A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about nicknames. Sarah Bernhardt had such a cool nickname…or maybe it’s a tagline: Queen of the Pose and the Princess of the Gesture. She was called the Divine Sarah and the world’s greatest actress. Early in her career, she was photographed by Nadar (known for his “astonishingly” vital personality!)

Sarah Bernhardt, French actress, photographed in 1864 by Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, known by the pseudonym Nadar

Her image was painted many times on posters by the wonderful, legendary Alphonse Muchá. In fact, his success–and by extension the Art Nouveau movement–was largely due to the exposure she gave him.

I must admit, the great success she had and the reputation she still enjoys over a century after her death puzzled me. What was it about Sarah Bernhardt that so delighted people?

Sarah was the illegitimate daughter of a courtesan and an anonymous attorney.  The attorney had left some money to provide for her. Sarah’s childhood dream was to become a nun, but she caused a scandal in her convent school by giving her pet lizard a funeral, and her mother decided acting might be a better profession of her.

As an actress, Sarah was acutely aware that publicity was her best hope of increasing her fame. Much of what she did was eccentric and may have been a publicity stunt. Or maybe she really was an unusually dramatic person. Like our Joséphine Baker, she had a pet cheetah. (You have to wonder, are they really dangerous animals?) She also owned a boa constrictor and an assortment of other pets that most people would not want!  Later, she performed male roles on stage and on film–a scandal at the time.

Sarah seemed preoccupied with her death. She loved roles where she was killed on stage. According to legend, her dressing room was decked out with a real human skeleton. She ordered a coffin built to her exact measurements and claimed to sleep in it every night, like a regular bed, and was photographed in it:

Wikimedia Commons

Sarah starred in many lost films. However, the final scene of the silent film Daniel (1920), in which she played the title role, was recently rediscovered. One thing to note before you watch it is that Sarah’s leg was amputated five years earlier. Apparently, there is some question about whether it was really necessary to do it and Sarah insisted.