Latitude in Mass-Produced Culture's Capital: New Women and Other Players in Hollywood, 1920-1941

Frontiers, 2004 by Abrams, Brett L

HOUSES

During the early 1920s, the growing movie industry and expanding city offered several women who worked in the other creative trades the opportunity to establish homes where they could be Hollywood players. Alla Nazimova, an accomplished violinist and Stanislavski-trained actress who became the leading interpreter of Ibsen on the Broadway stage before becoming known as a silent-film actress, ranked among the top stars in the annual Photoplay popularity poll in the late 1910s. The star moved west of downtown Hollywood, and her house at 8080 Sunset Boulevard made her a leader in the transformation of Sunset Boulevard into the Strip.33 She formed a development company and turned her homestead into a complex of twenty-five bungalows that lined the largest swimming pool in Hollywood. She named the place the "Garden of Allah," adding the "h" to her given name to associate it with the garden hostelry of sacred and profane love in Robert Hichens's 1904 novel, The Garden of Allah.34

Nazimova's homestead influenced the development of Hollywood as a town and its conception as a place of latitude for women. A group of Nazimova's friends who met regularly at the star's home and enjoyed ribald activities became known as the "8080 Club." After Nazimova left Hollywood in the mid-1920s, her homestead became an apartment complex for many of the workers who came to Hollywood during the first years of the talkies.

Media descriptions of Nazimova s home revealed that her house offered the star the opportunity to display her cross-gender clothing and other aspects of her Hollywood player personality. As the head of her own production company, Nazimova decided that this type of publicity was beneficial to her image and would make her movies successful. An interviewer for Photoplay described her masculine attire in the living room of Nazimova's house:

"She enters whistling," I observed aloud. Nazimova made a move and twirled into the corner of a divan, drawing her feet up after. The effect was boyish, shining black hair cropped very short and parted on one side, a white Eton collar over a dark blouse, a short plaid skirt and flat-heeled brogues, and an abnormally long cigarette holder properly functioning.35

Nazimova created a cross-gender look while she also appeared to be the "head of her castle." The interior décor of purple divans, crystal lights, and a mirror laced with gold reflected Nazimova's outsized personality. The reporter notes that within the house Nazimova revealed a dash of "diablerie" (wickedness) about her, so that one could not precisely say that heaven was her home.36

The star directed her publicity in a similar manner with newspapers. Newspaper coverage described Nazimova's home as a location where she could express another of her personality traits, a preference for the company of women. Nazimova brought a Hollywood player's defiance of gender norms to her friendships with young women, telling reporters that, "They call me Peter and sometimes Mimi." Nazimova's first nickname linked the actress to a male character, Peter Pan, while the latter nickname alluded to the tragic lover in La Bohème. One set of gossip items said that the star's swimming pool, crowded only with Hollywood ingénues, contained underwater lights that illuminated the water at night. The gossip united the physical display of female bodies around a swimming pool with a sensuous environment to suggest homosexuality at her Hollywood home.37