SARAH BERNHARDT
(1844-1923)
Baptized Sarah Marie Henriette Bernard but born Jewish
Eventually Called The Girl With The Golden Voice
I've had Sarah Bernhardt, who was considered the best actress of her generation, on my list of future subjects for some time. My search for books in English that are well regarded lead me to this one by author Robert Gottlieb, which is primary reference for this month's posts, along with some interesting web sites and YouTube videos. Gottlieb states that Sarah herself spun stories and that some of the people who wrote about her had agendas and so, perhaps, it's not possible to know the true or whole story. But he does try.
I think Sarah Berhardt had a hard life but like many of the people profiled here, she made the best of what she had to deal with.
What surprised me was learning that Sarah's mother, Youle Van Hard, was a courtesan in Paris and that she was born illegitimate and unloved. I was also surprised to learn that after Youle took Sarah out of school, she encouraged her to become a teenage courtesan. Youle had three illegitimate daughters over the years. You could say she set her daughters up to be courtesans, and, though youthful Sarah did have patrons for at least some of the time in her youth, her younger sister reportedly became a prostitute and had an even harder life.
Sarah's eventual successes may have begun because it seems that her mother, a patron, or most likely her birth father, were willing to provide an education for the girl. This was a time when women often went without an education. She took an early interest in acting and the theater and was educated at a good convent school and then a school for acting, but she was also born into a world where her gender - her family's situation - her class at birth - and her Jewishness came with limits. If you've been reading Mistress Manifesto, then you know that many a courtesan in previous centuries was also an entertainer. It was beauty, talent, and fame that attracted patrons and who knows what came first. Acting has become a respectable profession but it wasn't always. It was long assumed that any actor, any theater person, was living a scandalous life.
Sarah Bernhardt eventually became world famous - a celebrity - while also known for her 'love life.' I think that Sarah was expert at marketing and promoting herself, kind of like the way the singer-dancer Madonna, an expert at reinvention, has been. As an example, in her youthful days, Sarah posed with a hat that had a bat on top rather than a bird and took a coffin with her on her travels, and may have slept in it, which is sort of "ghoul school." Or was that just for a photo? I suspect that, if she took her coffin seriously, it was to remind herself to live life to the fullest rather than any darker reason such as thinking of herself as a Parisian vampire.
Sarah Bernhardt may have been known to love her independence. Was she a feminist? We can't say that just becoming an unmarried mother who has to support a child makes a woman a feminist. What went on in Paris, where courtesans had their place in society was one thing. Her behavior and attitudes were even thought to be part of an exaggerated or unstable personality. And maybe she did have some sort of breakdown at one point or another.
Sarah Bernhardt was Jewish by birth but her father was Catholic. She, and her sisters, were baptized eventually. She was placed in a Catholic orphanage. But who really was her father?
It wasn't common for a discarded orphan to leave a convent at thirteen years old and begin school at the Conservatoire de Musique et Declamation in Paris. Someone was interested in her education and her religion and wanted to give her a chance at success. Was that person her mother, who she believed - with good reason - didn't love her but who might have set aside some money? A father?
Excerpts from EBSCO.com: "Although she won second prize for tragedy in 1861 and second prize for comedy in 1862, she regarded the conservatory’s methods as antiquated. She left the conservatory in 1862 and accepted a contract with the national theater of France, the famed Comedie Francaise....In 1867, when Bernhardt was twenty-two years old, she became a member of the company at the Odeon, where she found definite successes in roles such as Cordelia in a French translation of William Shakespeaer's play King Lear (pr. c. 1605-1606), as Zanetto in François Coppée’s verse play, La Passant (1869), and as the queen in Victor Hugo's Ruy Blas (1838). Indeed, it was Hugo himself who called Bernhardt the girl with the Golden Voice (vox d’or)—a name that stayed with her throughout her life. Meanwhile, Bernhardt’s success was so immediate that she even gave a command performance for France’s Emperor Napoleon III. However, the Franco-Prussian War interrupted her rising career with the closing of the Paris theaters in 1870."
Like several of the women I've featured here, Sarah was a woman who inspired artists to portray her. Alphonse Mucha, whose posters are rather well known to this day, was a collaborator with Sarah. She posed for him and he also designed costumes, sets and jewelry for her. He even enjoyed a seven year contract with Sarah. Their professional relationship began when Mucha designed this poster for her, as she starred in the play 'Gismonda.'
These posters were all over Paris the first of January, 1895.
Also, like several of the women I've featured here, a flower was created and named for Sarah, which is a peony.
In Robert Gottlieb's book we learn early that Sarah was not exactly the most truthful person, though her lies, as I see it, were out of concern for her reputation, her career, and ultimately her ability to support herself and her son. He says on page one that she was "a complete realist when dealing with her life but a relentless fabulist when recounting it." One of the questions was what year she was born and where. The 1844 above is the earliest year. One page 2 he says, "There are three basic components to her experience of childhood, two of them enough to derail an ordinary mortal: Her mother didn't love her and she had no father. What she did have was her extraordinary will: to survive, to achieve, -and - most of all - to have her way."
Sarah Bernhardt's son, Maurice Bernhardt was well loved. Never loved by her own mother, Sarah was determined to love him. She had been sent away to be raised by others and then introduced to the world in which men gave money to women for sexual favors, although that's not to say that there was always the possibility that the relationships her mother had - or she had - entailed far more. For at least a couple years after the birth of her son, someone supported her. And she took lovers, even when someone might be considered to be far too old for her.
She was bisexual, had romantic affairs with both men and women and played both male and female parts on stage. She was creative. Besides her talent for acting and singing, she became an accomplished painter and sculptor. She was also a woman of business.
Sarah married one time, to a Greek military officer and actor ,Aristides, also called Jacques, Damala. They married in 1882 when she was in her late 30's He was a decade or so younger than her, they separated, but stayed married until his death in 1889. Damala was an opium and morphine addict and a womanizer who died of an overdose.
Perhaps she proved her strength of spirit and courage most during World War I. In 1915 she had a leg amputated but soon after she volunteered to perform for the troops, to improve moral, and insisted on being carried to the front lines. She appeared in propaganda films and patriotic plays.
Gottlieb's book is short but sweet. I'm challenged to post what would be most interesting to my readers about this fascinating woman! Read on!
Missy
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*** She was photographed sleeping in a coffin.
The following web sites and articles are reference or this post
MUCHA FOUNDATION ORG See other posters that featured Sarah Bernhardt and read about the artist.
EBSCO RESEARCH : SARAH BERNHARDT
