The Magnificent Lunatic: The Life and Work of Sarah Bernhardt

Rene Berger's Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet. Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas at Austin

Sarah Bernhardt as Mrs. Clarkson in L' Étrangère, 1887. Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas at Austin

In 1878, Sarah Bernhardt's every activity was news. The Exposition Universelle brought tourists to Paris to see the big attraction, Monsieur Eiffel's iron tower. But Sarah upstaged what many were calling an architectural monstrosity. She was smitten with the hot-air balloons in the Tuileries Gardens, which for a price would take customers up 500 meters to gaze at the city. On a cold, cloudless day. Sarah ascended in a balloon and convinced the aeronaut to release the tether. Soon they were sailing over the fairgrounds, floating above the Eiffel Tower's lattice monument and beyond the Louvre's indistinct pallor. The breeze strengthened; Sarah's gossamer white scarves flew from her shoulders, a semaphore to the crowds below. Her fans pointed skyward. "Our Sarah. Our Miss Bernhardt," they shouted. She was caught, her day of anonymity ruined. She hid in the shelter of the basket and drank several flutes of champagne as the balloon drifted beyond the city.

When she returned home that evening, reporters were waiting in the foyer of her house. Also waiting for her was a summons to appear before the administrator of the Comédie Française. Theater troupe members needed permission to leave Paris. Moreover, her antics were becoming a disgrace; her excursion was in all of the papers. Sarah blamed the winds for carrying her beyond the city's borders—and she did not appreciate being told what she could and could not do. She threatened what she could and could not do. She threatened to resign. Her box-office value was already too high to jeopardize, so the administrator backed down.

By 1878, Sarah was the leading star of French theater, but it had not been easy. Her overnight success had been a decade in the making. Early in her career, Bernhardt seemed the least likely to succeed as an actress. When she was finally cast in bit parts, nothing in her performances convinced teachers or directors otherwise.

Gismonda miniposter by Alphonse Mucha, 1894. Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas at Austin

She was too skinny. One columnist announced that she was so thin she had no need for an umbrella; she could walk between raindrops. Another critic said she should watch out for ravenous dogs; they might mistake her for a bone. And the public's favorite: "You know she's such a liar; she may even be fat." Instead of hiding her thinness under gathered gowns and flounces, she wore costumes that accentuated her wasp waist and slender limbs. Her hair was also all wrong, uncontrollably kinky, earning her the moniker "the blonde Negress." Others said, "That isn't hair; that's a mop." She wore her mane proudly, sometimes teasing it out in a halo around her face.

She had frequent and acute stage fright but accepted it as a part of her desire to deliver a great performance. When one young, inexperienced actress bragged that she didn't know the meaning of stage fright, Sarah responded, "Wait until you get to be a good actress, my girl, and then you'll know."

Sarah Bernhardt's greatest talent was to recognize her limitations and refuse to let them wreck her work. She knew that she was not pretty but used uniqueness to her advantage. And if she wasn't an actual beauty, she could cast a spell with her catlike, sapphire-blue eyes and passionately expressive mouth.

The early facts of Sarah Bernhardt's life are elusive. Few early documents exist, and her memoir, My Double Life, is unreliable. Biographers have tried to sort through conflicting stories—many told by Sarah and later by her son and friends—but with limited success. The date of her birth is unknown, but biographers have settled on October...