Nita and Zita were Jewish sisters born in Hungary who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1920s and performed acrobatic and contortionist burlesque acts around the world. When they retired in their 50s, they settled in New Orleans and painted their entire house with dots, small patterns and flowers. Upon their deaths, they were buried in the pauper’s section of the Jewish cemetery in New Orleans. Their headstones only bore their original names: Piroska Gellert (1904-1991) and Flora Gellert (1895-1985). There was no mention of their stage names or the fame they had gained during their lifetimes.
This was a sad ending for two sisters who rose to fame but were forgotten in later life. Their neighbors thought of them as somewhat odd and their house stood out as especially eccentric and quirky, even by New Orleans standards. There is a good chance you wouldn’t have ever heard about them if not for Marci Darling, the director of the documentary about them, “The Nita & Zita Project,” which played last month as part of the Dances with Films Festival.
Darling traveled to New Orleans in the 90s, where she saw some of the sisters’ costumes hanging in a junk shop in the French Quarter. The only neighbor who attended their funeral entered their house afterward and found thousands of costumes made from found objects, which she then sold in a yard sale.
”They had some tattered costumes hanging from the ceiling at the shop and I just fell in love with the whole story of who these people were,” Darling said. She bought some pictures and costumes of the local legends and returned to Los Angeles, where she performed as a belly dancer, circus acrobat and burlesque dancer. Then, she and her dance partner Kim Murphy created an act paying tribute to Nita & Zita. The partners performed every Thursday night at the Viper Room in West Hollywood and traveled around the U.S. with their act. They performed for 10 years and then went their separate ways. Darling got married, had children, got divorced, wrote five bestselling books and a blog. Then, in 2018, Kim died about a year after getting married; she was only 44.
”Kim had struggled with bipolar disorder since the ‘90s on and off,” Darling said. ”This film is my homage to her. It was just a way for me to relive our Royal Palace years, which were my very favorite years in my life.”
The idea to make the film came about last year in the middle of the night. ”I literally woke up from a dream and was just like, ‘Oh, I know what I need to do,’ and it became a real obsession.”
At first, Darling thought the project was going to be something short, like a reel on her phone. However, as she started researching the story of the long-forgotten sisters, the project took on a life of its own and became a full-length documentary.
”Once I started researching, many doors opened. I traveled to the New England Genealogical Society, the New York Library of the Performing Arts, Harlem, Transylvania. I visited Nita and Zita’s home in New Orleans and talked to the neighbors who still remembered them,” Darling said.
”It was very lucky to be in this time where they’re digitizing a lot of things but there’s lots of stuff that’s not digitized yet. I had to go to New York and search through card catalogs. Then the New Orleans Historical Collection was like, ‘We have a big donation from them, several boxes of their items. Somebody pulled them out of the trash in New Orleans.’”
Darling happily started digging in – and what she found was gold. As more and more layers of the story were revealed to her, Darling was fascinated by what she found.
”I learned a lot about Hungary between 1900-1922,” she said.. “The sisters decorated every single surface in their house, even the bathroom, because it reminded them of their childhood home. That’s what they did in Hungary and a lot of Eastern European countries. Their house was very dilapidated because they were caring for it by themselves. I totally understood that desire to make things beautiful even as they were falling apart.”
Through newspaper clippings, Darling was able to piece together a fascinating picture of the sisters. Their names were often spelled wrong, and their ages fluctuated significantly as they shamelessly deducted a decade or more to be perceived as younger. They used to rent out parts of their house to tenants and taught exercise classes for a short time.
Throughout the years, there was an attempt to turn the house into a museum, but nobody could get the funding for it. ”It was finally bought by a son and his mom who wanted to preserve it,” said Darling. ”But they didn’t have the money to do what it takes. They then sold it to someone who promised to preserve it but didn’t.”
When Darling visited the Gellerts’ graves, she felt sad to see their headstone only bearing their names, date of birth and death.
“I’m hoping that as the story gets more and more known, we will be able to turn their house into a museum.” – Marci Darling
Over 30 years after their deaths, Darling decided to give the sisters a proper farewell. She hired a 1920s band and said Kaddish over their graves. ”We brought little stones and glittered them up in New Orleans style, put jewels on them and wrote their names on them,” she said.. “We put them on their graves with tiny little shoes. I’m hoping that as the story gets more and more known, we will be able to turn their house into a museum or maybe put up a statue around New Orleans or the street where they once lived.”
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