Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt (Jewish Lives) by Robert Gottlieb

Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt (Jewish Lives) Reviews

• 
  Jeannette

  I have the advantage of having read two other Bernhardt biographies: Madame Sarah by Cornelia Otis Skinner and The Divine Sarah by Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale which I highly recommend. When this book appeared I wanted to see how the author could possibly write Sarah's biography on 219 pages.
  The answer, of course, is he cannot. What he can do is thoroughly research and read all of the books, articles, correspondence, etc (many in French) that we do not have access to and summarize. I see this as a book(s) report rather than a true "biography".
  The first half of the book is a little tiresome as he spends a lot of time on Sarah's early life and her family (such as it was). There are a lot of references to important people of the day, that, unless you are schooled in French mid-19th century society, mean little.
  The second half of the book, after Sarah is out on her own acting, producing, directing her own plays, is the meat of the book. Gottlieb delves into her methods of acting, her reasons for choosing specific plays, her drive and the development of her persona. I found her males roles fascinating, especially her views on playing Hamlet.
  He also describes some of her infrequent vacations from the theatre, including his description of her home away from home Belle-Ile. This is a Sarah rarely viewed and much appreciated.
  I do recommend this book, but not the only book you read on Sarah. Use it as a supplement to other, longer, in-depth biographies on this fascinating woman and actress whose influence has been so far reaching.
• 
  Ann

  A highly praised actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Sarah Bernhardt was an international figure known for her extravagent fashions, scandalous love affairs, and outrageous actions (such as owning a menagerie of animals and sleeping in a coffin). This book tells the story of her fascinating life from her neglected childhood to her rise to international fame. As Bernhardt was also an outrageous liar, the author takes into account her often questionable autobiographical descriptions of her life events and speculates upon what really happened. If Sarah Bernhardt were alive today, she'd be as outspoken and provocative as Cher or Madonna or Lady Gaga -- but hey, she came first!
• 
  Robert

  Robert Gottlieb's Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt offers a comprehensive account of the great actress's life and fame, filling in a number of blanks to be encountered in Bernhardt's own memoirs and drawing on other biographies of Bernhardt which, I suspect, are more detailed and lengthy than I, for one, would have the time or interest to read.
  
  The core attraction in any book about Bernhardt is Bernhardt's extraordinary cultural impact, which extended a good forty+ years worldwide. She was as famous as famous could be, adulated for her spectacular talent as an actress and a draw wherever she went (to the U.S. nine times, all over Europe and beyond). Gottlieb doesn't say this, but the account he offers leads me to think that part of Bernhardt's celebrity had to do with the decline of aristocracy in France and elsewhere and perhaps also the secularization of "public" sentiment gradually detaching itself from the powers of the "church" in all of its denominations. Bernhardt managed to fill voids in the public's emotional life while remaining true to her unique, rather tortured self.
  
  In her memoirs, Bernhardt isn't candid about how little parental attention she received as a child and how much it hurt her. Her mother favored her younger sister and sent her off to be raised by others. Her father was essentially never part of her life. This led her to seek love wherever she could find it and well explains another facet of her life that Gottlieb explores (as did the public rumor and gossip mill): Bernhardt had a nonstop series of affairs with "benefactors" (when she was young), leading men (when she was a leading lady), and "notables" (whenever she came across them.) The problem was that for her sex was necessary but apparently unsatisfactory, and a major attempt to resolve things through her marriage to Aristide Damala, a Greek diplomat, backfired: she put him on stage with her and he had zero talent, she tried to keep him reasonably close to her bed and he preferred many others.
  
  Gottlieb succinctly answers a reader's curiosity about Bernhardt's power as an actress. She was the master of the pose, the gesture, and had an extraordinary quality of voice that matched perfectly with the audience's expectations of "declamatory" theater at the time. Beyond that, she was fanatically and brilliantly involved in designing ornate, unique costumes and stage sets: She gave the audience something to look at that, again, had an almost religious impact, lush and otherworldly.
  
  Gottlieb is a good writer, makes fair and wise use of his sources, doesn't hesitate to call Bernhardt out on her embellishments and exaggerations, and covers the full array of critical reactions to her at the time (Oscar Wilde adored her, George Bernhard Shaw didn't). The odd, odd thing about Bernhardt that Gottlieb identifies without overplaying it is the fact that she was an outlandish prima donna in many ways while at home with friends and family she could be utterly normal, unpretentious, tolerant (especially of her spendthrift son), and realistic about where things stood in her life and career.
  
  For many years now the concept of "celebrity" in the cultural world has had a counterproductive effect on many of us, signifying a manipulated commercial identity, famous for being famous, and all that. Bernhardt's contrariness and her genius were exploited for commercial reasons, to be sure, but to use one of Gertrude Stein's formulations, there was an abundance of there there. She was human and super-human at the same time.
• 
  Jan

  "Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt" by
  Robert Gottlieb is the first book in Yale University Press' Jewish-Lives-series. That was the reason I took out on reading it, not really knowing who Sarah Bernhardt was. The series descirbes itself as "...a major series of brief interpretive biography...". Having just finished the book I'd say the emphasis in this description should be on the word brief. With its 256 pp I read another rather short biography. However, Gottlieb somehow manages to fit the essential details in.
  
  Being easy to read I sometimes stumbled over Gottlieb's execution of the task. For me, some parts did not quite fit in to the course of events. Take for example chapter XXI (of XXII). While the previous chapter covers Sarah's work after WW I, this chapter comes out of nowhere, comparing the acting of Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonara Duse. Reading this chapter somehow felt for me as if the author, at the last minute, tried to put a part into the book about how Sarah's work has to be seen in context of her time. Unfortunately for me there is no connection of this chapter to the rest of the book at all. Very disturbing for me as a non-native speaker, were the incomprehensible changes tenses. The author changes from past tense to present tense without coprehensible reason. Don't get me wrong, there might be a perfectly valid grammatical rule, I don't judge on that, as I'm cerntaily no expert on English grammer. However the change in tenses makes reading kind of bumpy.
  
  Content-related I'd describe the book in a kind of parabolic fashion: It starts out quite fragil, is very interesting towards the climax of Sarah's career and loses momentum at the end.
  
  The fragil start is, according to the author, due to the lack of sources about Sarah's childhood and youth. The only source for this period of her life are her memoirs. As the author acknowledges, those are not too reliable, as Sarah tended to exaggerate. This makes the first chapters of the book kind of a guesswork.
  
  The last part of the book certainly is better documented. However, for me it felt like Gottlieb ran out of space and/or time to properly cover the last two decades of Sarah's life. This time is pressed into the last chapter of only 12 pages. That, of course, doesn't allow much depth.
  
  To end this review on a positive note: The book achives a major point very well: It outlines the personality of Sarah Bernhardt with all its challanges. From time to time I had the feeling to see her in my mind's eye, presenting herself on stages as the gracious actress she certainly was or as the impetuous fury she also could be.
• 
  Lee Rene

  Robert Gottlieb edited The Divine Sarah, the 1991 bio of Bernhardt by the late Robert Fizdale and Arthur Gold. The Divine Sarah was noteworthy for looking at Bernhardt's life through the prism of a scabrous work, The Memoirs of Sarah Barnum. Sarah Barnum was written by her enemies and ascribed to Marie Colombier, an anti-Semitic actress who was jealous of Bernhardt's success. In the years since The Divine Sarah was published, there has been a great deal of new information about Bernhardt that disproves much of what Fizdale and Gold wrote. Unfortunately, Mr. Gottlieb didn't avail himself of the new research and just rewrote Fizdale and Gold. While the book is short and witty in places, it is not complete portrait of this marvelously complex woman. The read has to make do with left-over cold-cuts rather than a full meal.
• 
  Blanche

  Sarah Bernhardt clearly took great pains during her career to create a larger-than-life persona to be her legacy. This book certainly gives a sense of the histrionics, the personal drama, and the (sometimes misplaced) determination that have kept this 19th/20th century actress' name on the lips of those in and out of the theatre community. While the book was not a particularly objectively written biography, I still enjoyed it as a work that did demonstrate to me the oversized life Sarah lived.
• 
  Alex Myers

  Nice and readable! This biography felt "intimate" in comparison to the "Divine Sarah." Admittedly, it is thinner in its scope and breezes past a few topics that needed to be delved into. Nonetheless, gave a great sense of the shape of Bernhardt's life and the importance of the work that she did. Also, lots of good pictures.
• 
  Pam Shelton-Anderson

  I read this book after hearing the author interviewed on NPR and it was well worth it. He used extensively researched material, including her memoirs and letters to bring clarity to the murkiness of many aspects of her life. He built a convincing portrait of this complex and talented woman.
• 
  Wendy Hollister

  An eccentric woman who slept in a coffin. She was definitely a woman of free thought and actions!
  
  
• 
  Steve

  I had heard of Sarah Bernhardt of course, but really knew nothing about her. What a splendid introduction and overview by Robert Gottlieb. Makes one breathless trying to keep up with her!
• 
  Gaydon Phillips

  Enjoyed this. A shortish bio with lots of great photos.
• 
  Peter

  The French actress Sarah Bernhardt lived between the decade of the 1840s and March 1923. During Bernhart’s long career which started in 1862, she was an internationally famous actress. Her funeral was the largest in Paris in 1923 since Victor Hugo’s funeral in 1885 (Gottlieb 218). In 2010, the American Writer Robert Gottlieb published a biography of Sarah Bernhardt. I read the book on my Kindle. Gottlieb is interested in how Bernhardt went from being “a figure of scandal to being a magnificent artist to being venerated as a great symbol of, and ambassador for, France '' (Gottlieb 152). Bernhardt was a French patriot and during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, she was involved in running a military hospital. During the Dreyfus Affair, when the French military captain named Alfred Dreyfus was falsely accused of spying for the Germans, Bernhardt was a big supporter of Dreyfus. The book has illustrations. Bernhardt was an important model for her friend the artist Alphonse Mucha (Gottlieb 97, 152). Gottlieb’s biography of Bernhardt is for Yale University Press and the Leon D. Black Foundation's Jewish Lives series. Bernhardt lived a very colorful life. She was a larger-than-life character. I found Robert Gottlieb’s biography of Sarah Bernhardt to be a very good introduction to the historical figure of Bernhardt.
  Works Cited:
  Steves, Rick. 2015, August 26. “Prague, Czech Republic: Mucha's Masterpieces - Rick Steves’ Europe Travel Guide - Travel Bite.” Rick Steves’s Europe. YouTube. Prague, Czech Republic: Mucha's Masterpieces - Rick Steves’ Europe Travel Guide - Travel Bite - YouTube
• 
  Angela

  Lately I have been reading a lot about late nineteenth-early twentieth-century actress Sarah Bernhardt for a blog post and really enjoyed Gottlieb's book. He manages to tell her story with both reverence and amusement. Bernhardt was a serious talent but some aspects of her life were just too outlandish not to have fun with. She was a master of publicity and was arguably the first international superstar. Gottlieb also provides insight on her celebrity status and her enduring legacy. The book includes dozens of photographs, including a section of full-page stage shots.
  
  He (and all of us) face a tremendous task when we try to understand anything about Bernhardt since, as he points out, "she was a complete realist when dealing with her life but a relentless fabulist when recounting it." Gottlieb nicely compares different accounts of contested episodes of her life and usually comes to a conclusion about what likely happened. Sometimes, however, he seems to throw up his hands and say "you pick!"
  
  The most frustrating aspect of the book however is that it does not include footnotes and sometimes fails to give any indication of where his material is coming from. There is a bibliography and a description of sources that should satisfy many unless you are trying to track down some of his quotes/information like I am. Highly recommended anyway.
• 
  Kerry Pickens

  What I learned from reading this biography is that I know very little about French theater or aristocrats of the late 19th and early 20th century. Its interesting we all know Les Miserables but if you mention  La Dame Aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas or Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo - we are at a loss. The other thing I learned was Sarah was extremely narcissistic and self promoting to the point that writing her biography is mostly speculative because she made up so many stories about herself. To her credit, she was born to a teenage mother, her father was only a rumor, and her mother was either neglectful or verbally abusive. Sarah had many affairs with leading men, and pretty much any one she knew including Victor Hugo and a few men. She was known for her extravagant dress and very adept at posing for pictures, which I guess a strength in the theater. I can't say I admire her, but she did have strong personality at a time when women were expected to marry or prostitute themselves.
• 
  Carolyn Harris

  Interesting to read more about the famous 19th century/early 20th century actress. I thought the final chapters were the most interesting, when the author discussed her efforts on behalf of France to persuade the United States to join the First World War and how the declamatory acting style of the 19th century went out of fashion with the emergence of silent films. At the beginning of the book, there was too much focus on speculation about her early life and the author repeated numerous times that Bernhardt's own reminiscences were unreliable. Includes further reading suggestions.
• 
  Seema

  What an amazing woman! The book has a definite positive slant and glosses over some of the darker parts of her life, but you can read between the lines and still be amazed by her grit, passion, determination, and sheer life force. A more honest biography would have been even more powerful in showing how she endured and overcame despite a remarkably difficult start in life.
• 
  Cindy

  I knew nothing about Sarah Bernhardt when I picked up this book. It was in the Discard pile in my local library. I found It to be a very interesting read because she was a very interesting woman, way ahead of her time.
• 
  Rita

  Disorganized- the author jumps from one area of Sarah's life to another, not really tying them coherently together in time. Author also vaguely anti-Semitic in his references to Sarah, although in the guise of repeating contemporary comments about her.
• 
  Maureen

  This is a book club read. I could not get interested because no one new for certain anything about her early life.
• 
  Navarra

  Despite her title as the “most famous actress in the world,” it is unlikely that many know of the French turn-of-the-century thespian/sculptor/silent film star, Sarah Bernhardt, but her celebrity compares well with that which we see today. Her public’s concern with her scandalous personal life, her fashion trendiness, and her scathing critics and caracatures (e.g. Chekhov) are precursors to the kind of media personality and media treatment of such personalities that has become common-place in the turn of this century. Robert Gottlieb’s book “Sarah” attempts to remind us of this once extremely well-publicized and remarkable woman.
  
  Her echoes in popular culture still abound, even if the uninitiated are unaware of them. In the popular television series NCIS, the character of Abby Sciuto, played by Pauley Perrette, similarly sleeps in a coffin (although, how much of this Sarah actually did is questionable) and displays very unconventional and possibly morbid choices in attire. Even though the character of Abby Sciuto does not generally wear headgear, Sarah’s bat hat wouldn’t clash with Abby’s wardrobe. Bloggers have described Sarah as the original goth.
  
  The similarities between Sarah Bernhardt and Josephine Baker are striking. Both were ground-breaking entertainers based in France, owned a menagerie of animals (particularly those considered exotic today), were fashion icons considered to be quite skinny (although would be considered normal weight now), belonged to persecuted minorities and (in common celebrity fashion) been the victim of several unhappy love affairs. However, this comparison and Josephine Baker are not even mentioned in the book.
  
  The author’s thesis is that his book is as close to a faithful rendering of Sarah’s life as her own memoirs are dubious. A thesis that is quite credible. Although Robert Gottlieb doesn’t bedazzle with literary stylistics and even with the occasionally disjointedness of the narrative, his book shows evidence of assiduous scholarship. In addition, the letters written and works cited harken back to a time when the written language was employed with care and flair. What the author lacks in literary eloquence, the subjects of his book make up for. In one piece of her vast, illegible and now impossible to compile correspondence, she writes stirringly: “To you, above all, I owe my knowledge of love, not the love I inspire in others but that love which I myself feel, which is mine to give.” The object of this love, fellow actor Jean Mounet-Sully replies: “I shall place an aigrette on your brow, and cover your arms with lace made of kisses…,” forcing me to look up aigrette and discovering it is a headdress made from the feathers of an egret. Who knew?
  
  When one contemplates and compares the facades and deceptions of celebrity historically and contemporarily, it is easy to perceive Gottlieb’s painstaking care and cautious skepticism in analyzing and disentangle Sarah’s true life from her self-composed “theatre.” Sarah inspired the kind of fandom that is seen with 2013 celebrities such as Rhianna, Lindsey Lohan, and Kim Kardashian. Nevertheless, the end of her life was triumphant in the way that most celebrities over the last century has not been. Media, fans, and Hollywood chew up most celebrities (unlike celebrated actors such as Meryl Streep and Paul Newman and character actors like James Cromwell) and spit them out, leaving most to end in ignominy or consigned to oblivious (remembered only in death—e.g. Farah Fawcett, Whitney Houston, etc.). Sarah flourished in theatre even after an amputation of her leg and progressive aging in a way that would be inconceivable today.
  
  In conclusion, I would recommend this brief biography to those who are interested in a bon vivant life that has had and still has an deep and lasting impact on media celebrity, acting and the entertainment arts, even if the name of Sarah Bernhardt is becoming a distant reflection. Those, undeterred by a book that is not exactly engrossing, will find it is not arduous read and contains a lot of buried treasure worth mining. And it has a lot of pictures.
  
• 
  Judith Rich

  I was given this as a gift and found it an interesting read. I feel quite thick that I'd not realised her non-French sounding surname was because she was Jewish and I therefore didn't know about the anti-Semitism she encountered. I realised on reading this how little I actually knew about her at all (just that she is one of the few women to have played Hamlet and that she lost her leg). She was a true celebrity of her time.
• 
  Evanston Public Library

  Among theatrical actors of the 1800s, the memorable names of but a paltry few have survived the test of time into our own century. The French actress Sarah Bernhardt is not only one of those few, but she arguably tops that list. Robert Gottlieb’s short-but-sweet biography gives humorous account of Sarah Bernhardt’s scandalous behavior (she might have been described as a courtesan…until, at least, the birth of illegitimate son), her eccentricities (she famously wore a stuffed-bat hat), and her unabashed self-promotion (she schlepped around her personal coffin from city to city). Best known for her dramatic on-stage death scenes, Bernhardt’s passionate performances led to her legendary status in Europe and the United States. If you’ve read a late 19th-century biography on any personality in the arts, Sarah Bernhardt will likely be mentioned in it. Gottlieb’s biography, filled with wonderful Victorian-era photographs of Bernhardt, is a recommended and entertaining work on this colorful diva of yesteryear. (Russ K., Ref.)
• 
  Allison

  Not very well-written. I have never seen so many parenthetical asides in a work of non-fiction in my life. Also, the author spends alot of time referencing other biographies, then debunking much of what has been written with a wink and a nudge: "Well, this is what Sarah said happened, but we'll never know the real truth..." What? An actress creating her own mythlogy? How dare she? Frankly, I'd rather be entertained by the mythology-according-to-Sarah than slog through this cluttered attempt at reality.
• 
  Jennifer

  If I could give this one 3 1/2 stars, I think that I would. It's an interesting story about a truly fascinating woman. I like that Gottlieb acknowledges early on the complications of writing a biography about a woman who created an image out of a shell of falsehoods. He then goes to great pains to try to establish what the likely truth is. The only trouble for me was that I found myself caring very little what the truth was and wanting to just hear the stories. Truth is usually stranger than fiction, but Sarah Bernhardt's brand of fiction may be a category all its own.
• 
  Sharon

  Rather textbook like in its presentation, nonetheless fascinating in content. Knowing very little about the Sarah Bernhardt when I started, Gottlieb presented and interesting chronology of her life and career. She was one moment stage dive and the next social activist. One moment ego centric star the next grounded mother and friend. So kudos to the author for piquing my interest in an intriguing personality I might have overlooked.
• 
  Pat

  Oddly dry book for such a potentially engaging subject who lived such an interesting, bohemian life. The pictures were fascinating and her life made what otherwise was a dull and dry read worth my time. I was also somewhat put off by the author's annoying habit of diverting from the timeline without notice or reference to what year(s) he was writing about. In summary, I expected to be more entertained.
• 
  Cynthia

  An entertaining read - not great literature but very informative about an actress that I have heard of but did not know much about. Based on the information in the book, we would find her acting melodramatic and supremely histrionic today but what a character. Her fame occurred before movies and television and would not likely happen again. It is hard to imagine why American were so thrilled with her since all of her acting was in French but they did.