Nina Vanna
British actress (1899–1953)

Nina Kind Hakim Provatoroff, known by her stage name of Nina Vanna (née Yazykova; 27 September 1899 – 8 November 1953), was a Russian-born British film actress who appeared in a number of silent films during the 1920s.
She sometimes played in historical dramas, playing Lady Jane Grey in the first of three film versions of her life (Lady Jane Grey; Or, the Court of Intrigue) and Lucrezia Borgia in what may be the first of several versions.
Vanna was married three times, first to Robert Kind from whom she was later divorced, secondly to film director Eric Hakim (1900–1967), whom she also divorced, and finally to an importer/exporter and art collector Peter Provatoroff from 1946 until her death in Banstead, Surrey, UK.
Career
Vanna began her film career in England where she made her debut in Scrooge (1923) as Alice. In the next years followed her leading roles in films, among them A Christmas Carol (1923), Lucrezia Borgia; Or, Plaything of Power (1923), Lady Jane Grey in Lady Jane Grey; Or, The Court of Intrigue (1923), The Man Without Desire (1923), The Cost of Beauty (1924) and The Woman Tempted (1926).
Just before beginning of filming of The Man Without Desire, in which the actress played a young socialite, she was persuaded by Ivor Novello, appearing as a Venetian aristocrat, to change her name to "something that sounded less emetic".
She extended her career to France, Germany and Austria from 1924 with the new films La closerie des Genets (1924), Veille d'armes (1925), Männer vor der Ehe (1927), Café Elektric (1927), Die raffinierteste Frau Berlins (1927), A Murderous Girl (1927), Youth Astray (original title: Was die Kinder ihren Eltern verschweigen, 1927), Was weisst Du von der Liebe/Gefährdete Mädchen (1927), La vie miraculeuse de Thérèse Martin (1930). After a longer pause followed her first and last sound film at the same time with The Show Goes On (1937).
Other movies included Love in an Attic (1923) The School for Scandal (1923), Guy Fawkes (1923), The Money Habit (1924), We Women (1925), Before the Battle (1925), Graziella (1926), The Triumph of the Rat (1926), and Adventure Mad (1926).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Nina Vanna” as british actress (1899–1953). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as british actress (1899–1953). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 2, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q4984275. The first chronological checks are 1899, 1953, 1900 and 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nina Vanna” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.