“I am writing a play about a woman dancing with her bare feet in the blood of a man she has craved for and slain.”

-Oscar Wilde (1891)

Alla Nazimova in Salome (1923, dir. Charles Bryant), the screen adaptation of Wilde’s play. Above, she performs the “Dance of the Seven Veils” to seduce King Herod into ordering the beheading of John the Baptist; below, the execution.

Kathryn Stanley as Salome (1926, photo by Edwin Hesser)

“Thou rejectedest me. Thou didst speak evil words against me. Thou didst bear thyself toward me as to a harlot, to me, Salome, daughter of Herodias, Princess of Judaea! 

Well, I still live, but thou art dead, and thy head belongs to me.”

-Oscar Wilde, Salome

Alla Nazimova & Arthur Jasmine in Salome (1923, dir. Charles Bryant)

Production designer Natacha Rambova based much of Salome’s decor and costumes on the decadent illustrations Aubrey Beardsley produced for the first edition of Oscar Wilde’s play Salome.

The above still is a recreation of Beardsley’s The Peacock Skirt