Customer Reviews

Nazimova: A Biography

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Most people only know the Alla Nazimova through her connection with Rudolph Valentino and her "gay" silent film "Salome." She is nearly always reviled as a domineering, spiteful lesbian queen of Hollywood whose own ego led to her fall.
This book provides a completely different picture of the woman behind the name. Her horrendous treatment as a child definitely molded her personality. An extremely talented actress, she earned her stardom on stage, screen and then stage again, inspiring many of the greatest playwrites of the early 20th century to write plays, many for her.
The author reveals much of Nazimova's sadness and disappointment in her personal life and career, her gullibility when it came to trusting friends with her money, and the vast number of women and the few men with whom she had love affairs.
Through exhaustive research of Nazimova's voluminous but unfinished (and unpublished) autobiography, interveiws with the few living persons who met her, and the letters and memoirs of a vast number of acquaintances and co-workers, the author has constructed a fascinating portrayal of a fragile, brilliant, yet tempermental child-woman who may well have been the greatest actress of at least the first half of the twentieth century.
Readers will be surprised to read the rave accounts of Nazimova's unparalleled talent her from Truman Capote, Ibsen, Shaw and Katherine Hepburn, as well as the doting love and companionship showered on the elderly Nazimova by her godaughter Nancy Davis, later Nancy Reagan.
I highly recommend this book to those who love silent films and bizzare, talented personalities.

"Nazimova" is a fascinating portrait of a mythic figure. Alla Nazimova died only fifty or so years ago, and she appeared in a number of films in the sound era, but you'd think she was Sarah Bernhardt's great-grandmother for all that remains of her in our consciousness. And now I think I know why. While I enjoyed the book very much -- at times its recreation of a vanished world is truly amazing -- I came away with a sense that something important was missing in Nazimova herself. We learn a great deal about her lovers but not much about her students. Did she bother to have any? Lambert cites plenty of idolators and proteges, but few to whom she passed on her techniques and values in a formal way (Nazimova's flaw or Lambert's? Hard to tell). That may be why we have so little sense of her today. But there's no denying that Nazimova was a powerful influence on the modern theatre -- not to mention a dizzying link between Chekhov and Louis B. Mayer -- and anyone who cares at all about theatre history should read this book

Alla Nazimova was my Godmother and I have heard many stories about her over the years so I was delighted to see a book written about her by Gavin Lambert. I found the book to be fastanating and learned so much about this woman who brought Ibsen and Chekhov among others to the theaters in America. She appears to be a very private yet complicated indivdual who knew exactly what she wanted and went after it with her whole being. She accomplished so much on the stage and in films that it is a shame so few people today remember her. Perhaps Lambert's book will rekindle that interest again in such a great lady of the theater.

I recently finished reading the book, wonderfully detail, loved each chapter, me being a hollywood historian found it extremely helpfull. Extremely interesting profile,(really fair) of the life of Madame Nazimova as well as a great insight on hollywood history, totally recomended. Thank you very much Gavin Sincerely Octavio Carlin

Gavin Lambert is a mesmerizing writer. He chronicles Nazimova's hellish childhood (which shaped all that followed, I believe), her dramatic rise on the stage (where she did her best work) her Hollywood years and beyond. I find it sad that her stage performances exist only in the memories of those who were lucky enough to see her back in the day, and those people are leaving us very quickly. Nazimova strikes me as a woman who could be infuriating, frustrating, difficult, kind, generous, funny, certainly her own worst enemy at times, and sometimes all of the above in the same moment. The fun she would have during performances made me laugh out loud, and the stupid choices she made for film made me say "no, don't DO that" to the pages of this meticulously researched book. About her sister and niece, I have no kind words whatsoever, and I can thoroughly understand why Lambert dismissed anything the niece had to say. I can't wait to read the other film-related books that Gavin Lambert has written - I'm so glad I started with this one.

Would the person who identified themself as a grandaughter of Allah please contact me? I am also supposedly related to Alla, a cousin doing a family search. My grandmother Hannah, was the sister to Allah's (Marion's) mother in Ukraine. Also, I may actually know the decendents of Allah's mother Sonja, through her later marriage, one who would be her younger half-brother! He is still alive at 92! DR drifkin@msn.com

It's surprising that hardly anybody remembers Alla Nazimova. At one point (in the 1910s) she was the highest paid actress in the world, earning $13,000 per week--$3000 per week more than Mary Pickford--and her fame was international. She also converted her movie star mansion on Sunset Blvd into the famously infamous Garden of Allah Hotel, which became the hotel-of-choice of many soon-to-be-famous faces. But somehow the march of fame has largely left this uniquely exotic woman on the sidewalk. But LambertĀ's biography of this extraordinary life does much to bring her back center stage. For anyone with an interest in American theater and early Hollywood life, this thoroughly detailed and imminently readable biography is a must read.

Lambert thinks he has written the most definitive and the first biography on Nazimova. He is wrong on both counts. His book makes no substantial revelations about the life of the great actress, but does introduce her to the people today who think Gwyneth Paltrow is more than just an average actress.

The book is, for now, the best on Nazimova. The first book on her, by Olga Lewton, came out in the 1980's and is just a personal account with many errors. Lambert makes his most glaring error by not mentioning the Lewton book, though he cites interviews with Lewton. If Lambert dd not know about that book when he wrote this, he is a sloppy researcher. If he did know and failed to list it in the bibliography, he is misleading his readers.

an absolute beauty of a boo