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Loading... Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt (Jewish Lives) (original 2010; edition 2010)by Robert Gottlieb
Work InformationSarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt by Robert Gottlieb (2010)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. 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. ( ) no reviews | add a review
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Everything about Sarah Bernhardt is fascinating, from her obscure birth to her glorious career-redefining the very nature of her art-to her amazing (and highly public) romantic life to her indomitable spirit. Well into her seventies, after the amputation of her leg, she was performing under bombardment for soldiers during World War I, as well as crisscrossing America on her ninth American tour.Her family was also a source of curiosity: the mother she adored and who scorned her; her two half-sisters, who died young after lives of dissipation; and most of all, her son, Maurice, whom she worshiped and raised as an aristocrat, in the style appropriate to his presumed father, the Belgian Prince de Ligne. Only once did they quarrel-over the Dreyfus Affair. Maurice was a right-wing snob; Sarah, always proud of her Jewish heritage, was a passionate Dreyfusard and Zolaist.Though the Bernhardt literature is vast, Gottlieb's Sarah is the first English-language biography to appear in decades. Brilliantly, it tracks the trajectory through which an illegitimate-and scandalous-daughter of a courtesan transformed herself into the most famous actress who ever lived, and into a national icon, a symbol of France. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)792.028092The arts Recreational and performing arts Stage presentations, Theatre Standard subdivisions and types of stage presentation Techniques, procedures, apparatus, equipment, materials, miscellany Acting and Performance History, geographic treatment, biography BiographyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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