`PARA XPAR@ ` ≡TEXT ` ΓNazimova, Alla1878╨1945actorBorn in Yalta in the Russian Crimea on June 4, 1878, Alla Leventon was educated in private schools in Zƒrich and Odessa. At seventeen she abandoned her study of the violin to enter the dramatic school of the Philharmonic Society of Moscow. In 1898 she came under the tutelage of Konstantin Stanislavsky of the Moscow Art Theatre. She adopted the name Nazimova for the stage. After seasons in provincial Kislovodsk, Kostroma, and Vilna, she spent the 1903╨1904 season performing Magda, Ghosts, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, and other modern pieces at a working people╒s theater in St. Petersburg. When her director, Pavel Orlienieff (later Paul Orlenev), encountered official censorship in attempting to present Evgeni Chirikov╒s The Chosen People, he decided to take a company abroad, and Alla Nazimova accompanied him. The Chosen People was presented in Berlin and London early in 1905, and in it Nazimova made her New York debut at the Herald Square Theatre in March 1905. The Russian-language production was well received by critics but a box-office failure. A few more productions of lbsen, Chekhov, and Strindberg plays followed in various makeshift theaters. When the company returned to Russia, Nazimova remained in New York. She signed a contract with the Shubert brothers, and, after an intensive study of English, she opened under her own direction in Hedda Gabler at the Princess Theatre in November 1906. That performance and her subsequent one in A Doll╒s House in January 1907 established her reputation as an actress of great intensity and an almost protean power of characterization. The Master Builder, September 1907, and Eyolf, at a Shubert playhouse named for her, April 1910, followed. For several years, under Charles Frohman╒s management and then her own, she found it difficult to secure quality material. She toured the vaudeville circuit in 1915 in War Brides, a pacifist piece. The movie version the next year was her first work in Hollywood. For Metro Pictures Nazimova made a number of films characterized by her own dedication to high standards and by the strong tendency of producers to cast her in an exotic and passionate role. Toys of Fate, 1918, Revelation, 1918, Out of the Fog, 1919, The Red Lantern, 1919, The Heart of a Child, 1920, Madame Peacock, for which she wrote the screenplay, 1920, A Doll╒s House, 1922, and a very stylish and expensive version of Oscar Wilde╒s Salome, 1922, were among her most important films. In 1923 Nazimova returned to Broadway in Dagmar. She became an American citizen in 1927. In 1928 she gave one of her great performances in Eva Le Gallienne╒s Civic Repertory Theatre production of The Cherry Orchard. She appeared in Katerina in 1929, in A Month in the Country with the Theatre Guild in 1930, and in Eugene O╒Neill╒s Mourning Becomes Electra, which opened in October 1931 and in which she gave a brilliant performance that won her wide acclaim. The intelligence and depth of her performances, her command of nuance in body, voice, and expression, made her perhaps the most influential actress on the American stage. Subsequently she was in a dramatized version of Pearl Buck╒s The Good Earth, 1932, The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles, 1935, and Ghosts, 1935. She then returned to Hollywood, where she played character parts in Escape, 1940, Blood and Sand, 1941, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 1944, In Our Time, 1944, Since You Went Away, 1944, and other films. She died in Hollywood, California, on July 13, 1945. &styl ` N ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ !I !I !I !I !I !I * !I √ !I !I W !I h !I ┤ 5¬ ╡ !I { !I ç !I ▐ !I ∞ !I o !I } !I ô !I ÿ !I Ç !I è !I Γ 5¬ π !I ú !I » !I ╖ !I ┴ !I ╔ !I ╫ !I ▀ !I ε !I ÷ !I
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