Alla Nazimova, the Broadway actress turned movie star, arrived in Los Angeles in the fall of 1918 with her partner, actor Charles Bryant, and their retinue. They began house hunting immediately, touring properties in West Adams and Silver Lake – both popular with the film colony. Beverly Hills was not yet home to movie actors and moguls because it had covenants that barred blacks and Jews.
When Nazimova saw Hayvenhurst, she was sold instantly. The estate offered the refinement and seclusion she craved, reminding her of both her Manhattan apartment at the Hotel des Artistes and Who-Torok, her six-acre retreat near Port Chester, New York. The area was rustic, with bean fields, citrus groves and Japanese nurseries. The property fronted a rutted dirt road that would one day become the Sunset Strip.
The location was ideal. Metro’s new studio was just two traffic-free miles southeast at Cahuenga and Santa Monica. The Sunset Boulevard trolley terminated at the estate’s eastern boundary, at Crescent Heights and Laurel Canyon.
Nazimova leased Hayvenhurst immediately. Over the next few months, she spent $30,000 – about half a million today – on improvements. She planted mimosa trees, birds of paradise, poinsettias and roses. She built an aviary on the terrace and installed a 65-by-45-foot swimming pool. By December, she was fully ensconced. “Yes, I’ve a wonderful home out near Laurel Canyon,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “There is a swimming pool and five fireplaces and even chickens in the back yard by day and mocking birds by night. And please say that I’m tremendously happy to be in California.”
She jokingly renamed the estate “the Garden of Alla,” a nod to Robert Smythe Hichens’s 1904 novel The Garden of Allah, about a priest who renounces his vows and flees to the Algerian desert. The book inspired three films, including a 1936 Technicolor version starring Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer, produced by David O. Selznick.