Olga von Root

Baroness Olga Vadimovna von Root (; 2 December 1901 – 28 June 1967) was a Russian stage actress and singer. Born into a noble family of German, Polish, and Greek background, Root was educated at the Smolny Institute of Noble Maidens in Russia.

As a teenager, she ran away from home and travelled with a Romani family, studying their music and dance. During the Russian Revolution, while her father served in the White Army, Root performed in cabarets and nightclubs to help support her family. After the war, she performed in Russia and other European countries as a stage actress and singer under the stage name Olga Vadina. She later married the American industrialist Armand Hammer and moved to the United States, taking up residence in Manhattan. While living in New York, she worked to transcribe numerous Romani ballads. Root is the grandmother of American businessman Michael Armand Hammer and the great-grandmother of American actor Armie Hammer.

Early life and family Baroness Olga Vadimovna von Root was born in Sevastopol, Crimea in 1901. She was the daughter of Baron Vadim Nikolayevich von Root, a Czarist military officer and nobleman, and Lubov Karlovna Kostsyushko-Valyuzhinich, a member of a Polish landed gentry family. Root's paternal ancestors were Volga German nobility who came to the Russian Empire during the reign of Peter the Great to serve in the Imperial Russian Army. Her maternal grandfather, Karl Kazimirovich Kostsyushko-Valyuzhinich, was Catholic and the founder of the Archeological Museum in Chersonesus. Her maternal grandmother, Maria Pavlovna Reveliotis, was a Russian Orthodox woman of Greek descent and the granddaughter of the Russian landowner and leader of the Greek War of Independence General Theodosios Reveliotis. Through her mother, Root was also a descendant of the Polish national hero Tadeusz Kościuszko. They had one son, Julian Armand Hammer, who was born in Moscow in 1928. The family left Moscow in 1930 and took up residence on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. She and Hammer divorced in 1943.

Root was the grandmother of American businessman Michael Armand Hammer and the great-grandmother of American actor Armie Hammer.