Alla Nazimova’s lucrative deal with Metro Pictures came with a grueling schedule. On weekends, she hosted salons at the Garden of Alla. Her salon, the 8080 Club – named for the estate’s address – welcomed Hollywood peers and visiting intellectuals. Alla dressed extravagantly in Chinese robes and charmeuse shifts while smoking Egyptian cigarettes from a foot-long ebony holder.
On Sundays, she hosted women-only pool parties, especially for young starlets. Rumors swirled that the gatherings were clothing optional. It’s plausible. Nude swimming and sunbathing were common in Europe.
She wrote to her sister Nina: “I look through my windoes [sic] upon the mountains where here and there peep out white villas like in Yalta, and upon mimosa trees in our garden in full bloom below … Charles rides a good deal in the canyons and brings delicious honey which people living on top of mountains sell. There are thousands of beehives for the sage honey and Charles loves it.”
She met Rudolph Valentino when he was at the beginning of his career, well before he became the movies’ first male sex symbol. In a quirk of fate, he married two of her protégées, actress Jean Acker and art director Natacha Rambova, in succession.
In fact, Rudy married Rambova before his divorce from Acker was final. Nazimova, the matron of honor at the second wedding, found herself in the summer of 1922 embroiled in Valentino’s bigamy scandal, which made headlines around the world.