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Actor, born in Russia (now the Ukraine) on the 22nd of May, 1879, died on the 13th of July, 1945.
Gay: N/A |
Lesbian: 8 out of 9 |
Trans: N/A |
Queer: N/A |
Arguments could be made that she was bisexual—she supported herself early in her life mainly through affairs with rich men—but she seems to have primarily been a lesbian. She was privately out in Hollywood, and just barely in publicly.
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.
Nazimova branched into film in 1916 as Joan in Herbert Brenon’s War Brides opposite her then-husband Charles Bryant. He, too, was a Broadway transplant, and both of them being gay, they married in 1912 to improve their public image and stand a better chance in Hollywood. This so-called “lavender marriage” was a common practice at the time, often one arranged by the studios the actors worked for, but this pairing seems to have been done before they signed with Metro, which Nazimova would do in 1918.
1918 would also be the year Nazimova founded Nazimova Productions and began producing some of her own films, occasionally with either herself or Bryant directing. Their first film was Eye for Eye. Her films were avant-garde and surreal before the movements had even reached the US and she was often forced to often fund them out of her own pocket, finding no backers willing to risk them.
While her 1921 film Camille was a success, in large part to Armand being played by Rudolph Valentino, Salomé would be both her and Bryant’s downfall in 1923. Though now hailed as not only the greatest but the only possible screen adaptation of Wilde’s play, audiences of the time couldn’t makes heads or tails out of it and the rumors of its all-gay cast (partly if not entirely true) only hindered its reception. The dismal failure of the film bankrupted Nazimova Productions and ended Bryant’s directorial career.
Bryant returned to Broadway; the sham marriage no longer necessary, they divorced. Nazimova continued acting in film, though finding fewer and fewer characters to play with the introduction of the Hays Code. Eventually, she went back to the stage as well.
Broke and in need of money, she acted a handful of times on the screen in the ‘40s, her last movie being Since You Went Away in 1944. Nazimova died on the 13th of July, 1945 in Los Angeles, California
Aliases
Films
[ Gay feature | Lesbian feature | Trans feature | Queer feature ]
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