Sewing Circles: Natalie Hays Hammond, Alla Nazimova, and Queer Women of the Stage and Screen

Credited with coining the term ‘sewing circle’ as a playful euphemism for a group of lesbian or bisexual women, the Russian émigré Alla Nazimova (b. 1879- d.1945) was a frequent visitor to Hammond Castle Museum and very close friend of its founder John Hays Hammond Jr.. She also represents a surprisingly large subset among Hammond intimates: influential Queer women who would come to fundamentally define the American stage and screen in the early 20th Century. An internationally known actress, director, costume, and lighting designer, and screenwriter, Nazimova’s 1922 screen adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé is sometimes hailed as one of the first Art Films in American Cinema and has long been the subject of rumors that it had an exclusively gay cast and that it’s initial cut depicted explicitly homosexual relationships.

Other Queer theatrical women frequently appearing in the Museum’s guest book or in Hammond’s correspondence include the actress Marlene Dietrich and writer Ruth Landshoff-Yorck, fixtures of Weimar Berlin’s 1920s gay and drag community, the latter of whom had appeared in F.W. Murnau’s seminal horror film Nosferatu (1922) and was a friend of Harry Martin and John Latouche, and Tallulah Bankhead, who once described herself as “Ambisextrous” rather than bisexual, and Hammond’s own sister, the artist and designer Natalie Hays Hammond. 

This mini-exhibit will bring together aspects of Queer history and Women’s history with a focus on historical correspondence and surviving artistic work from these remarkable women to illuminate this curious subset of Hammond’s circle of friends, their relationships with one another, and how they fit into the broader tapestry of Queer society at the time. Visitors will get a chance to peek into a largely overlooked aspect of the history of American cinema, at the level of someone who admired and respected the contributions of these important Queer women of the Stage and Screen