Sarah Bernhardt

Sarah Bernhardt is the most famous actress of the late nineteenth century stage. Celebrated by an emerging and very vocal group of young female workers and artisans in her native Paris in the late 1860s and the 1870s called "les saradoteurs she went on to become the most popular actress of her generation in Europe, North America, and Australia. Attention has been paid to her "golden voice," the clever ways she marketed and promoted herself, her pioneering patronage of artists such as Alphonse Mucha and René Lalique and her capacity to be at once a successful actress, manager, and theatre director. Scant attention has been paid, however, to Bernhardt’s involvement and success in the early motion picture film industry, both in France and abroad.