I DO NOT PROFESS TO BE A GOOD WRITER, IF YOU READ ON, PLEASE, DO SO AT YOUR OWN PERIL.I was born Mariam Edez Adelaida Leventon in Yalta, Crimea, Ukraine the youngest of three children of a brutal, ne'er-do-well Jewish pharmacist and his affluent, unstable wife. I believe he may have been envious of how much my mother doted on me. Even though he began mercilessly beating her a month after marriage, still, he wanted her love. It didn't take my mother long before she began to have affairs, which my father would eventually find out about, and then end. One of them a wealthy gentleman. Had it not been for my father's meddling, once again, he would have taken us away from that fiend. However, my father was persistent. He came armed with a letter from a previous lover. Subsequently, we were turned out. My father, unable to force her love divorced my mother and drove her away from me forever at the age of 6. My brother and I attempted to rekindle the realtionship when I was 17. But my mother had decided to forget in order to heal the wounds of our loss. My father sent my sister, Nina, being the oldest and most favored, to boarding school. My brother was sent to military school. I was sent to live with his brother in Germany. There I found a happy existence until I was 10, when my father, after having come into some money from selling an idea for medicinal soap to the Russian government, decided it was time I come home. I was taken back to Yalta. There I was secluded to a room, forbidden from freely roaming the house, for my father had remarried a vicious hag who couldn't even stand the sight of me. I took up the violin, had my first brush with success, and found my name, Nazimova. A pseudonym (the last name of a heroine in a novel) at the age of 10, before performing publicly on the violin; my father forbade me to use the family name, fearing that I would embarrass him. After I made my debut to enthusiastic applause, he took me home and caned me so severely that he broke my arm. ''Just because a few provincial fools applaud you, don't imagine you're Paganini,'' he said. I could ramble on forever about how miserable life was while this man was alive, but I should go on to other aspects of my life. So, I close this chapter with Yakov's being placed in a sanitorium. The bastard had contracted syphillis from frequently visiting prostitutes.From 1896 to 1899, I studied under Namirovich and Stanislavsky. My father died, my brother grew short of funds and I had to resort to a brief time as a lowly prostitute. In no time my status rose to courtesan, or "kept woman".
I married in 1899 to an impoverished aristocrat. I was not in love. He was merely revenge against a previous lover. This man would prove very difficult to divorce. Years later, I was left with the only option to manufacture yet another story so that I could "marry" a lecherous pill, by the name of Charles Bryant. Who would, oddly enough for a time, lend me respectability in the American theatre.In 1900 I met ,and fell in love with, Pavel Orlenev. He was a legend in the Russian theatre.He was also a close friend of Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky. My talent grew under his tutelage. We had a tempestuous affair. I just didn't have much luck being with, and trusting men. I never fared very well with them. In 1905 we went to America. I recieved great praise there. Orlenev was not as much of a success. He left for Russia a year later. I stayed behind.
My reputation as a great Thespian in America excelled.I was able to choose from many plays close to my heart as vehicles for my career. Some of the plays I chose were Hedda Gabler, A Doll's House, The Master Builder, Bella Donna where I met my future "husband" Charles Bryant, and War Brides. War Brides was also my first film debuing in 1916. I met Mercedes de Acosta after a performance of the play and had my first known lesbian "affair", followed by Eva Le Gallienne in 1917, another great theatre actress of my time who did a few films. By 1918, I was a box-office Metro star and completed 11 films for them over a three-year period.
A torrid, stylish and rather outre tragedienne who played exotic, liberal women confronted by great personal anguish, I earned personal successes as a reformed prostitute in Revelation (1918), a suicide in Toys of Fate (1918) and dual roles as half-sisters during the Boxer Rebellion in The Red Lantern (1919), not to mention the title role of Camille (1921) with Rudolph Valentino.
I had affairs with both of Rudy's two wives before they met and married Jean Acker, and Natacha Rambova. At the end of 1918 I had purchsed a home at 8080 Sunset Boulevard, jokingly, I named it The Garden of Alla. This would become an infamous Hollywood landmark. I am sad to say, not infamous enough to survive the corporate beast, and in 1959 Lytton Savings and Loan bought my home, which was then a hotel, and turned it into a parking lot. Eventually they desecrated this sacred place with a pink shopping mall. Ever hear that song "Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni Mitchell? The one where she talks about paving paradise and putting up a parking lot? That's about my old home.In 1919 the critics who were once so kind ceased to be so. My star status was suffering. Before my disaster, with Salome, I received enthusiastic reviews for resurrecting A Doll's House. One critic from Photoplay wrote,"Adverse criticism of her last Metro pictures cut her sharply. Some thought that her ego was running rampant, unbridled. That is not true.... She may not have as clear a perspective as, say, Mary Pickford, but she will gain it or die in valiant defeat. There's a strain in her that will not let her pass up a challenge where her art is concerned..... She's a misunderstood woman who wants to be understood".
I was now over 40, I did not have my contract renewed by Metro; anxious to produce and direct my own movies I lost money heavily on Salome - and opted to return to New York and rebuild my stage career- which I did.In 1925 Charles Bryant asked me to sign a fake document dated 1918 stating that I would agree to pay both our future taxes. Why I did this I will never know. The poor bastard got wind that I had had enough and was planning to divorce him. He knew he needed to cover his arse since he had been filing joint tax returns when we were never really married. That good old chappy then went out and found himself another meal ticket marrying a young girl from an affluent family, after I had ensured a "divorce in Paris. When he went to apply for a marriage license he claimed never being married before. Single was the status he marked. Scandle insued. My fans and critics were benevolent judges understanding my mistake and why I made it.That same year never a woman of business sense I seized an idea to remodel "The Garden of Alla " into a Hotel with 27 bungalows to be built in the capacious grounds; being assured by my business advisor, Jean Adams, that it would provide me an income for life. But I was bitterly disappointed; more and more money was invested, she bilked me for thousands upons thousands of dollars, then vanished.In 1927 with creditors hassling me, I sold my home. The Hotel was renamed "The Garden of Allah," and reopened in 1927 with a mighty 18 hour poolside party, prohibition no problem! Among the celebrities at the opeing were Clara Bow, Glibert Roland, screenwriter Frances Marion and her husband, and Lilyan Tashman with her husband of convenience Edmund Lowe.In 1928 my good friend Eva invited me to become a member of her Civic Repertory Theatre. I accepted, my uphill climb once again began in the theatre. I met my last companion of 16 years here, Glesca Marshall, who would be with me until my death.In 1939 after a last New York stage appearance as mother to an 18 year old Montgomery Clift, my hair grey and cut "schoolboy fashion", I moved back into Bungalow 24 with my last lover Glesca Marshall. Now by no means rich I looked for small parts in the movies of the time to pay the bills; I can be seen as Tyrone Power's mother in the remake of Blood and Sand (1941); an aristocratic European lady in In Our Time (1944) with Ida Lupino, as a Polish immigrant in Since You went Away (1944) with Claudette Colbert. Sadly I refused David O Selsnick's offer of Madame Defarge in The Tale of Two Cities !In 1936 I suffered from a breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy; the cancer did not return but my demanding and energetic lifestyle of wealth, stardom, the stage, Hollywood and the movies; cigarettes and alcohol and rich living, had weakened my health; after a coronary thrombosis I passed on in Hollywood in 1945 aged 67.My ashes are interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale.
Ghosts(Orlenev's company)
Hedda Gabler
At age 45 starring in The Redeeming Sin The New York Times wrote
"a less heavy hand, [but] Nazimova redeems the picture. The fact is the picture would have been a sin without her."
I edited my profile with Thomas Myspace Editor V3.6 !
