#Glesca Marshall

[queer-cinephile]

30 Days of Classic Queer Hollywood

Day 10: Alla Nazimova (1875 - 1945)

Once the highest paid film actress in the world, Alla Nazimova has also been dubbed "The Founding Mother of Sapphic Hollywood". This is due to her coinage of the term "sewing circle" as a discreet code for queer women in Hollywood.

Nazimova is confirmed to have had romantic relationships with many women, including: longtime companion Glesca Marshall, actresses Jean Acker and Eva Le Gallienne, director Dorothy Arzner, writer Mercedes de Acosta, and Oscar Wilde's niece Dolly Wilde.

Nazimova was in a 13 year long "lavender marriage" with actor Charles Bryant. Bryant surprised Nazimova and the public when he announced he was marrying a woman 20 years his junior, thus revealing their marriage to be a sham. The ensuing scandal damaged Nazimova's acting career.

[instantpansies]

adhd ramble time!!!

so i'm researching significant films from queer history right, bc i already have an interest in that and also bc of this queer media archive nick and i are working on (see my pinned post)

anyways i found the silent film Salomé (1922), which stars Alla Nazimova (generally went by just Nazimova), a Russian Jewish sapphic silent film star. several of the female characters are played by men in drag and there were supposedly several gay cast members but yk. altogether the film is not extremely canonically queer but is definitely one of those queercoded fun experimental things from the silent era. it's impressive though, and a very expensive and cool-looking production (watch here)

so i decided to research nazimova who as it turns out was in a lavender marriage for a while and had several relationships with women. her most steady girlfriend was Glesca Marshall, another actress, who lived with her in the hotel nazimova established and then sold off, the legendary Garden of Allah Hotel. marshall was later buried with another girlfriend, Emily Woodruff. interestingly, nazimova's goddaughter was Nancy Davis, who would eventually marry Ronald Reagan. yeah.

another of nazimova's girlfriends was the surrealist/magical realist painter Bridget Bate Tichenor, who was at one point the editor of Vogue, was influenced by and in turn influenced several huge names in the surrealist movement, and. wow. check out her paintings!!! that's so cool!!!

there are so many! here's the link where i found all of these.

in conclusion this is your sign to go wikipedia surfing about a random topic!! these paintings weren't even on wikipedia i had to do extra research but it was so fun! so yeah check out all these people bc they're so cool. thanks bye ok

[yourdailyqueer]

Glesca Marshall (deceased)

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Bisexual

DOB: 19 September 1906  

RIP: 21 August 1987

Ethnicity: White

Occupation: Actress

[internationalsadhits]

Nazimova as Salomé (1923), and the wig she wore discovered in a trunk left at her lover Glesca Marshall’s last home, Columbus GA (2014).

Silent film was of course not known by that name in its own time - it could only be considered “silent” in contrast to the later “talkies.” Their salient characteristic was not a lack of synch sound, but the amazing fact that they were “moving pictures.” Salomé’s wig sparkles as Nazimova shakes her head, pouts, scowls, and dances. No one is waiting for her to speak, particularly - we already know her most important line. But we’re all, like Herod, watching her every move.

It can be easy to lose that sense of movement - of life - in a work from the past. Salomé’s wig, in the present, is a strange but rather lifeless artifact. The film could feel that way, too - just a curious piece of history - if we fail to animate it with our attention, our imagination, our participation. If we don’t put the wig on and give it a shake.

Haley Fohr of Circuit des Yeux does exactly that with a live soundtrack she’s written to perform alongside Salomé. She gives that wig a run for its shimmy, sampling her low singing voice through a synthesizer, using live strings and a muted trap drum kit to animate the drama she sees in the film. Her score is a pulsing, breathing - literally, her voice technique is like a very complete exhale - frightening set of gestures that fluctuate alongside the emotions of the film. Nazimova moves constantly through it, but always slowly. And Haley Fohr’s composition mirrors the teetering, collapsing quality to her movements. I was on the edge of my seat.

[365daysoflesbians]

JUNE 3: Alla Nazimova (1879-1945)

Alla Nazimova’s performances, punctuated with the poignant theatrical poses that created her mystique in movies as well as in real life, are often forgotten, though she is considered to be the founding mother of Sapphic Hollywood...

Alla Nazimova, real name Miriam-Edez Adelaida Leventon was born in 1879 in Yalta, Crimea, which was then par of the former Russian Empire.

After a difficult childhood disrupted by her parents’ divorce and spent in boarding schools or foster homes, she took an interest in theatre early on, moving to Moscow where she took lessons at the Academy of Acting, and joined the Moscow Art Theatre company under the name Alla Nazimova (combining the diminutive for Adelaide and the last name of the heroine of a Russian novel)

Her success on stage came early on, in Moscow and St Petersburg first, then spread to the old continent and its major capital cities as she toured Europe. Her companion then was actor Pavel Orlenev, with whom she migrated to the United States in 1905, and founded a Russian-language theatre in NYC.

She first conquered the American stage on Broadway in 1906, playing the leading role in Henry Miller’s production of Hedda Gabler, which was acclaimed by the critics as well as the audience. She remained on the stage for quite a few years afterwards, often starring in Ibsen or Chekhov plays. In 1915 the success of the play entitled War Brides led the following year to its film adaptation, in which she reprised her role as a suffragette and made her silent film debut, appearing as a strong voice for women and feminism.

By 1917 she was moving to Hollywood and had obtained a contract with Metro Pictures Corporation, which allowed her to have a career in motion pictures but also still perform in the live theatre. She also soon started writing her own movies and starring in them – her own company (Nazimova Productions) produced nine largely profitable feature-length films while under contract with the Metro.

With these successes Nazimova was then able to buy an estate on Sunset Boulevard, better known as the ‘Garden of Alla,’ where she would hold wild, outlandish parties, and which she converted into a hotel in 1926.

While her first marriage to Sergei Golovin (with whom she supposedly had a child) remained little known, her second with Charles Bryant from 1912 to 1925 was an arrangement, a sham- a ‘lavender wedding’ to cover for her relationships with women.

Indeed Nazimova was at the heart of Hollywood’s queer community. She even coined the term “Sewing Circle” referring the lesbian, bisexual or bi-curious Hollywood ladies, a code for them to conceal their true sexuality.

Alla herself was not shy about her preferences. Among the women with whom she was involved, were actresses Jean Acker and Eva Le Gallienne, writer Mercedes De Acosta, Dolly Wilde (Oscar’s niece!) and director` Dorothy Arzner. She was also rumoured to have had affairs with painter Bridget Bate Tichenor and actress Natacha Rambova.

Her love for women appeared in most of her movies – not only did Nazimova often hint at lesbian affection, kissing her female co-stars (in character), but she also hired many members of her sewing circle behind the camera. She also helped launch the careers of actresses Jean Acker and Natacha Rambova (who, incidentally, were both married to Rudolph Valentino).

But as her popularity waned, she became bolder, and began to take aesthetic risks and to embody a gay sensibility beyond the taste of her mainstream audience, damaging her career further.

Alla Nazimova performs the Dance of teh Seven Veils in Salomé (1923)

The movie that is now remembered as her most significant, was Salome. It was a surreal, expressionistic production with an all-gay cast, which attempted to produce a “female movie modernism.” Though at the time it was a commercial failure, which further indebted her.

In 1938 she underwent major surgery for breast cancer - and afterwards, trying to make a comeback, she soon realised Hollywood had no room for an actress in her sixties. She ended up accepting small parts, and living on a small, spartan apartment above the garage in her old Sunset Boulevard mansion, and lived there with her partner of 17 years Glesca Marshall until her death in 1945.

want to know more? here and here

Lise

[briannawhiteme]

Look up Alla Nazimova. Oh my God. I looked her up just because of this post and damn. The woman's life is a trip. She was a Russian Jew who grew up in foster care. Who came to America, performed on Broadway, and posed as a wife to a friend and fellow actor of hers to keep the press from outing him, despite still being married to a guy in Russia. She eventually divorced both and moved to LA where she acted, and was also a screenwriter and producer.

She created the term sewing circle because she (a raging bisexual who preferred women) had shit tons of parties where Hollywood's LGBT community would hang out and hook up. She was a huge fan of Oscar Wilde and made the film Salomé based on his novel of the same name. For Salomé, nearly all of the cast was LGBT as a homage to Wilde. She also dated his niece, Dolly Wilde.

She was as openly gay as a person could be in the 20s-40s and lived with her partner Glesca Marshall for the last 16 years of her life.

The woman is an icon. I'm barely scratching the details of her life.

this is the single greatest thing i’ve ever learned from wikipedia 

[kaploded2]

#Repost @lgbt_history (@get_repost) ・・・ Alla Nazimova (June 3, 1879 – July 13, 1945), “Salomé,” 1923 . Alla Nazimova, who was born one hundred and thirty-eight years ago today, was a Russian-born American actress of stage and screen; she is perhaps best-remembered for coining the phrase “sewing circles” to refer to the underground social scene of closeted lesbian and bisexual actresses and artists. . Born in Yalta in 1879, Nazimova showed a passion for theatre as a teenager. By 1903, she was a star in Moscow and St. Petersburg, touring Europe, and ultimately moving to New York City to found a Russian-language theatre with her boyfriend, Pavel Orlenev. In 1906, after Orlenev returned to Russia, Nazimova made her Broadway debut to much acclaim, leading to years of success on the American stage. In 1917, Nazimova negotiated a contract with Metro Pictures and moved to Hollywood, where she starred in a string of successful films. . During her time in Hollywood, Nazimova was known to throw lavish and allegedly debauched parties at her mansion on Sunset Boulevard, known as “The Garden of Alla.” While it was well-known that Nazimova was lesbian, she maintained a “lavender marriage” with actor Charles Bryant from 1912 to 1925; the marriage was never consummated and, when the press discovered the truth, Nazimova’s career in Hollywood suffered, prompting her to return to Broadway. . In 1929, Nazimova began a relationship with actress Glesca Marshall; the two lived together until Nazimova’s death. . Alla Nazimova died of a coronary thrombosis on July 13, 1945; she was sixty-six. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #AllaNazimova