Home – Imaginary Futures - From Thinking Machines to the Global Village
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Here Be Monsters|blog
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Actor, director, auteur and queer icon, Alla Nazimova intended her 1923 movie Salomé —a high-concept, art-house reading of the Biblical temptress, as refracted through the Symbolism of Oscar Wilde’s highly influential 1891 play—to be the box-office smash of the year.
Salomé is a relatively literal version of the story as told by Wilde, with production and costume design following Beardsley’s illustrations for the play. High-concept, indeed, and a considerable creative distance from the froth that audiences actually flocked to see that year. The film was a flop, and signalled the start of a terminal decline for Nazimova’s career.
Fast-forward a couple of decades, and The Garden of Alla—her Hollywood home at the end of Sunset Boulevard (a notorious garden of delights for her and her circle)—had been converted into a hotel, with Alla living out her penurious older age in one of its villas. There’s a convincing argument her story inspired, at least in part, the character of Norma Desmond, in Sunset Boulevard .
Home – Imaginary Futures - From Thinking Machines to the Global Village
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Here Be Monsters|blog
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