The most memorable books for me are biographies. I love learning about important people’s lives because we often look to these people to inspire us. What makes Gavin Lambert’s biography Nazimova so great is that it perfectly hits those same type of inspirational notes while also giving the reader a unique reading experience that they will most likely want to enjoy over and over again.
Alla Nazimova (1879-1945) was an electrifying Russian-born film and stage actress who is known for her roles in plays by Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, and others, as well as being in silent movies. She also came up with the term “sewing circle” for the bisexual and lesbian Hollywood actress community (Nazimova was bisexual).
Covering everything from her spectacular beginning as an actress in the play War Brides and its inspired film of the same name to her untimely death from a coronary thrombosis at 66, Lambert crafts a fascinating book that richly documents Nazimova’s life and career in spectacular fashion.
What I really like is Lambert’s use of quotations as a storytelling tool. Each of the chapters are marked with a quote from Nazimova that fits in with the chapter’s theme. For example, Nazimova’s quote “I carry about with me a role I am going to play in the future and even when I do not think about it, it is with me,” which opens chapter one, implies that Nazimova was am actress who vanished in her roles and enjoyed her work.
The next chapter shows Nazimova as a woman who, for her first acting job, learned English in five months, and, by all accounts, did a fantastic job at it. This shows how passionate she was about her work because it takes somebody really in love with a craft to put in the kind of effort needed to learn a language in this short a time period.
Another thing that I thought was well thought out was the research in the book. The biography is filled with little nuggets highlighting Nazimova’s life that most people won’t know about. For example, I didn’t know how many famous people were inspired by her. In fact, one of the greatest playwrights of all time, Tennessee Williams, has been quoted as saying that “The first time I wanted to become a playwright was when I saw Alla Nazimova in Ghosts… She was so shatteringly powerful that I couldn’t stay in my seat.”
It’s quotes and insights like this, and many other sprinkled throughout the book, that makes the biography so engaging. This is a great book that pays tribute to its subject’s life while at the same time providing its target audience with an extremely entertaining read.