Nita Naldi

Nita Naldi, born Mary Nonna Dooley on November 13, 1894, in a New York City tenement, was an American stage performer and silent film actress whose Broadway career spanned from 1918 to 1952. The daughter of working-class Irish parents, Julia (née Cronin) and Patrick Dooley, she was named in honor of her great-aunt Mary Nonna Dunphy, a nun who had founded the Academy of the Holy Angels in Fort Lee, New Jersey, in 1879. Of her siblings, only her younger brother Daniel Aloysius survived infancy. Following her father's departure from the family in 1910, Naldi attended the Academy of the Holy Angels that same year. Her mother's death in 1915 left her responsible for two younger siblings, prompting her to take work as an artist's model and a cloak model before entering vaudeville alongside her brother Frank.

By 1918, Naldi was performing as a chorus girl at the Winter Garden Theatre in The Passing Show of 1918. She adopted her stage name from a childhood friend, Florence Rinaldi, discarding her birth name of Nonna Dooley in the process. Her Broadway credits from this period include Art and Opportunity and The Bonehead, the latter earning her enough notice that producer William A. Brady offered her a role in his 1920 play Opportunity. She went on to appear in additional Broadway productions including Queer People, Firebird, and, in 1952, In Any Language, in which she co-starred with Uta Hagen.

Naldi's film career began with small roles before she was cast as the exotic character Gina in Paramount Pictures's 1920 release Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring John Barrymore, who reportedly recommended her for the part after observing her dancing at the Winter Garden. Her performance in that film led to further opportunities, most significantly the role of Doña Sol in the 1922 adaptation of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's novel Blood and Sand. Spanish author Ibáñez himself selected Naldi for the part, and Famous Players–Lasky signed her for the production. The film marked her first pairing with Rudolph Valentino and established her screen image as a vamp, a character type first popularized by actress Theda Bara. During this period, Peruvian artist Alberto Vargas painted Naldi embracing a bust of a satyr; the original depicted her partially topless, though copies published in outlets such as the magazine Shadowland were modified to conceal her partially visible left breast.

Naldi continued working with Famous Players–Lasky in productions of increasing prominence, including Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments in 1923. She reunited with Valentino for A Sainted Devil in 1924, his final film for the company, and the two subsequently traveled to France with the Valentinos to conduct research for the unmade film The Hooded Falcon. Back in California, they made Cobra, which was poorly received and became their final film together. Naldi also starred in Natacha Rambova's 1925 production What Price Beauty?, a film notable for containing actress Myrna Loy's first screen appearance. After completing the Dorothy Gish film Clothes Make the Pirate, Naldi traveled to France, where she married J. Searle Barclay in August 1929. She later appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's The Mountain Eagle in 1926, and made two additional films in France and one in Italy before retiring from the screen entirely, never having appeared in a sound film despite possessing an acceptable voice.

Barclay, whom Naldi had met during her stage career, had been involved in divorce proceedings in 1929 in which Naldi was named as a party; his wife of sixteen years had sought the divorce from the fifty-four-year-old millionaire. Naldi and Barclay had lived together with her sister in New York since 1920. Naldi returned to the United States alone two years after their marriage and filed for bankruptcy in 1934. Barclay died penniless in 1945, and Naldi had not spoken publicly about him prior to his death.

Financial difficulties stemming from her retirement and the Great Depression brought Naldi back to the Broadway stage. She appeared in both Queer People and Firebird in 1933, though reviews were harsh enough that she filed a $500,000 suit against one publication in 1934; the suit was dismissed in 1938. In 1942, she was considered for a role in For Whom the Bell Tolls but did not receive the part, and she made no further films. That same year she appeared in a New York revue with Mae Murray, reciting the 1897 poem "A Fool There Was." In 1952 she took a notable role in the Broadway play In Any Language. In 1955, she coached Carol Channing in the art of vamping for Channing's musical The Vamp, and she also appeared during the 1950s on the television series Omnibus. Naldi denied throughout her life any romantic involvement with either Valentino or Barrymore, and she had no children.

Naldi spent her final years in New York City and died of a heart attack on February 17, 1961, in her room at the Wentworth Hotel on West 46th Street. She was buried in the family plot at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, New York. For her contributions to the film industry, she was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6316 Hollywood Boulevard.