20 Facts About Nita Naldi

Nita Naldi was often cast in theatrical and screen productions as a vamp, a type of character first popularized by actress Theda Bara.

Nita Naldi was born in a tenement in New York City to working class Irish parents, Julia and Patrick Dooley, in 1894.

Nita Naldi soon entered vaudeville with her brother Frank, and by 1918, she was performing as a chorus girl at the Winter Garden Theatre in The Passing Show of 1918.

Nita Naldi soon quit the film after realizing that Dooley had romantic intentions with another woman.

Nita Naldi was offered a role in A Divorce of Convenience with Owen Moore.

Nita Naldi's noted performance in that film subsequently afforded Naldi more career opportunities.

Nita Naldi was selected by Spanish author Vicente Blasco Ibanez for the role of Dona Sol in the film version of his novel Blood and Sand.

In 1924, the Valentinos and Nita Naldi traveled to France in order to do research for the film The Hooded Falcon.

Nita Naldi was given her own film as a consolation.

Nita Naldi is often mistakenly credited for appearing in Hitchcock's The Pleasure Garden.

Nita Naldi made two films in France and one in Italy, and then she retired.

In 1929, seven years after the success of Blood and Sand, Naldi was named as a party in the divorce proceedings between 54-year-old millionaire J Searle Barclay and his wife of 16 years.

Barclay and Nita Naldi had met during her stage career a decade earlier and had lived together with her sister in New York since 1920.

Nita Naldi, alone, returned to the United States two years later and then filed for bankruptcy in 1934.

Nita Naldi did not speak publicly about Barclay until after his death in 1945.

Nita Naldi returned to the stage with Queer People and The Firebird in 1933.

In 1942, Nita Naldi was considered for For Whom the Bell Tolls but did not receive the part.

Also in the 1950s, Nita Naldi appeared on the television series Omnibus.

Nita Naldi spent her final years in New York City, where she died of a heart attack in her room at the Wentworth Hotel on West 46th Street on February 17,1961.

Nita Naldi was buried in the family plot at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, New York.