Catherine Reef - Sarah Bernhardt: The Divine and Dazzling Life of the Worlds First Superstar

CLARION BOOKS

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New York, New York 10016

Copyright 2020 by Catherine Reef

All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

Clarion Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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Cover art, hand-lettering, and illustrations by Ellen Duda.

Cover photo copyright The J. Paul Getty Museum

Cover design by Sharismar Rodriguez

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Names: Reef, Catherine, author.

Title: Sarah Bernhardt / Catherine Reef.

Description: Boston : Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2020] Includes bibliographical references. | Audience: Ages: 12+. | Audience: Grades: 78.

Summary: A tantalizing biography for teens on Sarah Bernhardt, the first international celebrity and one of the greatest actors of all time, who lived a highly unconventional, utterly fascinating life. Illustrated with more than sixty-five photos of Bernhardt on stage, in film, and in real lifeProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019017244 | ISBN 9781328557506 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Bernhardt, Sarah, 18441923Juvenile literature. ActressesFranceBiographyJuvenile literature.

Classification: LCC PN2638.B5 R44 2020 | DDC 792.02/8092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019017244

eISBN 978-0-358-33001-1
v2.0620

For Chantal Touzet-Bush

The nineteenth century will be called the century of Sarah Bernhardt.

J EAN R AMEAU , journalist

Bernhardt plays the leading female role in Jean Racines classical drama Phdre.

There are five kinds of actresses: bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actressesand then there is Sarah Bernhardt.

widely attributed to Mark Twain, writer

Who was this odd young woman? Flix Duquesnel, the new manager of Pariss Odon Theater, had never seen anyone like her. She had paraded into his study as if the world were watching. Behind her trailed a nursemaid holding a plump, pink boy about eighteen months old. Duquesnel guessed that the child was the young womans son.

Her name was Sarah Bernhardt, and she was twenty-one. Was she tall? No, that was an illusion. She was petite, standing just over five feet in height. She only appeared tall because she carried herself with such confidence. Her eyeswere they blue? It was hard to tell. At times they flashed gold or green in the midday sunlight that filtered through the blinds. And how strangely she was dressed! On her frizzy, reddish-blond hair was perched a straw hat with bells hanging from its brim. She had tied a feathered fan at her slender waist, and she wore a Chinese high-collared blouse with shiny embroidery. Duquesnels maid thought she must have come from the other side of the world.

The manager was bewitched. She was not pretty, he thought, but she possessed some other, more compelling quality for which he had no name. I found myself face-to-face with a marvelously gifted creature, intelligent, nearly a genius, he sensed, someone of great energy. Her voice, he said, was pure as crystal. Sweet as heavenly music, it went straight to ones heart.

It was June 1866, and Bernhardt was asking for a job. Her timing could not have been better, because Duquesnel was looking for new actors to breathe life into the plays presented at the Odon. Secretly, he hoped to discover a star. There were reasons to think that Bernhardt was a poor choice for what he had in mind, however. She had trained as an actor and even worked as one, but her temper had earned her a reputation for trouble. And reviews of her acting were so-so at best. Still, Duquesnel saw potential in her. With the right direction, he believed, this Sarah Bernhardt could go far.

And so she did. She became a bigger star than Flix Duquesnel or anyone else could have imagined. For decades in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, she ruled the theater world in Paris and had countless fans throughout the world. She entertained royalty in palaces and ordinary folk in tents. Crowds everywhere showered her with flowers.

A true original, Bernhardt filled her home with palm trees, statues, bearskin rugs, curios from around the world, and a menagerie of exotic pets. She dressed to please herself in lace, furs, and eccentric hats. Others copied her style, but she never imitated anyone.

The public knew many different Sarahs. There was Sarah in costume, wearing jeweled headdresses, veils and wigs, silks and brocades. Audiences saw her as a queen of Egypt or Byzantium, as prince of Denmark or Joan of Arc. They watched her die onstage thousands of times in all kinds of ways: from poison, stabbing, a snakebite, or jumping off a roof. I have touched real death in my different deaths, Bernhardt wrote. My face has been bloodless, my heart has almost stopped beating, my lungs have stopped breathing.

There was Sarah the world traveler, shooting a gun in Brazil, meeting the great Houdini in Boston, or perching at the edge of Niagara Falls.

Sarah Bernhardt was famous for her onstage deaths. She observed the dying and dead in hospitals and morgues to make her death scenes seem realistic.

Then there was Sarah the patriot. Devoted to her beloved France, she supported her country in times of war, nursing wounded soldiers or performing for troops at the front lines.

The public knew Sarah the mother, and later Sarah the grandmother. Briefly, they knew Sarah the wife. They knew Sarah the sculptor, dressed in trousers and holding a chisel, and Sarah the author of popular books. They had seen pictures of her, too many to count: Sarah sleeping in a coffin or wearing a stuffed bat on her head; Sarah floating in a hot-air balloon; Sarah playing tennis or riding a horse.

Golden-voiced Sarah. Divine Sarah.

No one ever forgot seeing Bernhardt act. She walked onstage with a smile, as if thanking the audience for coming. Briefly she was herself; then she transformed into her character almost by magic. People remarked again and again that they fell under a spell. They forgot they were watching Sarah Bernhardt and believed they were seeing Cleopatra, Prince Hamlet, the queen of Spain, or whatever character she was portraying. She spoke her lines in that clear, musical voice, now uttering strings of words quickly, now barely managing to whisper a syllable. She used her whole body to communicate, giving meaning to every tilt of her head and movement of her hands. Onstage, she loved; she hoped; she was betrayed; she suffered. At an intensely dramatic moment, she might extend an arm and hold it in the air for a second, or two, or three. Audiences cried with her; they laughed, they cheered, and they adored her.

A hat topped with a stuffed bat was one of the most eccentric items in Bernhardts wardrobe.

Creating the illusion took hours of practice, because Bernhardt had set herself a lofty goal. As she explained, What I am trying to show you is human nature as it has shown itself to me.