Alla Nazimova as the title character in her screen adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé, 1923. John Coulthart writes: “Nazimova inaugurated the project, produced it and even part-financed it since the studios, increasingly worried by pressure from moral campaigners, regarded it as a dangerously decadent work. Nazimova had a rather colourful off-screen life and the stories of orgiastic revels at her mansion, the Garden of Allah, probably didn’t help matters.”

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