“I have succeeded miserably.
I have failed triumphantly.”
– Alla Nazimova
Alla on the set of Camille, 1921
Alla Nazimova was a Broadway megastar, film legend, pioneering auteur, and the most highly paid actress in the world.
She was a Russian, Jewish, queer immigrant who was acclaimed, applauded, and adored in the first four decades of the twentieth century.
Then – astonishingly – Alla Nazimova was forgotten.
Alla – Beyond the Garden explores Alla’s extraordinary contributions to film and theater and celebrates the legacy of a woman who lived boldly on and off stage.
About the Film
Alla in Camille, 1921
The film aims to restore Alla to her rightful place in the pantheon of iconic American stage and screen legends.
It illuminates the remarkable life and career of a woman who transcended the boundaries of her time, leaving an enduring legacy on stage, screen, and beyond.
It reveals Alla’s transformative influence on American theater, her fearless contributions as a queer filmmaker, and her central role in creating the cultural and social life of early Hollywood and its queer community.
From impoverished acting student in Russia to the pinnacle of Broadway and cinema fame, from financial ruin to triumphant comeback, hers is a dramatic tale of daring, creativity, resilience, and genius.
“The first time I wanted to be a playwright was when I saw Alla Nazimova. She was so shatteringly powerful that I couldn’t stay in my seat.”
– Tennessee Williams, Playwright
Revolutionary Actor
Alla fled antisemitism, persecution, and censorship in Russia to make her New York debut in 1903 performing in Russian for Jewish emigres.
She quickly learned English and became a megastar on Broadway, redefining early 20th-century American theater and inspiring a generation of actors and playwrights including theater icons Eugene O’Neill and Tennesse Williams.
Film Legend
Hollywood beckoned, and Alla became the most highly-paid actress in cinema, earning a whopping $13,000 a week. She headed her own production company, became a movie star at forty, and established the template for the exotic, sexually sophisticated “foreign” woman emulated by later European screen giants, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich.
Alla in Madame Peacock, 1920
Alla in Camille with Rudolf Valentino, 1921
Pioneering Queer Filmmaker
42-year old Alla playing a teenage Salome , 1922
Alla’s daring film adaptation of queer playwright Oscar Wilde’s notorious Salomé, then banned in England for “spreading homosexuality and encouraging moral corruption,” is recognized as a classic of LGBTQ+ cinema and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry for its cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance.
Persistent rumors allege that Alla insisted on casting only queer actors in her homoerotic homage to Wilde.
“Salome is like a fever dream, so odd and beautiful it hits your core.”
– Anita Monga,
San Francisco Silent Film Festival Artistic Director
Garden of Allah
Faced with a financial crisis, Nazimova built villas on her property, transforming it into a residential hotel called the “Garden of Allah” (the “h” was added later). The Garden hosted one of the most notorious and longest-running parties of the Roaring Twenties despite Prohibition’s alcohol restrictions.
Guests enjoyed a rare freedom (sexual and otherwise) from the rigid morality of the era and the hotel soon became a discreet Hollywood refuge for celebrities and literary figures.
Residents included luminaries of Hollywood’s Golden Age, including film stars Greta Garbo, Orson Welles, and Humphrey Bogart, as well as comic legends such as the Marx Brothers. Jazz Age novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Last Tycoon at the hotel.
“The Garden of Allah, for one brief moment, was Camelot.”
– Sheilah Graham, Writer and Resident of the Garden of Allah
1923 – Alla’s home and The Garden of Allah Hotel
Godmother of Hollywood’s Queer & Intellectual Communities
1920s – Alla in her library at the Garden of Alla
Alla’s impact was also profound off-screen. Weekend salons at her extravagant mansion were the hub of early Hollywood’s social and queer scenes.
Her guest list included the era’s leading artists, writers, and actors, such as movie legends Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, and director George Cukor.
A public facade of marriage granted Alla the private freedom to be unapologetically bisexual. Sunday was reserved for pool parties with “The Sewing Circle,” code for Hollywood’s queer women. At a time when they were forced to live in the shadows, Alla created a safe space for socializing.
“The language of Alla Nazimova is universal.
It is the language of the soul.”
– Alan Dayle, Theater Critic
Act Three
Alla made a triumphant return to Broadway at 49, re-establishing herself as one of the great actors of her generation. She later returned to the Garden of Allah, renting one of the villas in the hotel she used to own.
Three of her early movies have survived. Fortunately, several 1940s radio plays and supporting film roles preserve her voice, providing a tantalizing glimpse of her artistry.
But after her death in 1945, Alla faded from memory.
Our film restores Alla’s legacy as a trailblazer of female power, creativity, and independence whose enduring influence on theater, film, and queer culture transcends her era.
1939 – Alla in Henryk Ibsen’s Ghosts on Broadway
“The applause shook the city.”
Kirkland, Theater Critic
“If Alla Nazimova had come along a hundred years later than she did, she’d have found a world with its arms thrust wide open to embrace the groundbreaking artist that she was.”
– Martin Turnbull, Historian & Novelist
About the Filmmaker
Director and Producer Michelle Paymar
Michelle in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Archive
Michelle’s most recent film, From Cairo to the Cloud, about an ancient archive discovered in a Cairo synagogue, screened at festivals around the world and will be broadcast nationally on PBS.
She worked as a director and writer of documentary television programs for NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, CBC, and other major broadcasters. Her work has taken her to over 40 countries to film stories about a wide range of subjects, including news, history, wildlife, and the environment.
Paymar’s independent work includes documentaries about a nonprofit empowering women in Sri Lanka, a groundbreaking memory care center, pioneering AIDS documentary, For Our Lives, and Sippie, about classic blues artist Sippie Wallace (Co-Directed with Roberta Grossman).
She received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Film Directing from the American Film Institute and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.