Pivoine sarah bernhardt biography

During her last performance in La Tosca in Rio de Janeiro she had an accident that eventually led to the amputation of her right leg a decade later. Her chosen leading man for the tour was the handsome year-old Lou Tellegan, who became her lover for the next three years. Bernhardt appeared in several silent films, but her only success was in the title role of Elizabeth Queen of England in That year, at the age of 70, she left for her last American tour, which continued for eighteen months.

She was received as a celebrity and spoke at public gatherings urging the Americans to join the Allies. Deprived of the possibility of moving freely on stage, it was her golden voice that kept her audience enthralled. Shortly afterwards, on March 26,Bernhardt died of uremia. Bernhardt wrote poetry, prose, and plays. She also made an adaptation of the drama Adrienne Lecouvreur She wrote an autobiography, Ma Double Vieand two fictional accounts of episodes in her life in the novel Petite Idole translated into English as The Idol of Paris, and in Jolie Sosie n.

Aston, Elaine. Bergman-Carton, Janis. Cobrin, Pamela. Gilman, Sander L. Gilman, 65— Glenn, Susan A. Gold, Arthur, and Robert Fizdale. New York: Knopf, Huret, Jules. Sarah Bernhardt. Paris: c. Raper, London: Musser, Charles. Ockman, Carol. Interpreting Images of Sarah Bernhardt. Stokes, John, Michael R. Booth and Susan Bassnett. Symons, Arthur.

Have an update or correction? Let us know. Episode Alaska's Jewish Pioneer Daughter. Shapira, Elana. Jewish Women's Archive. Sarah Bernhardt October 23, —March 26, Institution: U. Library of Congress. Jewish Lives. Info Email. Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt. Add To Cart. Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew. Louis B. Stan Lee: A Life in Comics.

The amputation did not deter her. She adapted roles so she could stand supported or sit and was skillful enough to make audiences forget her handicap. Off stage, she was carried about in a sedan chair. Given her background, Bernhardt grew up with little concern for the sexual conventions of Victorian society and roundly ignored them. Unlike her mother's, her liaisons, mainly with men in the theater and literary worlds, pivoine sarah bernhardt biography for emotional and sexual satisfaction rather than money which apparently she never fully found.

Still, most of her ex-lovers remained her friends. Her sole marriage was a disaster. Jacques Damala, 12 years her junior, was a strikingly handsome Greek soldier, diplomat, Don Juanand morphine addict. They married in London on April 4, She if few others thought he had acting talent and even bought him a theater to appease his jealousy and conceit.

He soon walked out, she obtained a separation inand he died of drug abuse in Bernhardt kept a bust of him in her home and would not speak ill of him. Later —13she again discovered supposed talent in another smashingly handsome adventurer, Lou Tellegen, but did not marry him. After two American tours, he left her for silent-film stardom and married the opera diva Geraldine Farrar.

Bernhardt worked to the end. She suffered a short uremic coma while rehearsing Sacha Guitry's Un Sujet de roman in December and never again appeared on stage. On March 15,while filming Guitry's La Voyante at her exotic Paris mansion, she collapsed in another attack of uremia, which finally killed her on March Her stone states simply, as if no more were needed: sarah bernhardt.

Bernhardt did not lack detractors among theater critics, notably George Bernard Shawwho much preferred her Italian rival Eleanora Duse — Many, suspicious of huge commercial success and scorning the veritable cult surrounding her, charged that her flagrant self-promotion prostituted her art for applause and money. Anti-Semitism also raised its head; she met it by proudly and simply affirming that she was "a Roman Catholic and a member of the great Jewish race.

At the same time, she never descended to the merely cheap or vulgar. Certainly she was not infallible in choosing plays or judging her ability to succeed in them. She was ready to try new works and methods but also was a shrewd manager, ready to trot out old warhorses to pay 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 the audience a memorable serving of "la Divine Sarah" and usually a good cry—and making a ton of money at it—was.

As for Bernhardt's place in theater history, she epitomized the spirit of romanticism and more than anyone else infused it into the playing of French classical roles. A long debate over whether her method was emotionalist or anti-emotionalist was fueled by contradictions between her statements favoring the former and her highly polished technique.

Pivoine sarah bernhardt biography

An actress May Agate testified that "she could simulate tears and conduct a conversation about something else. Bernhardt's repertoire was vast—over roles, most of them leads; she memorized them in four or five concentrated readings and thereafter almost never forgot a line. She studied them thoroughly and worked hard to avoid mere stereotypical interpretation.

While her range of characters was broad, her repertorial range was mostly classical and romantic French; she had no feel for the new "realistic" school of Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, and Shaw, with their "problem" plays and neurotic, sex-starved, middle-class heroines—"that northern stuff" " des norderies "as she called it. She had striking successes in young male travesti roles.

Traditional in the French theater but a novelty for her English-speaking audiences, they were also a means to disguise her aging, which she dreaded and denied. She argued that roles like Hamlet or Napoleon's son L' Aiglon portray youths of 20 with the minds of men of 40; hence, unlike the older actors usually assigned, "the woman more readily looks the part and yet has the maturity of mind to grasp it.

It was above all in romantic melodrama portraying women in love that Bernhardt excelled. Victorien Sardou supplied her with a string of highly popular vehicles. Bernhardt projected a "chaste sensuality" which Victorian audiences found irresistible. They also wanted tears, and she could bring them up as nobody before or since, with death scenes her specialty.

She exuded sex and portrayed it unmistakably, challenging repressive Victorian conventions. But she never crossed the line into cheapness or obscenity: more important to her even than passion was beauty—which stamped her as a true romantic. It must be added, however, that an element of titillation also entered her audiences' experience, for everyone knew that almost always her stage lover was playing that role offstage too.

Finally, Bernhardt made the grand tour de rigueur well into the 20th century for anyone wishing to be a great star. The device was "invented" by Adelaide Ristori — with her American tours, but Bernhardt revealed its potential to produce deluges of money and fame. Remarkably, she performed abroad only in French yet drew huge crowds; audiences received a translation or a plot summary as at an opera.

Despite the often circus-like atmosphere of the tours, she took the business seriously. When responding to a great formal celebration offered her inshe said, "I have planted the dramatic literature of France in foreign hearts. That is my proudest achievement. Even though the French government decorated her finally inneither it nor the French people ever fully appreciated how very much she had done to win renewed respect for France and French culture abroad in the wake of the defeat of —71, and most especially to help prepare the people of England and the United States to come to suffering France's aid during the First World War — There are five kinds of actresses: bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses—and then there is Sarah Bernhardt.

Sarah Bernhardt was an endless entertainer and a fount of contradictions, as vain, demanding, and all-around "impossible" as the most stereotypical great star, yet also a generous, sensitive woman who kept a host of friends for life. Perhaps her most impressive quality, aside from sheer magnetism, was her courageous will—in surmounting childhood neglect; in following the call of her pivoine sarah bernhardt biography despite early failures and devastating attacks of stage fright throughout her life; in fighting through pain and disability in order to perform as contracted and at the level expected of her; and, most strikingly, in defying the myriad conventions of her time enforcing the helplessness of women in order to make herself a truly independent woman "no matter what.

Aston, Elaine. Oxford: Berg, Bernhardt, Sarah. London: William Heinemann, Gold, Arthur, and Robert Fizdale. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, Salmon, Eric, ed. Bernhardt and the Theater of Her Time. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,