Natacha Rambova
Natacha Rambova was an American dancer, costume designer, art director, and Egyptologist. Rising to prominence in the early 1920s, she became one of Hollywood's first women to exert significant creative control behind the camera, particularly through her collaborations with silent film actor Rudolph Valentino, whom she married in 1923.
Trained in ballet and the visual arts, Rambova began her career dancing with Russian ballet choreographer Theodore Kosloff before moving into stage and film design. She gained recognition for her work with director Alla Nazimova, contributing to a series of visually daring productions noted for their modernist and Art Deco aesthetics. As Valentino's wife and creative partner, Rambova played a central—if controversial—role in shaping his screen image, serving as costume designer, art director, and consultant on several of his films. Her emphasis on stylized design, historical authenticity, and European modernism marked a departure from conventional Hollywood aesthetics of the period and proved both influential and controversial.
Following her divorce from Valentino in 1926, Rambova largely withdrew from the film industry and opened a couture boutique in New York. During the Great Depression, she relocated to Europe, where she married a Spanish nobleman. In her later years, she became a respected Egyptologist, collaborating with scholars and co-authoring works on ancient Egyptian history and mythology. She died in 1966 in California of a heart attack while working on a manuscript examining patterns within the texts in the Pyramid of Unas.
Early life
Rambova was born Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy on January 19, 1897, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her father, Michael Shaughnessy, was an Irish Catholic from New York City who fought for the Union during the American Civil War and then worked in the mining industry. Her mother, Winifred Shaughnessy, was the granddaughter of Heber C. Kimball, a member of the first presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and was raised in a prominent Salt Lake City family. At her father's wishes, Rambova was baptized a Catholic at the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City in June 1897, though she later was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the urging of her mother at age eight.Rambova's parents had a tumultuous relationship: her father was an alcoholic, and often sold her mother's possessions to pay off gambling debts. This led her mother to divorce Shaughnessy in 1900 and relocate with Rambova to San Francisco. There, she remarried to Edgar de Wolfe in 1907. During her childhood, Rambova spent summer vacations at the Villa Trianon in Le Chesnay, France with Edgar's sister, the French designer Elsie de Wolfe. The marriage between her mother and Edgar de Wolfe was short-lived, and she again remarried, this time to millionaire perfume mogul Richard Hudnut. Rambova was adopted by her new stepfather, making her legal name Winifred Hudnut. Rambova was given the nickname "Wink" by her aunt Teresa to distinguish her from her mother because of their shared name. She also sometimes went by Winifred de Wolfe, after her former step-aunt Elsie, with whom she maintained a relationship after her mother's divorce from Edgar.
The Imperial Russian Ballet
A rebellious teenager, Rambova was sent by her mother to Leatherhead Court, a boarding school in Surrey, England. In her schooling, she became fascinated by Greek mythology, and also proved especially gifted at ballet. After seeing Anna Pavlova in a production of Swan Lake in Paris with her former step-aunt Elsie, Rambova decided she wanted to pursue a career as a ballerina. Her family had encouraged her to study ballet purely as a social grace, and were appalled when she chose it as her career. Her aunt Teresa, however, was supportive and took Rambova to New York City, where she studied under the Russian ballet dancer and choreographer Theodore Kosloff in his Imperial Russian Ballet Company in 1914. While dancing under Kosloff, he suggested that she adopt the Russian-inspired stage name Natacha Rambova. Standing at, Rambova was too tall to be a classical ballerina, but was given leading parts by the then-32-year-old Kosloff, who soon became her lover.Rambova's mother was outraged upon discovering the affair as Rambova was 17 years old at the time, and she tried to have Kosloff deported on statutory rape charges. Rambova ran away to Bournemouth, England, to stay with Kosloff's wife Maria "Alexandria" Baldina, under an assumed role as a governess for his daughter while the matter was contested. In 1916, during a San Francisco engagement of Kosloff's Imperial Russian Ballet, Rambova's mother met with Kosloff and agreed to withdraw all charges, permitted Rambova to continue dancing with the company, and pledged financial support for costumes and sets in exchange for her daughter's return and a reconciliation. After a year in hiding, Rambova reunited with her mother in Chicago before rejoining the company in Omaha, where she shared top billing with Kosloff. She later became disillusioned upon learning that Kosloff had maintained relationships with multiple women in the company during her absence, though her determination to establish herself as an artist tempered her sense of betrayal and disappointment.
Career
Costume and set design
In 1917, Kosloff was hired by Cecil B. DeMille as a performer and costume designer for DeMille's Hollywood films, after which he and Rambova relocated from New York to Los Angeles. Rambova carried out much of the creative work as well as the historical research on Aztec culture for Kosloff, and he then stole her sketches and claimed credit for these as his own. After the film's completion, DeMille offered Theodore Kosloff and his assistants further studio work, but they declined in order to continue touring on the Keith-Orpheum circuit. In late 1917, the Imperial Russian Ballet launched its second Los Angeles engagement, highlighted by The Aztec Dance, performed by Natacha Rambova and Kosloff, who wore his costume from the DeMille film. The tour was critically successful and concluded in New York in the spring of 1918.Shortly thereafter, the Russian Revolution led to the confiscation of Kosloff's Moscow property by the Bolshevik government, resulting in the financial collapse of the Imperial Russian Ballet. A final tour was planned for the 1918–19 season, during which auditions were held nationwide for students to enroll in the Los Angeles dance school established by Kosloff, Rambova, and Vera Fredova at Trinity Auditorium. Maria Gambarelli of the New York Metropolitan Opera replaced Rambova as Kosloff’s principal dance partner, as Rambova increasingly focused on designing costumes and sets for new productions inspired by Tartar themes. Disheartened by Kosloff's financial collapse but not wanting to return home, she nonetheless remained with the company, devoting her efforts to research and design.
Rambova increasingly resented Kosloff for taking credit for the extensive research and design work she undertook in support of his emerging motion-picture career. Although Kosloff was an avid painter, he showed little interest in costume or set design, yet he routinely presented Rambova's completed sketches to DeMille as his own after approving them. Rambova designed costumes for Kosloff's supporting roles in Why Change Your Wife? and Something to Think About.
On DeMille's subsequent production, Forbidden Fruit, a fantasy sequence inspired by Cinderella was assigned jointly to Rambova and Mitchell Leisen. The sequence became the film's most visually striking element. Leisen later credited Rambova for much of the work: "I did some of the clothes for the Cinderella Ball... Natasha Rambova did the others. One of hers was a black dress for the Fairy Godmother that had little electric lights all over the skirt."Around this time, actress Alla Nazimova was taking lessons from Kosloff in preparation for one of her films. As he had previously done with DeMille, Kosloff offered to submit innovative costume and set designs, which resulted in Rambova's work appearing in the dream sequences of Nazimova's film Billions. Rambova subsequently began designing for Nazimova’s next project, an adaptation of Pierre Louÿs's Aphrodite. Rather than presenting the sketches himself, Kosloff asked Rambova to deliver the designs directly to Nazimova. Nazimova responded favorably but requested revisions, and was impressed when Rambova executed the changes immediately in her own hand, making clear that she was the designer responsible for the work. Impressed by both the designs and their creator, Nazimova offered Rambova a position on her production staff as an art director and costume designer, proposing a wage of up to USD $5,000 per picture.
While working on Aphrodite—a project that was never filmed—Rambova used the opportunity to free herself from Kosloff. She chose a weekend to move out of his Franklin Avenue house while Kosloff was away visiting DeMille at his country estate, Paradise. Agnes de Mille, one of Kosloff's students and DeMille's niece, later remarked that his visits there involved social pursuits rather than hunting. Rambova was aware of Kosloff's ongoing affairs and of his sexual relationships with young pupils, factors that prompted her permanent departure. On the morning she planned to leave him, Kosloff returned home unexpectedly, confronted her, and ordered her to unpack. When she refused, he shot with a hunting rifle and the bullet lodged above her knee. Rambova escaped with the help of a housemate, fleeing through a window and reaching a waiting taxi despite her injuries.
Rambova fled to the Metro studio, where Nazimova's Aphrodite was in production. French cinematographer Paul Ivano later recalled that Rambova arrived "in tears, nearly hysterical," adding, "We spent nearly the entire day picking the birdshot out of her leg, as she related how Kosloff had tried to kill her." Despite the severity of the attack, Rambova declined to press charges, believing that the resulting notoriety would damage her reputation and overshadow the beginning of her career as Nazimova's art director. Instead, she chose to suppress the episode. In later years, she explained her injuries by claiming she had been shot and scarred by a jealous ballerina, using the story as an excuse for abandoning dance. Her relationship with Kosloff profoundly affected her: she became determined to conceal her emotions and vulnerabilities behind a carefully maintained air of aloof detachment.