Island, and sat by himself in the center to watch her performance. Personal life In 1933 there were reports that Swirskaya was engaged to marry twice-widowed New York lawyer Frederick G. Fischer and that his family committed him to an asylum to prevent the match. Thamara de Swirsky professed particular love for Los Angeles as early as 1910, recalling that "I knew when I first touched foot to your soil that here I would find the warmth and the glow which would call out the best that is in me." She settled in Los Angeles after her dance career; she taught and played piano for a living. She died there in 1961, weeks after she was badly injured in a traffic accident during a storm, aged 73 years. There is a statuette of Thamara de Swirsky in a dance pose, by Paolo Troubetzkoy, in the collection of the Getty Museum. Her unpublished memoirs have also been discovered in recent years. References External links . Photographs of Thamara de Swirsky in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division Photograph Files, New York Public Library. Photograph of Thamara de Swirsky in the George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress. Photograph of Thamara de Swirsky in an Egyptian-inspired costume and pose, from the Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie. Photographs of Tamara Swirskaya by Bassano Ltd, in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. 1888 births 1961 deaths Vaudeville performers Female dancers from the Russian Empire Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States