Customer Reviews

Madame Sarah

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Sarah Bernhardt was the Madonna and the Meryl Streep of her day. She was a brilliant actress who broke from the traditions of the Comedie Francaise to create her own theatrical milieu. She inspired the intellectuals and the fans alike in fin-de-siecle Paris and she acted her way around the world. Her scandalous life style inspired plenty of press and numerous imitations.

Author Cornelia Otis Skinner provides a direct link to this era: her father, a noted stage actor, remembers seeing The Divine Sarah on the stage, and Cornelia herself became an actress. Cornelia was also a devotee of the French theatre--her most famous book, "Our Hearts Were Young and Gay", recounts her early studies with the stars of the Comedie Francaise in the 1920s.

Reading the witty "Madame Sarah" you have the feeling that you are hearing from someone who was there, someone who actually saw the Left Bank students unhitch the horses of Sarah's carriage and pull it through the streets themselves. The book is well-informed and admiring of its complex subject, but it is not fawning, as it frankly documents the less-appealing sides of a talented woman.

I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the history of the theatre, the French theatre, the Paris of the era, or the very intriguing actress herself...

about a figure as compelling as almost any in the last 160 years.

After reading it, I was in love with Sarah Bernhardt and author Cornelia Otis Skinner.

Anybody who didn't like this book wouldn't like Princess Bride, Pepe Le Moko or Messages From My Father. (And I wouldn't like them.)

This book is funny, touching, adventurous, complete and satisfying. I think it should be required reading for everyone, not only for its insights about character, life and countries -- but also as a promotional tool to educate the tv masses as to how little in their diet can compare to one great book.

I've bought a half dozen of them and sent them to the young'ens.

And they all caught the magic.

This author is incredibly talented in bringing the Divine Sarah back to life with a power and passion that makes it difficult to put the book down. After reading this book, and listening to the musical masterpieces written specifically for Sarah, I can completely believe that she is the greatest classical performer the world has known. What she chose to do with her life is inspirational, and even more incredible considering that as a female in that point in time, her power should have been limited. Her type of art is no longer seen in this world, at least not in the US. Cornelia Otis is an amazingly visual author with the ability to suck you into Sarah Bernhardt's world, and I cant say enough, if you love art and strong beautiful females, this book is worth reading.

For those that are unaware, Sarah Bernhardt is renowned as one of the greatest actresses of all time. She was born in France in the 1800s and gained most of her training on the stage, developing into an international superstar of manic proportions by age 30.
There is an all encompassing problem with the book - its tone. A vast amount of information is contained but is told with little feeling save that of a clinging, saccharine nature that still manages to sound drier than last year's fish. I just could not get involved with Bernhardt's life at all, and the constant literary bowing (without no real explanation, just to say she was great) gets very tiresome fast, with the subject to me eventually coming off as an overacting egotist. I am curious as to if Bernhardt would be popular today at all actually, based on her tendencies towards very dramatic, wriggly death scenes and the like. The tone is complicated by its overall smugness, a pervading sense throughout the book that seems like the author is sitting on a 100 foot high pedestal holding her nose at non stage folk. Especially if they're Americans, it seems.
The book has a fairly comprehensive index and then would be alright for a school report, but just to read is awful.

Author: Skinner, Cornelia Otis, 1901-
Title: Madame Sarah.
Publisher: Boston, Houghton Mifflin, [c1966]
Edition Date: 1966
Language: English
Notes: Includes index.
Physical Details: xxii, 356 p., [13] leaves of plates illus., ports. 24 cm.
Subjects: Bernhardt, Sarah, 1844-1923.
a reviewer writes: Sarah Bernhardt was the Madonna and the Meryl Streep of her day. She was a brilliant actress who broke from the traditions of the Comedie Francaise to create her own theatrical milieu. She inspired the intellectuals and the fans alike in fin-de-siecle Paris and she acted her way around the world. Her scandalous life style inspired plenty of press and numerous imitations.

Author Cornelia Otis Skinner provides a direct link to this era: her father, a noted stage actor, remembers seeing The Divine Sarah on the stage, and Cornelia herself became an actress. Cornelia was also a devotee of the French theatre--her most famous book, "Our Hearts Were Young and Gay", recounts her early studies with the stars of the Comedie Francaise in the 1920s.

Reading the witty "Madame Sarah" you have the feeling that you are hearing from someone who was there, someone who actually saw the Left Bank students unhitch the horses of Sarah's carriage and pull it through the streets themselves. The book is well-informed and admiring of its complex subject, but it is not fawning, as it frankly documents the less-appealing sides of a talented woman.

I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the history of the theatre, the French theatre, the Paris of the era, or the very intriguing actress herself...

Madame Sarah [biography of Sarah Bernhardt], Cornelia Otis Skinner; Houghton Mifflin Company (1967)


Excellent, despite the oft-abysmal editing (or lack thereof) that resulted in MS regrettably being assigned a less-than perfect rating. This was unavoidable - having first been spoiled by Skinner's far superior "Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals" (so, read Elegant Wits first).


Post Note: Somewhere out there, in the legions of illiterate American horse owners, there must be at least one person who reads histories/biographies.

The "absinthe-minded" pun (p. 5: "Alfred de Musset, quietly getting drunk or as one wit put it, `becoming absinthe-minded' ") has been put to use as the name of a horse entered in Monmouth Park's 11th race on August 14, 2010 (the Monmouth Oaks; purse $200,000).

But the horse's name - "Absinthe Minded" - indicts the owner himself as being just that. The hyphen is missing.