alla Nazimova was born Mariam Edez Adelaida Leventon on 22nd of May, 1879 in Yalta, a city on the Crimean peninsula in present day Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire). She was a highly skilled violinist and studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory before moving into acting at 17. She emigrated to the US in 1905 to start her Broadway acting career with a drama called The Chosen People.
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Alla Nazimova, one of the most exotic actresses of the late 1910s and 1920s, had an exotic Russian background to begin with. Born of Jewish parents in Yalta, and educated in a Swiss Catholic convent, she took up the violin and in her school orchestra played under Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. Her acting aspirations led her to Moscow and an apprenticeship with Stanislavsky's Art Theatre. She found leading roles in the provinces and settled in St. Petersburg where she married her theater partner Paul Orleneff. Eventually the pair took the Zionist play The Chosen People on a European tour, and to America in 1905.
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Wong's first role was in Alla Nazimova's silent film The Red Lantern (1919) as an uncredited extra. However, even with associations with a Hollywood power like Nazimova, her ethnicity prevented her from getting choice parts. Though her family had been in California since 1855, as a Chinese-American, Wong was considered "foreign" both through social prejudices of the time, and by law. Anti-miscegenation laws existed in California until 1948. Hollywood films of the silent era and early 1930s pre-code era sometimes flouted the more conservative social mores of the time, but these restrictions were codified when the studios adopted the Hays Code in 1930, and began enforcing it in 1934. Wong's career was especially affected by the anti-miscegenation rules in the Code, since they prevented her from playing romantic roles with non-Asian actors.
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A year ago Alla Nazimova decided Scriptwriter Arch Oboler was a genius, requested him to write a radio play for her. Pleased that Nazimova shared a conviction that he himself had held for years, Oboler turned out an opus called The Ivory Tower, in which, for the union minimum of $21, Nazimova made her first appearance on the air. This week Oboler will present another famed actress in her radio debut. She is Elisabeth Bergner, who will run through Oboler's latest radio work, An American is Born.
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Near the end of her acting career silent film actress Alla Nazimova was advised by her 'business experts' to convert her mansion at the corner of Sunset Blvd. and Crescent Heights into a revenue generating property to provide for her retirement. By the time she had completed remodeling the house and adding the bungalow complex in 1928 she was bankrupt and forced to sell out. Eventually she was reduced to renting a flat in one corner of her former home.
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Alla Nazimova