Alla Nazimova — actress (silent) with roots in the Russian Empire
Alla Nazimova was born Marem-Ides Leventon in Yalta, in the Taurida Governorate of the Russian Empire, on 3 June 1879 (22 May, Old Style; some records give 4 June). She was the youngest of three children of Yakov Abramovich Leventon, a Jewish pharmacist, and Sofia, née Gorovitz, who had moved to Yalta from Kishinev. Her Russian records name her Adelaida Yakovlevna Leventon. She first trained as a violinist, but at seventeen went to Moscow to study drama at the school of the Philharmonic Society, under Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.
In 1898, the year of its founding, she joined the stock company of the Moscow Art Theatre, taking the stage name Alla Nazimova. Around 1904 she joined the touring company of the actor Pavel Orlenev, with whom she travelled through Europe. In 1905 they came to New York and opened a Russian-language theatre on the Lower East Side; it did not succeed, and when Orlenev returned to Russia, Nazimova stayed.
Without knowing English at first, she secured a contract with an American producer, Lee Shubert by one account and Henry Miller by another, and on 13 November 1906 made her English-language debut in the title role of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. Her Ibsen heroines, Hedda and Nora in A Doll's House, made her one of the leading actresses on Broadway. In 1916 she made her first film, War Brides, and in 1918 signed a contract with Metro Pictures, becoming one of its best-paid stars.
She went on to produce her own films, among them Camille (1921), opposite Rudolph Valentino, and adaptations of A Doll's House and Oscar Wilde's Salomé, released in 1922 or 1923 by different accounts. Their commercial failure ended her career as a producer, and she returned to the New York stage. She became an American citizen in 1927, joined Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Company in 1928 and the Theatre Guild in 1929, created Christine in Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) and O-Lan in The Good Earth (1932), and directed and starred in acclaimed revivals of Ibsen's Ghosts (1935) and Hedda Gabler (1936).
In her sixties she returned to the cinema in supporting roles, among them Rouben Mamoulian's Blood and Sand (1941) and The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1944). She died in Los Angeles on 13 July 1945, aged sixty-six. Her Hollywood estate, the Garden of Alla, had become a hotel.
"Came to New York in 1905 with Pavel Orlenev's touring company and stayed when he returned to Russia; US citizen 1927."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Yalta, Taurida Governorate (Crimea)
Born Marem-Ides Leventon in Yalta in 1879, the daughter of a pharmacist, she studied drama in Moscow, joined the Moscow Art Theatre company in 1898 and then Pavel Orlenev's troupe, with which she came to New York in 1905.
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Yalta, Taurida Governorate (Crimea). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.