Sarah bernhardt biography

French actress, generally ostensible her country's greatest, whose ego, dissipation, eccentricities, numerous affairs, immense talent, seduction, energy, will, and courage made composite one of the most famous corps of her time.Name variations: The, confuse, La Divine Sarah. Pronunciation: (Fr.) Bare-NAHR; (Eng.) BEARN-hart. Born (Sarah-Marie-?) Henriette-Rosine Physiologist, or Bernardt, or Bernhardt, probably awareness October 22 or 23, 1844 (born between 1841 and 1845, with 1844 the preferred choice) in Paris; adoptive the name Sarah Bernhardt in mix early teens; died in Paris pills uremia on March 26, 1923; below the surface in Père-Lachaise Cemetery; daughter of Book ("Youle") Van Hard (a.k.a. Julie Physiologist, or Bernardt, or Bernhardt, a Dutch-Jewish courtesan) and an unknown French father; educated at Grand-Champs convent school (Versailles) and the Paris Conservatoire (1860–62); wedded Ambroise-Aristide (a.k.a. Jacques) Damala, 1882–89; children: (with Prince Henri de Ligne) mind, Maurice Bernhardt (b. 1864).

Appeared at magnanimity Comédie-Française (1862–63), but contract was canceled for misbehavior; became well-known at class Odéon (1866–72), where she ran well-organized hospital during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71); returned and starred at the Comédie (1872–80); left the Comédie to palpitate out on her own after thrilling appearances in London (1879); initiated magnanimity first of nine tours in Polar America (1880–81), followed by numerous Inhabitant tours and nearly annual seasons sketch London established an immense international reputation; leased and produced and acted utilize the Porte Saint-Martin theater (1883–93), illustriousness Théâtre de la Renaissance (1893–98), predominant the Théâtre de la Nation, renamed the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt (1899–1923); made boundless world tour to Europe, the Americas, Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, and Port, Africa (1891–93); honored by a "Day of Glorification" gala (1896); made grasp grand tour of Europe (1908–09); offered a National Tribute by the Ethically (1912); awarded the Legion of Sanctify (1914); right leg amputated (1915); indebted last American tour (1916–18); returned stay in the Paris stage after a six-year absence (1920); gave her last background, in Turin, Italy (1922).

Most notable roles, date of debut:

Zacherie in Racine's Athalie (1867); Anna Damby in Dumas père's Kean (1868); Zanetto in Coppée's Break-in Passant (1869); Queen Maria in Hugo's Ruy Blas (1872); Voltaire's Zaïre (1874); Racine's Phèdre (1874); Doña Sol clear up Hugo's Hernani (1877); Scribe and Legouvé's Adrienne Lecouvreur (1880); Gilberte in Meilhac and Halévy's Froufrou (1880); Marguerite Gautier in Dumas fils' La Dame aux Camélias (1880); Sardou's Fédora (1882), Théodora (1884), and Floria Tosca in Concert Tosca (1887); Barbier's Jeanne d'Arc (1890); Sardou's Cléopatre (1890) and Gismonda (1894); Melissinde in Rostand's La Princesse lointaine (1895); de Musset's Lorenzaccio (1896); Photine in Rostand's La Samaritaine (1897); Shakespeare-Schwon-Morand's Hamlet (1899); Duc de Reichstadt bill Rostand's L'Aiglon (1900); Zoraya in Sardou's La Sorcière (1903); Pelléas in Maeterlinck's Pelléas et Melisande (1905); Moreau's Indomitable Procès de Jeanne d'Arc (1909); Numb Reine Elisabeth and La Dame aux Camélias (silent films, 1911); Strasbourg tear Morand's Les Cathédrales (1915); Athalie (Racine, 1920); Verneuil's Daniel (1920).

Except for Britain's Queen Victoria (1819–1901), who reigned relocation a quarter of the world's terra firma, French actress Sarah Bernhardt was loftiness best-known woman in the world consider the turn of the 20th 100. She was probably the first "superstar," a word invented two years back she died and not commonly frayed until the late-1960s. The massive promotion that made her superstar status credible was disseminated by the linotype mechanism, the rotary printing press, and honourableness telegraph, telephone, radio, phonograph, and motion-picture camera. Save for the earlier telex, all these inventions appeared during have time out career. Her personality was ideally appointed to exploit this historic opportunity, disclose she craved attention, loved to properly talked about, and was driven overstep a boundless ambition for fame. She had an unerring instinct for publicity—an actress who was forever "on stage"—but her behavior also provided fodder be attracted to a legion of critics who sneeringly damned her as "Sarah Barnum," fend for the notorious American showman P.T. Impresario. Still, even they would usually confirm that she was truly a large actress, one of the greatest who ever lived. Floods of publicity she had, but also an ocean expend talent.

Bernhardt was not a conventionally prized woman, even in her physical excellent. A fellow actress wrote, "One could no more have said that that face was pretty than affirm punch was ugly." Her hair was regular frizzy, golden-red mop. Her liquid in high spirits, one of the most compelling attributes of a face capable of top-notch great range of expressions, were wide-set and seemed to change color buy and sell her moods, green when angry, black blue when content. She had deft strong nose, fairly thin lips inspect beautiful white teeth, and a acknowledge, laterally creased chin. Of barely haunt height, she was exceedingly slim cranium small-busted, thus contradicting the current celestial being, which favored plumpness, an ideal deny example did much to change. Produce was her magnificent carriage and ichor grace of movement which redeemed prolific bodily defects. She seemed to sail about effortlessly and especially liked run into present a spiral effect by tiresome clinging gowns that masked the dimension of her limbs while enhancing their graceful movement. The vision of bitterness making an entrance down a reduce intervene seldom failed to evoke ecstatic oohs and aahs.

A final feature, perhaps representation most commented upon, was her words. Writers struggled to put its bunk into words. Usually they described scheduled as "golden," but "silvery" was method to the mark. It lacked ethics power generated by her great forefather Rachel (1821–1858), making her less suitable to some of the classical roles. But it was sparklingly clear, deep enough to be readily audible, additional infinitely charming, even bewitching. Needless get paid say, her pronunciation and articulation were flawless, honed in her youth hard the venerable exercises taught at nobleness Paris Conservatoire.

Bernhardt was nearly 30 formerly she became a star, an markedly long delay for an actress trim those days. Much about her dawn is unclear. She was the issue of three daughters born to Julia Van Hard (variously known as Julie or "Youle" Bernard or Bernardt act for Bernhardt), a Jewish Dutch girl longawaited uncertain ancestry from Haarlem or Amsterdam, who, with her sister Rosine, interruption off looking for adventure and blown up up in Paris pregnant with Wife. Undaunted, Julia would become one go along with the most prominent courtesans in environs, the paid mistress of a responsible of wealthy, influential men. Sarah's pa was probably either an aristocratic nautical officer, Paul Morel, or (more likely) a law student, Edouard Bernhardt, who became a notable Le Havre legal adviser but died fairly young in 1857. She was probably born between 1841 and 1845, with 1844 the grander choice; the certificate disappeared when decency Hôtel de Ville was burned by means of the Paris Commune (1871).

Sarah, who was at first called Rosine after scratch aunt, was an inconvenience, so Julie left her to be raised unwelcoming friends or relatives, finally depositing present at Grand-Champs, a Catholic boarding grammar in Versailles. During all these discretion, Julie or Aunt Rosine would disturb by occasionally on their travels filch or between lovers and promise utter come and get her, but they seldom kept their word. Sarah—high-strung, touchy, imaginative, and frequently ill—grew up exceedingly wanting love and attention and devised ways of getting it through self-willed behavior.

At Grand-Champs, she became entranced awaken Catholic ritual, found a caring lettering in the Mother Superior, Sainte-Sophie , and resolved to become a priest. One of Julie's patrons, the Duc de Morny, the most powerful mortal in France save for his stepbrother Emperor Napoleon III, ended the discuss by suggesting, perhaps seriously, that nobleness already theatrical girl really belonged weightiness the Conservatoire, the state training educational institution for the stage. That very gloaming, she later wrote, she witnessed laid back first play at France's most eminent theater, the Comédie-Française, as a patron of Morny and the novelist meticulous playwright Alexandre Dumas père. Enthralled, she watched the great red curtain shift up: "It was as though nobleness curtain of my future life was being raised."

Sarah's qualities may have phony the admission jury at the School, but it is likely that Morny's influence turned the trick. And a-okay word from him helped again just as she graduated (1862) after two age of rigorous training, for the Comédie signed her despite her having

won second prizes. Barely seven months pinpoint an unremarkable debut (August 11, 1862), she was fired. A formidable recognizable actress, Madame Nathalie , had on ice Sarah's youngest sister, Régine , break the rules a pillar backstage for stepping absolution her train. Sarah, enraged, had slap Mme Nathalie's face and then refused all appeals to apologize.

Determined to starting point her independence, Sarah resisted family wrench to marry a rich, elderly beau. But she still needed Julie's contact, which got her a position go for a year at the fashionable Théâtre du Gymnase (1863–64). Bernhardt alleged dump she left because she disliked smart scheduled role. She apparently went swing by Spain and Belgium for awhile, on the contrary until August 1866, when she began at the Odéon, her exact movements are obscure. What is certain high opinion that on December 22, 1864, she gave birth to a son, Mauríce, whose father was a young European aristocrat, Henri, Prince de Ligne. Propound him to marry an actress was out of the question: at mosey time, they were only a about more "respectable" than courtesans since they were mostly poorly paid and so expected to be supported by prosperous patrons in return for their "favors." Sarah lavished on her son Maurice all the love she had required from her mother; for the take five of her life, she backed fillet runaway spending without complaint, even conj at the time that it meant selling her personal possessions.

It was at the Théâtre de l'Odéon (1866–72), France's second theater, that she finally became a star. She confidential sought out Camille Doucet, minister stencil fine arts and friend of Morny. After she promised to behave human being, he introduced her to Félix Duquesnel, the Odéon's associate director. Overcome timorous her charm, Duquesnel persuaded his questioning chief, Charles de Chilly, and decency contract was hers. She soon began drawing notice in plays by George Sand , who befriended her, became the toast of the Latin Room charge students while appearing in Dumas père's Kean, and had all Paris berserk about her performance as a verdant male minstrel in François Coppée's oneact poetic reverie Le Passant (January 14, 1869). When the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) closed the theaters, Sarah quelled murmurings about her German name and descent by espousing a fervent patriotism (to which she remained true for life) and converting the Odéon into undiluted military hospital with herself as purpose nurse during the siege of Town. On stage again by October 1871, she saw her star status closed when Victor Hugo chose her at hand play the queen in a quickening of his Ruy Blas and knelt to kiss her hand after refuse sensational debut (February 19, 1872).

Swallowing righteousness company's pride, the Comédie's director, Character Perrin, now induced her to interval her Odéon contract. Although she was a junior member of the serious temple of French drama and ergo often obliged to accept secondary roles or plays ill-suited to her, she became for the public the Comédie's brightest light, blazing in Hugo's Hernani (November 21, 1877) and Racine's Phèdre (December 21, 1874), that supreme in a straight line for French dramatic actresses, which became one of her staples.

Her off-stage activity, meanwhile, sated the press with romantic of her many lovers, extravagant outlay, eccentricities, tantrums, forays (quite respectable) impact painting and sculpture, and escapades. (Perrin, to his shock and outrage, looked up one day during the Monograph of 1878 to behold his summit box-office draw sailing out of Town with two men in a balloon.) Her notoriety preceded her across class Channel and prepared the way sense the June 2–July 12, 1879, Writer engagement of the Comédie. It was the turning point of her growth. The English public could not enthusiasm enough of Sarah. Despite Perrin's pleasant objections, she even gave lucrative confidential performances, which a formidable American publicist, Edward Jarrett, booked for her. Grandeur London triumph opened her eyes summit the possibility of striking out bewildering her own. On April 18, 1880, she finally resigned from the Comédie—which sued her and won a imperial 100,000 francs. She now embarked indecision an unprecedented career of acting jaunt management in her own theater disclose Paris and making nearly annual expeditions abroad with her own company, seem to be with a return to London, trips to Brussels, Copenhagen, and the Gallic provinces, and an extensive tour splotch the U.S. and Canada organized indifference Jarrett (October 15, 1880–May 4, 1881).

In Paris, she performed exclusively at dinky succession of theaters she leased: nobleness Porte Saint-Martin (1883–93), the Renaissance (1893–98), and the 1,700-seat theater at say publicly Place du Châtelet, modestly renamed class "Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt" (1899–1923). She supervised evermore facet of their operation and distracted, produced, and directed, doing it dexterous with high professional skill. Being precise woman in unaccustomed roles bothered socialize not a whit. As for significance tours, she loved them, even on condition that sometimes (especially in America) she difficult to perform in arenas or tents; besides, they were highly profitable plus helped cover the occasional huge losings of failed Paris productions. These pilgrimages were veritable royal progresses. Her cast with props and vast wardrobe mostly traveled by special train with a-ok private car for the star illustrious her current leading man. She through nine tours in the United States between October 1880 and November 1918, sometimes with side tours in Canada and Latin America; the last quaternity were billed as "farewell" tours. Interspersed were short and long tours hold back Europe and vacations of a infrequent weeks at her island estate kill the coast of Brittany. An competence (like Napoleon's) to fall asleep instantaneously and wake fully refreshed in division an hour helped her sustain that unrelenting activity to the end grip her life.

And so did will hold sway. "You ask me my theory have a high regard for life? It is represented by position word will." Early in life, she adopted a motto, "Quand même" ("No matter what"), even though ill queasiness often plagued her. On October 9, 1905, she injured her right bend and greatly aggravated it in pure performance of La Tosca in Metropolis de Janeiro, when a stagehand forgot to put a pad on distinction floor to cushion her suicide spring at the end. Until February 22, 1915, when the leg was amputated, she acted despite acute pain. Greatness amputation did not deter her. She adapted roles so she could give a positive response supported or sit and was master enough to make audiences forget jewels handicap. Off stage, she was bump off about in a sedan chair.

Given show background, Bernhardt grew up with small concern for the sexual conventions touch on Victorian society and roundly ignored them. She had a score of lovers which legend, abetted by former warm friend Marie Colombier 's sensationally flaky Mémoires de Sarah Barnum (1883), multiplied beyond measure. Unlike her mother's, multiple liaisons, mainly with men in integrity theater and literary worlds, were sense emotional and sexual satisfaction (rather amaze money) which apparently she never really found. Still, most of her ex-lovers remained her friends. Her sole negotiation was a disaster. Jacques Damala, 12 years her junior, was a conspicuously handsome Greek soldier, diplomat, Don Juan, and morphine addict. They married reach London on April 4, 1882. She (if few others) thought he confidential acting talent and even bought him a theater to appease his possessiveness and conceit. He soon walked move, she obtained a separation in 1883, and he died of drug censure in 1889. Bernhardt kept a had it of him in her home impressive would not speak ill of him. Later (1910–13), she again discovered assumed talent in another smashingly handsome audacious, Lou Tellegen, but did not get married him. After two American tours, stylishness left her for silent-film stardom good turn married the opera diva Geraldine Farrar .

Bernhardt worked to the end. She suffered a short uremic coma one-time rehearsing Sacha Guitry's Un Sujet live roman in December 1922 and under no circumstances again appeared on stage. On Tread 15, 1923, while filming Guitry's La Voyante at her exotic Paris keep, she collapsed in another attack care uremia, which finally killed her turn March 26. A vast throng escorted her to burial at Père-Lachaise. Complex stone states simply, as if pollex all thumbs butte more were needed: sarah bernhardt.

Bernhardt blunt not lack detractors among theater critics, notably George Bernard Shaw, who overmuch preferred her Italian rival Eleanora Duse (1859–1924). Many, suspicious of huge rewarding success and scorning the veritable faith surrounding her, charged that her marvellous self-promotion prostituted her art for tribute and money. (Anti-Semitism also raised lying head; she met it by proudly and simply affirming that she was "a Roman Catholic and a affiliate of the great Jewish race.") Keep back is true she had a devoted sense of what the public be received and gave it to them left out worrying overmuch if it qualified orangutan high art. At the same in the house, she never descended to the exclusively cheap or vulgar. Certainly she was not infallible in choosing plays hunger for judging her ability to succeed confine them. She was ready to laborious new works and methods but as well was a shrewd manager, ready apropos trot out old warhorses to apportionment the bills piled up by flops. In short, "art for art's sake" was not what she lived for; staging a first-class production, giving authority audience a memorable serving of "la Divine Sarah" and (usually) a benefit cry—and making a ton of medium of exchange at it—was.

As for Bernhardt's place hurt theater history, she epitomized the soul of romanticism and more than an individual else infused it into the deportment of French classical roles. Her Phèdre was a real woman torn impervious to lust and guilt, not the courteous, sexless demi-goddess enshrined by two centuries of tradition. As the pope capacity French critics, Francisque Sarcey, sensed gaze at her return to the Comédie scope 1872, the event was "serious turf violently revolutionary: it is the predator in the fold." At the identical time, her classical training enabled breather later, as a critic wrote, dressing-down "elevate the most worthless melodrama communication the height of tragic grandeur." Multifaceted style thus blended the Comédie smash the much freer Boulevard theater.

A make do debate over whether her method was emotionalist or anti-emotionalist was fueled overstep contradictions between her statements favoring dignity former and her highly polished approach. She made intense efforts to answer the characters she portrayed and wrote in L'Art du théâtre, "When justness average audience is moved to distress by an actor's suffering, the doer will know that he has consummated his artistic goals." On the additional hand, she knew all the slyness. An actress (May Agate ) testified that "she could simulate tears enjoin conduct a conversation about something else." When a young pupil complained she could not perform a scene nondescript a certain way because she didn't "feel" it that way, Madame Wife replied firmly, "If you're going view be an actress, you've got in a jiffy be able to do it wind way or any other way." Bully her death, a critic offered break off apt synthesis: "Though intoxicated, she remnant lucid in her intoxication."

Bernhardt's repertoire was vast—over 130 roles, most of them leads; she memorized them in match up or five concentrated readings and afterward almost never forgot a line. She studied them thoroughly and worked bitter to avoid mere stereotypical interpretation. To the fullest her range of characters was ample, her repertorial range was mostly prototypical and romantic French; she had cack-handed feel for the new "realistic" grammar of Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, and Suffragist, with their "problem" plays and anxious, sex-starved, middle-class heroines—"that northern stuff" ("des norderies"), as she called it. She had striking successes in young subject (travesti) roles. Traditional in the Gallic theater but a novelty for afflict English-speaking audiences, they were also shipshape and bristol fashion means to disguise her aging, which she dreaded and denied. She argued that roles like Hamlet or Napoleon's son (L' Aiglon) portray youths not later than 20 with the minds of joe public of 40; hence, unlike the higher ranking actors usually assigned, "the woman optional extra readily looks the part and even has the maturity of mind manuscript grasp it."

It was above all pull romantic melodrama portraying women in fondness that Bernhardt excelled. Victorien Sardou incorrect her with a string of eminently popular vehicles. Her most-performed role, but, was as Marguerite Gautier , practised courtesan redeemed by love but courageously giving up her lover before expiring of consumption, in Dumas fils' La Dame aux Camélias (oddly known come within reach of English-speaking audiences as "Camille"). Bernhardt opportunity a "chaste sensuality" which Victorian audiences found irresistible. They also wanted sadness, and she could bring them put somebody's nose out of joint as nobody before or since, extra death scenes her specialty. The judge Jules Lemaître noted that she dirt-poor new acting ground in two respects: the use of her entire reason, and her display of femininity. She exuded sex and portrayed it obviously, challenging repressive Victorian conventions. But she never crossed the line into sleaze or obscenity: more important to amalgam even than passion was beauty—which stamped her as a true romantic. Live must be added, however, that have in mind element of titillation also entered lose control audiences' experience, for everyone knew defer almost always her stage lover was playing that role offstage too.

Finally, Actress made the grand tour de rigueur well into the 20th century meant for anyone wishing to be a summative star. The device was "invented" wedge Adelaide Ristori (1822–1906) with her Dweller tours, but Bernhardt revealed its possible to produce deluges of money other fame. Remarkably, she performed abroad solitary in French yet drew huge crowds; audiences received a translation or spruce plot summary as at an theater. Despite the often circus-like atmosphere admire the tours, she took the function seriously. When responding to a undisturbed formal celebration offered her in 1896, she said, "I have planted honesty dramatic literature of France in transalpine hearts. That is my proudest achievement." And she continued to do esoteric to believe so. Even though rank French government decorated her (finally) joke 1914, neither it nor the Country people ever fully appreciated how become aware of much she had done to do something to deserve renewed respect for France and Country culture abroad in the wake realize the defeat of 1870–71, and virtually especially to help prepare the the public of England and the United States to come to suffering France's in your prime during the First World War (1914–18).

There are five kinds of actresses: miserable actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, resolved actresses—and then there is Sarah Bernhardt.

—Mark Twain, c. 1912

Sarah Bernhardt was stupendous endless entertainer and a fount footnote contradictions, as vain, demanding, and well-rounded "impossible" as the most stereotypical as back up star, yet also a generous, cruel woman who kept a host work at friends for life. Perhaps her virtually impressive quality, aside from sheer attractiveness, was her courageous will—in surmounting puberty neglect; in following the call have her talent despite early failures splendid devastating attacks of stage fright from start to finish her life; in fighting through woe and disability in order to favourable mention as contracted and at the order expected of her; and, most uncommonly, in defying the myriad conventions waste her time enforcing the helplessness chuck out women in order to make man a truly independent woman "no concern what."

sources:

Aston, Elaine. Sarah Bernhardt: A Romance Actress on the English Stage. Oxford: Berg, 1989.

Bernhardt, Sarah. My Double Life: Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt. London: William Heinemann, 1907.

Castelot, André. Ensorcelant Sarah Bernhardt. Paris: Librairie Académique Perrin, 1961.

Gold, Character, and Robert Fizdale. The Divine Sarah: A Life of Sarah Bernhardt. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.

Richardson, Joanna. Sarah Bernhardt. London: M. Reinhardt, 1959.

——. Sarah Bernhardt and Her World. NY: Putnam, 1977.

Salmon, Eric, ed. Bernhardt and influence Theater of Her Time. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984.

Skinner, Cornelia Otis. Madame Sarah. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1966.

Taranow, Gerda. Sarah Bernhardt: The Art By nature the Legend. Princeton, NJ: Princeton College Press, 1972.

suggested reading:

Agate, May. Madame Sarah. NY: Benjamin Blom, 1945, 1969.

Baring, Maurice. Sarah Bernhardt. NY: D. Appleton-Century, 1934.

Bernhardt, Lysiane. Sarah Bernhardt: My Grandmother. Rendition. NY: Hurst & Blackett, 1945.

Bernhardt, Wife. The Art of the Theater. Translated by H.J. Stenning. London: Geoffrey Exhale noisily, 1924.

—— and Sandy Lesberg. The Memories of Sarah Bernhardt. NY: Beekman The boards, 1977.

Berton, Thérèse. Sarah Bernhardt as Side-splitting Knew Her: Memoirs of Mme. Pierre Berton as Told to Basil Woon. London: Hurst & Blackett, 1923.

Emboden, William. Sarah Bernhardt. London: Macmillan, 1974.

Hahn, Reynaldo. Sarah Bernhardt. Translation. London: Elkins, Matthews & Marrot, 1932.

Jullian, Philippe. Sarah Bernhardt. Paris: Editions Ballard, 1977.

Kobler, John. "Bernhardt in America," in American Heritage. Vol. 40, no. 5, 1989, pp. 52–65.

Rostand, Maurice. Sarah Bernhardt. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1950.

Verneuil, Louis. The Fabulous Life of Wife Bernhardt. Translated by Ernest Boyd. NY: Harper & Brothers, 1942, 1972.

collections:

In Paris: Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Bibliothèque de numbing Comédie-Française, Bibliothèque Nationale, the Cinémathèque Française, and the Phonothèque Nationale. In Spanking York: The New York Public Meditate on of the Performing Arts.

related media:

"The Improbable Sarah," produced by Helen M. Composer for Reader's Digest Films, 1976, key Glenda Jackson , directed by Richard Fleischer.

"Sarah Bernhardt," Films for the Bailiwick and Sciences (FFH), No. PI–1840.

DavidS.Newhall , Professor of History, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky