In 1941, Alla Nazimova, the Garden’s founder, returned to the hotel after a successful 11-year run on Broadway. She had been diagnosed with cancer in 1937 and had undergone a mastectomy. During her recovery, she decided to return to movie-making, which was less-taxing work than performing daily on stage. With her partner of 13 years, Glesca Marshall, she moved into Villa 24, a second-floor unit above the pool. She paid to have a deck constructed so she could sit in the sun and watch the young people swim in the pool she had designed in 1918. Upon her return to the Garden, Alla said, “Today I have not so many things,” she said. “And I am happier.”
No longer the star, she appeared in supporting roles in five A-list studio films, including Escape (1940) with Robert Powell and Norma Shearer, Blood and Sand (1941), with Tyrone Power, and her final film, Since You Went Away (1944), with Claudette Colbert and teenaged Shirley Temple.
Alla devoted herself to her autobiography, often writing outdoors on her deck, where she enjoyed listening to Frank Sinatra – then a rising singer with Tommy Dorsey’s band – rehearsing in his villa next door. “What a sexy voice,” she told Glesca. “Listen to his phrasing.”
It may have been at the Garden that Sinatra met Ava Gardner, the North Carolina beauty who would later break his heart. She was living nearby with her second husband, bandleader Artie Shaw. Orson Welles, fresh off directing and starring in Citizen Kane, rented the ground-floor apartment below Nazimova. She listened through the air vent as he rehearsed for his CBS radio drama series, including his adaptation of Robert Hichens’ novel The Garden of Allah.