originally published in The Motion Picture Story Magazine - June, 1912 - Vol. III No. 5
In 1912, four years before she made her movie debut in "War Brides," Alla Nazimova was one of the most famous and respected stage actresses working in the United States.
That same year, the motion picture industry was still in the process of evolving from its primitive cinematic origins. The average movie at the beginning of 1912 was a single-reel film, running about 10-20 minutes in screen time. Multi-reel films were extremely rare and usually of a "specialty" nature. Over the following year, movies of up to four or more reels became popular, filmmakers made significant advances in developing a more complex cinematic style, and new technical advances improved the capabilities of the motion picture medium. In a matter of months, the "feature film" would evolve into a form that in many ways has not changed in the 90+ years since.
As the narrative format of the feature film was undergoing significant growth and change in 1912, many fundamental business and creative relationships between movie producers, performers, and audiences were also experiencing significant changes. Movie producers had initially sought to maintain control over their product by keeping their procuction personnel annonymous. But audiences naturally develop favorites, and if the studios weren't interested in promoting the names of their movies' stars, there were plenty of magazines that would publicize and promote the emerging stars of the new medium. By mid-1912, as the movies moved towards the feature film era, the movie "star system" was developing at a rapid rate.
Published monthly, "The Motion Picture Story Magazine" provided movie fans with short story adaptations of recent fims along with publicity photos and "behind the scenes" profiles of popular movie personalities, commentary about the topics of the day, and a sort of personalized "ask the Editor" feature. The June 1912 issue featured over 170 pages of photos, stories, commentary, and ads.
Considering that in 1912 moviemaking was still mostly limited to films of under 20 minutes in runtime, and the fact that many producrs wanted their stars to remain anonymous (and financially powerless), it's not surprising that the film business was not held in high regard by a lot of people. As one of its lead articles for the month of 1912, The Motion Picture Story Magazine published this account of an interview with Alla Nazimova. This is the sort of article that's often intended to provide second-hand support for a cause. At that time, Nazimova had not starred in any movies, and she wasn't involved in a current movie production. But she was a very famous actress -- a major star -- and in the article she provides some very encouraging remarks for the movie fans/readers. In 1912, that was good enough!
Although this article's style seems archaic by today's standards and the tone of the story borders on pure fanboy, this article offers an interesting glimpse into a significant time in cinema history, and a rare Nazimova history. Some notes and comments are available as a link to the story naviagation page.
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