It is true that she sometimes slept in a coffin; whether she was at home or traveling Bernhardt always kept a large coterie of friends and admirers about her, as well as servants and a menagerie of exotic animals. She was a visual as well as theatrical artist, and many of her paintings and sculptures were popular.
To her credit, she also had a weakness for humanitarian causes. Bernhardt is best known in America for her famous "farewell tours" that she made between and The nine tours she made in America often had a financial rather than artistic motivation behind them. The success of Queen Elizabeth in America, one of the first dramatic silent features, enabled producer Adolph Zukor to start the Famous Players production company, which eventually became Paramount Pictures.
In she started her own resident theater company. They take on Hamlet. That said, Bernhardt did have a new, prose version of the play commissioned which, hardly surprisingly, not everyone loved.
And her Hamlet was notably not a tortured soul, but — like Bernhardt herself — quick, energetic, and really rather resolute. In , Bernhardt injured her knee during Tosca, apparently leaping to her death — actually, leaping to a missing mattress that should have broken the fall. She never recovered, and in , had most of her right leg amputated. Not that she let it stop her performing: this septuagenarian was still a sweetheart for French troops in World War One, carried in on a white palanquin.
True, her acting style, which once seemed so poetic and fresh, now appeared excessively histrionic. But Bernhardt symbolised more than just acting by then: she was a monumental French figure, and her death prompted several days of public mourning. Because there really was no one else quite like her.
Bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses, and then there is Sarah Bernhardt. If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter. And if you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc. After her right leg was amputated, she continued to perform on stage as well as for the troops on the battlefront of World War I.
She did not use a prosthetic limb, instead relying upon strategically placed set pieces as she moved across the stage or being carried about upon a satin sedan chair in the style of Louis XV. Always on the cutting edge, she starred in several silent films. Though she died in before talking movies were made, many consider her the most famous actress the world has ever known.
A million people lined the streets of Paris to bid her adieu as her coffin made its way to Pere Lachaise cemetery. Coffin bed. Taxidermied bat hat. Amputated leg. Lovers aplenty. Sarah Bernhardt was known for many things besides her onstage talents.
At the age of 20, her son Maurice was born, as was her reputation as a scandalous woman. Maurice politely declined, explaining that he was content to be the son of Sarah Bernhardt.
In , Bernhardt proposed to and married Aristides Damalas, a Greek military man, 11 years her junior. She hired him to perform with her, but he preferred spending her money, having affairs, and taking morphine. Marcus explored other scrapbook collections at college libraries in venues such as New York and Boston. Training with the same teacher who mentored another great French Jewish theatrical star — Rachel Felix, known by her first name, Rachel — Bernhardt went on to perform for the prestigious Comedie Francaise.
She tenaciously exerted more control, taking roles that often highlighted her acting ability rather than attractiveness. In a play about imperial Rome, she eschewed playing a vestal virgin for the role of her blind grandmother who kills her with a dagger to spare her from torture.
Marcus says that Bernhardt had celebrity predecessors going back centuries, but these forerunners lacked advantages of democracy and technology that transformed celebrity into a global phenomenon. In Greece, they were athletes and playwrights. In the Middle Ages, they were saints. But before the advent of print, there were only two ways to become a celebrity, she said — local word of mouth, or state-driven means. For modern celebrity, they start to become equal.
Although increasing amounts of attention were being given to celebrities, not all of this was positive. Some of the negative coverage of Bernhardt was based on her off-stage unconventionality, such as media criticism of her balloon ride over Paris. Other coverage disparaged her appearance, claiming that she was too thin, or her having a child without marrying.
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