Hugo himself attended all the rehearsals. Though she died in 1923 before talking movies were made, many consider her the most famous actress the world has ever known. In London, she purchased three dogs, a parrot, and a monkey, and made a side trip to Liverpool, where she purchased a cheetah, a parrot, and a wolfhound and received a gift of six chameleons, which she kept in her rented house on Chester Square, and then took back to Paris. "[106], Bernhardt in Gismonda by Victorien Sardou (1894), Poster for Gismonda by Alphonse Mucha (1894), As Melissande in La Princesse Lointaine by Edmond Rostand (1897), Bernhardt made a two-year world tour (1891–1893) to replenish her finances. [84] When she returned to Paris, Bernhardt contrived to make a surprise performance at the annual 14 July patriotic spectacle at the Paris Opera, which was attended by the President of France, and a houseful of dignitaries and celebrities. [34] Other accounts say that they met in Paris, where the Prince came often to attend the theater. [127], In 1903, she had another unsuccessful role playing another masculine character in the opera Werther, a gloomy adaptation of the story by German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The jurors were skeptical, but the fervor and pathos of her recitation won them over, and she was invited to become a student. Bertie was a frequent visitor during the 1880s and 1890s and was allotted his own chamber, decorated with his coat of arms. Bernhardt also spent outrageous sums of money paying off the many gambling debts of her son, Maurice. The film has been lost. When the performance ended, Provost was waiting in the wings, and she asked his forgiveness. Produced by Eclipse it was directed by Louis Mercanton and René Hervil with a screenplay by Jean Richepin. The play went ahead, but was a failure. [98], From then on, whenever she ran short of money (which generally happened every three or four years), she went on tour, performing both her classics and new plays. The extreme love, the extreme agony, the extreme suffering. [101] She turned once again to Sardou, who had written a new play for her, La Tosca, which featured a prolonged and extremely dramatic death scene at the end. [199] When he was King, he travelled on the royal yacht to visit her at her summer home on Belle-Île. In 1887, she acted in a stage version of the controversial drama Thérèse Raquin by Emile Zola. It wasn’t until she was quite famous that Henri Prince de Ligne offered to formally recognize Maurice as his son. She also had affairs with many of her leading men, and with other men more directly useful to her career, including Arsène Houssaye, director of the Théâtre-Lyrique, and the editors of several major newspapers. She apologized profusely, and when the doorkeeper retired 20 years later, she bought a cottage for him in Normandy. [8], When Bernhardt was seven, her mother sent her to a boarding school for young ladies in the Paris suburb of Auteuil, paid with funds from her father's family. Over the next few years she worked on her craft and in 1868 had a breakout hit with the revival of Alexandre Dumas’s play Kean. According to these versions, he learned her address from the theater, arrived in Paris, and moved into the apartment with Bernhardt. [200], Her last serious love affair was with the Dutch-born actor Lou Tellegen, 37 years her junior, who became her co-star during her second American farewell tour (and eighth American tour) in 1910. However renowned was his appetite or his mistresses, His Royal Highness preferred to take his pleasures in the exclusive Parisian brothels, particularly La Chabanais, the most exclusive of them all. Was she troubled? However, the award at that time required a review of the recipients' moral standards, and Bernhardt's behavior was still considered scandalous. After Bernhardt's death, her theater was managed by her son Maurice until his death in 1928. La Chabanais was founded in 1878 by the Irish Madame Kelly, and operated near the Louvre at 12 rue Chabanais. She continued to tour the world late in life, even giving a recital at San Quentin Prison. Bernhardt sent a bust she had made of him to be placed on his tomb, and when she toured in the Balkans, always made a detour to visit his grave. When she returned by train to the city, Perrin was furious; he fined Bernhardt a thousand francs, citing a theater rule which required actors to request permission before they left Paris. He had little acting experience, but Bernhardt signed him as a leading man just before she departed on the tour, assigned him a compartment in her private railway car, and took him as her escort to all events, functions, and parties. "[122] The play was extremely successful; it was especially popular with visitors to the 1900 Paris International Exposition, and ran for nearly a year, with standing-room places selling for as much as 600 gold francs. [90], When Damala left, she took on a new leading man and lover, the poet and playwright Jean Richepin, who accompanied her on a quick tour of European cities to help pay off her debts. War stole everything from Morven Williams–her husband, her friends, her livelihood, and her home. [196] The list also included Khalil Bey, the Ambassador of the Ottoman Empire to the Second Empire, best known today as the man who commissioned Gustave Courbet to paint L'Origine du monde, a detailed painting of a woman's anatomy that was banned until 1995, but now on display at the Musee d'Orsay. Between 1886 and 1922, she spent nearly every summer, the season when her theater was closed, on Belle-Île. She died from uremia on the evening of 26 March 1923. I remember my few months at the Comédie Française. When Perrin protested, saying that Bernhardt was only 10th or 11th in seniority, the Gaiety manager threatened to cancel the performance; Perrin had to give in. This time, however, the mattress on which she was supposed to land had been positioned incorrectly. There they talked only about dresses and hats, and chattered about a hundred things that had nothing to do with art. Above all, Sarah Bernhardt was a celebrity, a pioneer whose example would be imitated by generations of popular entertainers to come. Since he was largely excluded from real political power, Prince Albert had a fashionable, leisured section of society to lead. The jury was composed of Auber and five leading actors and actresses from the Comédie Française. Then, in 1912, the pioneer American producer Adolph Zukor came to London and filmed her performing scenes from her stage play Queen Elizabeth with her lover Tellegen, with Bernhardt in the role of Lord Essex. The British critic Max Beerbohm wrote, "the only compliment one can conscientiously pay her is that her Hamlet was, from first to last, a truly grand dame. In 1990, a painting by Abbéma, depicting the two on a boat ride on the lake in the bois de Boulogne, was donated to the Comédie-Française. Bernhardt was diagnosed with uremia, and had to have an emergency kidney operation. Sarah Bernhardt was born in the early 1840s in Paris, France. [103] She then performed another traditional melodrama, Francillon by Alexandre Dumas, fils in 1888. She did not create the role; the play had first been performed by Eugénie Dochein in 1852, but it quickly became her most performed and most famous role. [133] In 1909, she again played the 19-year-old Joan of Arc in Le Procès de Jeanne d'Arc by Émile Moreau. Thierry asked that Bernhardt apologize to Madame Nathalie. [20], Debut of Bernhardt in Les Femmes Savantes at the Comédie Française (1862), Sarah Bernhardt in 1864; age 20, by photographer Félix Nadar, Bernhardt studied acting at the Conservatory from January 1860 until 1862 under two prominent actors of the Comédie Française, Joseph-Isidore Samson and Jean-Baptiste Provost. Perrin sued her for breach of contract; the court ordered her to pay 100,000 francs, plus interest, and she lost her accrued pension of 43,000 francs. Her impresario, Edouard Jarrett, immediately proposed she make another world tour, this time to Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Panama, Cuba, and Mexico, then on to Texas, New York, England, Ireland, and Scotland. She had the chair decorated in the Louis XV style, with white sides and gilded trim. [208] During the Second World War, the Germans occupied the island, and in October 1944, before leaving the island, they dynamited most of the compound. At first, Bernhardt pretended to be indifferent to him, but he gradually won her over and she became a fervent admirer. The opening night was attended by the Prince of Wales and by Hugo himself; after the performance, Hugo approached Bernhardt, dropped to one knee, and kissed her hand. The critics and audiences were not impressed, and the play was unsuccessful. Everyone was gay. In 1918, she returned to New York and boarded a ship to France, landing in Bordeaux on 11 November 1918, the day that the armistice was signed ending the First World War.