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Natacha Rambova (born Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy; January 19, 1897 – June 5, 1966) was an American film costume designer, set designer, and occasional actress who was active in Hollywood in the 1920s. In her later life, she abandoned design to pursue other interests, specifically Egyptology, a subject on which she became a published scholar in the 1950s.
Rambova was born into a prominent family in Salt Lake City who were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was raised in San Francisco and educated in England before beginning her career as a dancer, performing under Russian ballet choreographer Theodore Kosloff in New York City. She relocated to Los Angeles at age 19, where she became an established costume designer for Hollywood film productions. It was there she became acquainted with actor Rudolph Valentino, with whom she had a two-year marriage from 1923 to 1925. Rambova's association with Valentino afforded her a widespread celebrity typically afforded to actors. Although they shared many interests such as art, poetry and spiritualism, his colleagues felt that she exercised too much control over his work and blamed her for several expensive career flops.
After divorcing Valentino in 1925, Rambova operated her own clothing store in Manhattan before moving to Europe and marrying the aristocrat Álvaro de Urzáiz in 1932. It was during this time that she visited Egypt and developed a fascination with the country that remained for the rest of her life. Rambova spent her later years studying Egyptology and earned two Mellon Grants to travel there and study Egyptian symbols and belief systems. She served as the editor of the first three volumes of Egyptian Religious Texts and Representations (1954–7) by Alexandre Piankoff, also contributing a chapter on symbology in the third volume. 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.
Rambova has been noted by fashion and art historians for her unique costume designs that drew on and synthesized a variety of influences, as well as her dedication to historical accuracy in crafting them. Academics have also cited her interpretive contributions to the field of Egyptology as significant. In popular culture, Rambova has been depicted in several films and television series, figuring significantly in the Valentino biopics The Legend of Valentino (1975), in which she was portrayed by Yvette Mimieux, and Ken Russell's Valentino (1977) by Michelle Phillips. She was also featured in a fictionalized narrative in the network series (2015), portrayed by Alexandra Daddario.
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 Winifred (senior) 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 Winifred (senior) 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.
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 Ballet dancer. 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. While dancing under Kosloff, she adopted 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 retaliated against her mother by fleeing abroad, and her mother ultimately agreed to her continuing to perform with the company.
While working on her second project for Nazimova— Aphrodite, which never was filmed—Rambova revealed to Kosloff that she planned on leaving him. During the ensuing argument, he attempted to kill her, shooting at her with a shotgun. The gun fired into Rambova's leg, and the bullet lodged above her knee. Rambova fled the Hollywood apartment she shared with Kosloff to the set of Aphrodite, where a cameraman helped her remove the birdshot from her leg. Despite the nature of the incident, she continued to live with Kosloff for some time.
Stylistically, Rambova favored designers such as Paul Poiret, Léon Bakst, and Aubrey Beardsley. She specialized in "exotic" and "foreign" effects in both costume and stage design. For costumes she favored bright colors, baubles, bangles, shimmering draped fabrics, sparkles, and feathers. She also strived for historical accuracy in her costume and set designs. As noted in The Moving Picture Worlds review of 1917's The Woman God Forgot (Rambova's first film project): "To the student of history the accuracy of the exteriors, interiors, costumes, and accessories ... the will make strong appeal."
Both Rambova and Valentino were spiritualists, and they frequently visited psychics and took part in séances and automatic writing. Valentino wrote a book of poetry, entitled Daydreams, with many poems about Rambova. When it came to domestic life, Valentino and Rambova turned out to hold very different views. Valentino cherished Old World ideals of a woman being a housewife and mother, while Rambova was intent on maintaining a career and had no intention of being a housewife. Valentino was known as an excellent cook, while actress Patsy Ruth Miller suspected Rambova didn't know "how to make burnt fudge," although the truth was she did occasionally bake and was an excellent seamstress. Valentino wanted children, but Rambova did not.
While her association with Valentino lent Rambova a celebrity typically afforded to actors, their professional collaborations showed-up their differences more than their similarities, and she did not contribute to any of his successful films in spite of serving as his manager. In The Young Rajah (1922) she designed authentic Indian costumes that tended to compromise his Latin lover image, and the film was a major flop. She also supported his one-man strike against Famous Players–Lasky, which left him temporarily banned from movie work. In the interval, they performed a promotional dance-tour for Mineralava Beauty Products, to keep his name in the spotlight, though when they reached her hometown of Salt Lake City, and she was billed as "The Little Pigtailed Shaughnessy Girl", Rambova was deeply insulted. In 1923, Rambova helped design the costumes for friend Alla Nazimova in Salomé, inspired by the work of Aubrey Beardsley. Beginning in February 1924, she accompanied Valentino on a trip abroad that was profiled in twenty-six installments published in Movie Weekly over the course of six months.
Rambova's later work with Valentino was characterised by elaborate and costly preparations for films that either flopped or never manifested. These included Monsieur Beaucaire, The Sainted Devil, and The Hooded Falcon (a film that Rambova co-wrote, but was never realized). By this time, critics and the press were beginning to blame Rambova's excessive control for these failures. United Artists went so far as to offer Valentino an exclusive contract with the stipulation that Rambova had no negotiating power, and was disallowed from even visiting the sets of his films. After this, Rambova was offered $30,000 to create a film of her choosing, which resulted in the production of What Price Beauty?, a drama which she co-produced and co-wrote. In 1925, Rambova and Valentino separated, and an acrimonious divorce ensued.
After the divorce proceedings began, Rambova moved on to other ventures: On March 2, 1926, she patented a doll she had designed with a "combined coverlet", and also produced and starred in her own picture, Do Clothes Make the Woman? with Clive Brook (now lost). However, the distributor took the opportunity to bill her as 'Mrs. Valentino' and changed the title to When Love Grows Cold; Rambova was horrified by the title change. The film did garner press due to it being Rambova's first screen credit, however. An Oregon newspaper teased before a screening: "Natacha Rambova (Mrs. Rudolph Valentino) ... So much has been written of this remarkable lady who won and lost the heart of the great Valentino that everyone wants to see her. Tonight is your opportunity to do so." The film, however, was not well received by critics; a review in Picture Play deemed the film "the poorest picture of the month, or of almost any month, for that matter," adding: "The interiors are bad, the costumes atrocious. Miss Rambova is not well dressed, nor does she film well, in the slightest degree." After its release, Rambova never worked in film, on or offscreen, again. Three months later, Valentino died unexpectedly of peritonitis, leaving Rambova inconsolable, and she purportedly locked herself in her bedroom for three days. Though she did not attend his funeral, she sent a telegram to Valentino's business manager George Ullman, requesting he be buried in her family crypt at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx (a request Ullman denied).
In June 1928, she opened an elite Haute couture shop on Fifth Avenue and West 55th street in Manhattan, which sold Russian-inspired clothing that Rambova herself designed. Her clientele included Broadway and Hollywood actresses such as Beulah Bondi and Mae Murray. On opening the shop, she commented: "I'm in business, not exactly because I need the money, but because it enables me to give vent to an artistic urge." In addition to clothing, the shop also carried jewelry, although it is unknown if it was designed by Rambova or imported. By late 1931, Rambova had grown uneasy about the economic situation of the United States during the Great Depression, and feared the country would experience a drastic revolution. This led her to close her shop and formally retire from commercial fashion design, leaving the United States to live in Juan-les-Pins, France in 1932. On a yacht cruise to the Balearic Islands, she met her second husband Álvaro de Urzáiz, a British-educated Spanish aristocrat, whom she married in 1932. They lived together on the island of Mallorca and restored abandoned Spanish villas for tourists, a venture financed by Rambova's inheritance from her stepfather.
It was during her marriage to Urzáiz that Rambova first toured Egypt in January 1936, visiting the ancient monuments in Memphis, Luxor, and Thebes. While there, she met archeologist Howard Carter, and became fascinated by the country and its history, which had a profound effect on her. "I felt as if I had at last returned home," she said. "The first few days I was there I couldn't stop the tears streaming from my eyes. It was not sadness, but some emotional impact from the past – a returning to a place once loved after too long a time." Upon returning to Spain, Urzáiz became a naval commander for the pro-fascist nationalist side during the Spanish Civil War. Rambova fled the country to a familial château in Nice, where she suffered a heart attack at age forty. Soon after, she and Urzáiz separated. Rambova remained in France until the Nazi invasion in June 1940, upon which she returned to New York.
Rambova's intellectual investment in Egypt also led her to undertake work deciphering ancient scarabs and tomb inscriptions, which she began researching in 1946. Initially, she believed she would find evidence of a connection between ancient Egyptian belief systems and those of ancient American cultures. While researching at the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale in Cairo, she met the institute's director, Alexandre Piankoff, with whom she established a rapport based on their shared interest in Egyptology. Piankoff introduced her to his French translation of the Book of Caverns, a royal funerary text, which he was working on at the time. "To my amazement, I found that it contains all the most important esoteric material," Rambova wrote. "I can only compare it to the Copts Pistis Sophia, the Tibetan Voice of the Silence, and the Hindu Sutras of Patanjali. It is what I have been looking for for years."
Her interest in the Book of Caverns led her to abandon her studies of scarabs, and she began translating Piankoff's French translation into English, an endeavor she felt "was the main purpose and point" of her studies in Egypt. She secured a second two-year grant of US$50,000 through the Mellon and Bollingen Foundations (a considerably large grant for the time) to help Piankoff photograph and publish his work on the Book of Caverns. In the winter of 1949–50, she joined Piankoff and Elizabeth Thomas in Luxor to undertake further studies. In the spring of 1950, the group was given permission to photograph and study inscriptions on golden shrines that had once enclosed the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun, after which they toured the Pyramid of Unas at Saqqara.
After completing the expedition in Egypt, Rambova returned to the United States, where, in 1954, she donated her extensive collection of Egyptian artifacts (accumulated over years of research) to the University of Utah's Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA). She settled in New Milford, Connecticut, where she spent the following several years working as an editor on the first three volumes of Piankoff's series Egyptian Texts and Religious Representations, which was based on the research he had done with Rambova and Thomas. The first volume was The Tomb of Ramesses VI published in 1954, followed by The Shrines of Tut-Ankh-Amon in 1955. During this time, she kept regular correspondence with fellow Egyptologists William C. Hayes and Richard Parker.
For the third volume of Piankoff's series, Mythological Papyri (published in 1957), Rambova contributed her own chapter in which she discussed semiotics in Egyptian papyrus. Rambova continued to write and research intensely into her sixties, often working twelve hours per day. In the years prior to her death, she was working on a manuscript examining texts from the Pyramid of Unas for a translation by Piankoff. This manuscript, which exceeds a thousand pages, was donated to the Brooklyn Museum after her death. Two additional manuscripts were also left behind, which are part of Yale University's Yale in Egypt collection: The Cosmic Circuit: Religious Origins of the Zodiac and The Mystery Pattern in Ancient Symbolism: A Philosophic Interpretation.
In 1957, Rambova moved to New Milford, Connecticut, and devoted her time to researching a comparative study of ancient religious symbolism, which she continued virtually unabated until her death.
She grew delusional, believing that she was being poisoned, and quit eating, resulting in malnourishment. On September 29, 1965, she was discovered going "berserk" in a hotel elevator in Manhattan. Rambova was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital, where she was diagnosed with paranoid psychosis brought on by malnutrition.
With her health in rapid decline, Rambova's cousin, Ann Wollen, relocated her from her home in Connecticut to California, in order to help take care of her. There, Rambova was admitted to Methodist Hospital in Arcadia. On January 19, 1966 (her 69th birthday), she was relocated to a nursing home at Las Encinas Hospital in Pasadena. She died there six months later of a heart attack on June 5, 1966, at the age of 69. At her wishes, Rambova was cremated, and her ashes were scattered in a forest in northern Arizona.
The basis of the claim is an alleged relationship Rambova had with Alla Nazimova, her friend and peer while Rambova was beginning her career in film design. Similar inferences have been made about others in Nazimova's social circle, including Marlene Dietrich, Eva Le Gallienne, and Greta Garbo.
Whether Rambova was bisexual or homosexual is unclear; some have disputed such claims, including journalist David Wallace, who dismisses it as rumor in his 2002 book Lost Hollywood. Biographer Morris also disputes the claim, writing in his epilogue of Madam Valentino that "the convenient ... allegation that Rambova was a lesbian collapses when one scrutinizes the facts."Quoted in Additionally, a close friend of writer Mercedes de Acosta (also an alleged lover of Nazimova) told Morris that she believed Rambova and Nazimova's relationship was nothing other than platonic. Rambova's friend Dorothy Norman also stated that Rambova had been "displeased" by De Acosta's controversial 1960 autobiography, which implied she was bisexual or homosexual, as it had "cast her in an improper light." In his 1996 book The Silent Feminists, Anthony Slide stated that "all who knew Rambova deny that she was a gay woman."
Commenting on her career in film, design historian Robert La Vine proclaimed Rambova one of the "most inventive designers ... ever," also noting her as one of few who crafted both sets and costumes. Film historian Robert Klepper wrote of her designs in Camille (1921): "In evaluating the film today, one has to give art director Natacha Rambova her due credit for her vision as an artist. The Art Deco sets are beautiful, and the ultra modern design was far ahead of its time. Although Rambova may have influenced her future husband Valentino to make some bad business decisions, her talent as an artist cannot be denied." Historian Pat Kirkham also praised her contributions to film, writing that she created "some of the most visually unified films in Hollywood history." Costume historian Deborah Landis named Rambova's white rubberized tunic (worn by Alla Nazimova) and the Art Deco-inspired imagery of Salome (1922) among the "most memorable in motion picture history."
Though her work in both set and costume design has been deemed influential by film and fashion historians alike, Rambova herself claimed to "loathe fashion," adding:
Thus, Rambova's approach to fashion design in her post-film career was conscious of the individual, a practice which fashion historian Heather Vaughan suggests was carried over from her past designing movie costumes for "individual character types." Vaughan adds: "While not necessarily an innovator of fashion, her Hollywood cachet and ability to synthesize fashion and traditional cultures allowed her to create designs and a personal style that continues to fascinate."
Rambova's clothing designs drew on various influences, described by fashion critics as blending and re-working elements of Renaissance, 18th-century, Oriental, Grecian, Russian, and Victorian fashion. Common preferences in her work included the dolman sleeve, long skirts with high waists, premium velvets, and intricate embroidery, as well as incorporation of geometric shapes and use of "vivid colors ... that are violent and definite. Scarlets, vermilions, strong blues, and blazoning purples." She was cited as influential by several designers with whom she worked, including Norman Norell, Adrian, and Irene Sharaff. Rambova typically dressed in the style of her designs, and thus her personal style was also influential: She often wore her hair in coiled "ballerina style" braids, sometimes covered in a headscarf or turban, with dangling earrings and calf-length velvet or brocade skirts. Actress Myrna Loy once proclaimed Rambova the "most beautiful woman she'd ever seen." In 2003, Rambova was posthumously inducted into the Costume Designers' Guild Hall of Fame.
§ Indicates surviving films
Later life and death
In the early 1950s Rambova developed scleroderma, which significantly affected her throat, impeding her ability to swallow and speak.
Claims regarding personal life
Claims that Rambova was bisexuality or homosexual date back to at least 1975 when they appeared in Kenneth Anger's notoriously libelous Hollywood Babylon, in which it is written that Rambova claimed to have never consummation her marriage with Rudolph Valentino. This has led some historians to refer to the couple's union as a "lavender marriage." The claim, however, is at odds with the grounds of Valentino's 1922 arrest after the couple's wedding: he was arrested and jailed for consummating the marriage in Palm Springs, California, despite still being legally married to Jean Acker. Discussion of Rambova's sexuality continued to appear in academic and biographical texts throughout the 1980s and beyond.
Cultural significance
Design and fashion
Rambova was one of the few women in Hollywood during the 1920s to serve as a head art designer in film productions. At the time, her costume and set designs were considered "highly stylized," and divided opinion among critics. A 1925 Picture Play magazine profile on What Price Beauty? noted the "bizarre" effects present, adding: "Miss Rambova insists the picture will be popular in its appeal, and not, as one might think, "arty."" Rambova's sets incorporated shimmering shades of silver and white against sharp " Modernism" lines, and blended elements of Bauhaus and Asian-inspired geometries.
Scholarly influence
Rambova's scholarly work has been regarded as significant by contemporary academics in the fields of Egyptology and history: archaeologist Barbara Lesko notes that her contribution to Piankoff's Mythological Papyri "demonstrates her organizational skills and her commitment to searching out truths and does not reek of unfounded theories or other eccentricity." Rambova's research, specifically her metaphysical interpretations of texts, has been deemed useful by Egyptologists Rudolph Anthes, Edward Wente, and Erik Hornung. In the 1950s, Rambova donated her extensive collection of Egyptian artifacts to the University of Utah, displayed in the Utah Museum of Fine Arts's Natacha Rambova Collection of Egyptian Antiquities. Both Rambova and her mother were credited as "vital" to the establishment of the museum through their donations of paintings, furniture, and artifacts.
Depictions in art and film
Rambova has been depicted across several mediums, including visual art, film, and television: She was the subject of a 1925 painting by Serbian artist Paja Jovanović (donated by her mother to the UMFA in 1949). In 1975, she was portrayed by Yvette Mimieux in Melville Shavelson's television film The Legend of Valentino (1975), and again by Michelle Phillips in Ken Russell's feature film Valentino (1977). Ksenia Jarova later portrayed her in the American silent film Silent Life (2016), and she also figured in a fictionalized narrative in the network series (2015), played by Alexandra Daddario.
Filmography
1917 The Woman God Forgot § Costume designer 1920 Why Change Your Wife? § Costume designer 1920 Something to Think About § Art director, costume designer 1920 Billions Art director, costume designer 1921 Forbidden Fruit § Costume designer 1921 Camille § Art director, costume designer
Uncredited 1921 Aphrodite Art director, costume designer (never made) 1922 Beyond the Rocks § Valentino's costumes 1922 The Young Rajah Costume designer
Uncredited 1922 A Doll's House Art director, costume designer 1923 Salomé § Art director, costume designer, writer
Credited as Peter M. Winters 1924 The Hooded Falcon Costume designer, set decorator, writer (never made) 1924 Monsieur Beaucaire § Costume designer, writer 1924 A Sainted Devil Art director, costume designer, writer 1925 What Price Beauty? Producer, writer 1926 When Love Grows Cold Margaret Benson title: Do Clothes Make the Woman?; only acting credit
Stage credits
Bibliography
Authored works
Edited works
Notes
Works cited
(2025). 9780762458073, Running Press. ISBN 9780762458073
(2025). 9780981644042, PVG Publishing. ISBN 9780981644042
Further reading
External links
Categories: 1897 Births, 1966 Deaths, 20th-century American Actresses, 20th-century American Astrologers, Actresses From Salt Lake City, American Art Directors, American Costume Designers, American Egyptologists, American Fashion Designers, American Film Producers, American Latter Day Saints, 20th-century American Memoirists, American People Of Irish Descent, American Scenic Designers, American Silent Film Actresses, American Spiritualists, American Stage Actresses, American Women Film Producers, American Women Screenwriters, Artists From Salt Lake City, Artists From San Francisco, Dancers From California, Dancers From Utah, Screenwriters From California, Screenwriters From Utah, Writers From Salt Lake City, Writers From San Francisco, Women Film Pioneers, Women Scenic Designers, American Women Memoirists, American Women Graphic Designers, American Graphic Designers, Rudolph Valentino, 20th-century American Women Writers, American Women Archaeologists, American Women Fashion Designers, 20th-century American Screenwriters
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