title: Battle of Actium

text: Before the battle one of Antony's generals, Quintus Dellius, defected to Octavian, bringing with him Antony's battle plans.


title: Battle of Actium

text: Shortly after midday, Antony was forced to extend his line from the protection of the shore and finally engage the enemy. Seeing this, Octavian's fleet put to sea. Antony had hoped to use his biggest ships to drive back Agrippa's wing on the north end of his line, but Octavian's entire fleet, aware of this strategy, stayed out of range. By about noon the fleets were in formation but Octavian refused to be drawn out, so Antony was forced to attack. The battle raged all afternoon without decisive result.


title: Battle of Actium

text: Cleopatra's fleet, in the rear, retreated to the open sea without engaging. A breeze sprang up in the right direction and the Egyptian ships were soon out of sight. Lange argues that Antony would have had victory within reach were it not for Cleopatra's retreat.


title: Battle of Actium

text: Antony had not observed the signal, and believing that it was mere panic and all was lost, followed the fleeing squadron. The contagion spread fast; everywhere sails unfurled and towers and other heavy fighting gear went by the board. Some fought on, and only long after nightfall, when many a ship was blazing from the firebrands thrown upon them, was the work done. Making the best of the situation, Antony burned the ships he could no longer man while clustering the remainder tightly together. With many oarsmen dead or unfit to serve, the powerful, head-on ramming tactic for which the Octaries had been designed was now impossible. Antony transferred to a smaller vessel with his flag and managed to escape, taking a few ships with him as an escort to help break through Octavian's lines. Those left behind were captured or sunk.


title: Battle of Actium

text: J. M. Carter gives a differing account of the battle. He postulates that Antony knew he was surrounded and had nowhere to run. To turn this to his advantage, he gathered his ships around him in a quasi-horseshoe formation, staying close to the shore for safety. Then, should Octavian's ships approach his, the sea would push them into the shore. Antony foresaw that he would not be able to defeat Octavian's forces, so he and Cleopatra stayed in the rear of the formation. Eventually Antony sent the ships on the northern part of the formation to attack. He had them move out to the north, spreading out Octavian's ships, which until this point were tightly arranged. He sent Sosius to spread the remaining ships to the south. This left a hole in the middle of Octavian's formation. Antony seized the opportunity and, with Cleopatra on her ship and him on a different ship, sped through the gap and escaped, abandoning his entire force.


title: Battle of Actium

text: With the end of the battle, Octavian exerted himself to save the crews of the burning vessels and spent the whole night on board. The next day, as much of the land army had not escaped to their own lands, submitted, or were followed in their retreat to Macedonia and forced to surrender, Antony's camp was occupied, bringing an end to the war.


title: Battle of Actium

text: Scientists researching the "dead water" phenomenon are investigating whether the Egyptian fleet may have been trapped in dead water, which can reduce a ship to "travelling at perhaps as little as 20% of its normal speed."


title: Battle of Actium

text: The battle had extensive political consequences. Under cover of darkness some 19 legions and 12,000 cavalry fled before Antony was able to engage Octavian in a land battle. Thus, after Antony lost his fleet, his army, which had been equal to Octavian's, deserted. Though he had not laid down his imperium, Antony was a fugitive and a rebel without that shadow of a legal position the presence of the consuls and senators had given him in the previous year. Some of the victorious fleet went in pursuit of him, but Octavian visited Greece and Asia and spent the winter at Samos, though he had to briefly visit Brundisium to settle a mutiny and arrange for assignations of land.


title: Battle of Actium

text: At Samos Octavian received a message from Cleopatra with the present of a gold crown and throne, offering to abdicate in favor of her sons. She was allowed to believe that she would be well treated, for Octavian was anxious to secure her for his triumph. Antony, who had found himself generally deserted, after vainly attempting to secure the army stationed near Paraetonium under Pinarius and sending his eldest son Antyllus with money to Octavian and an offer to live at Athens as a private citizen, found himself in the spring attacked on two sides. Cornelius Gallus was advancing from Paraetonium and Octavian landed at Pelusium, with the connivance, it was believed, of Cleopatra. Antony was defeated by Gallus and, returning to Egypt, advanced on Pelusium.


title: Battle of Actium

text: Despite a minor victory at Alexandria on 31 July 30 BC, more of Antony's men deserted, leaving him with insufficient forces to fight Octavian. A slight success over Octavian's tired soldiers encouraged him to make a general attack, in which he was decisively beaten. Failing to escape by ship, he stabbed himself in the stomach upon mistakenly believing false rumours propagated by Cleopatra claiming that she had committed suicide. He did not die at once, and when he found out that Cleopatra was still alive, he insisted on being taken to the mausoleum where she was hiding, and died in her arms. She was soon brought to the palace and vainly attempted to move Octavian to pity.


title: Battle of Actium

text: Cleopatra killed herself on 12 August 30 BC. Most accounts say she put an end to her life by the bite of an asp conveyed to her in a basket of figs. Octavian had Caesarion killed later that month, finally securing his legacy as Caesar's only 'son', while sparing Cleopatra's children by Antony, with the exception of Antony's older son. Octavian admired the bravery of Cleopatra, and gave her and Antony a public military funeral in Rome. The funeral was grand and a few of Antony's legions marched alongside the tomb. A day of mourning throughout Rome was enacted. This was partly due to Octavian's respect to Antony and partly because it further helped show the Roman people how benevolent Octavian was. Octavian had previously shown little mercy to surrendered enemies and acted in ways that had proven unpopular with the Roman people, yet he was given credit for pardoning many of his opponents after the Battle of Actium. Further, after the battle, upon Octavian's return to Rome he celebrated his triple triumph spread over three days: the first for his victory over Illyria, the second for the Battle of Actium, and the third for his conquest of Egypt.


title: Battle of Actium

text: Octavian's victory at Actium gave him sole, uncontested control of "Mare Nostrum" ("Our Sea", i.e., the Roman Mediterranean) and he became "Augustus Caesar" and the "first citizen" of Rome. The victory, consolidating his power over every Roman institution, marked Rome's transition from republic to empire. Egypt's surrender after Cleopatra's death marked the demise of both the Hellenistic Period and the Ptolemaic Kingdom, turning it into a Roman province.


title: Battle of Actium

text: To commemorate his victory, Octavian founded the nearby city of Nicopolis ("City of Victory") in 29 BC on the southernmost promontory of Epirus, opposite Actium at the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf. On a hill just north of the new city, at the site where he had made his camp in 31 BC, he constructed a victory monument decorated with the bronze "rostra" (rams) taken from the captured warships of Antony's fleet.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: Krishnadevaraya (17 January 1471 – 17 October 1529) was an emperor of the Vijayanagara Empire, also known as the Karnata Empire, reigning from 1509 to 1529. He was the third monarch of the Tuluva dynasty, and is considered to be one of the greatest rulers in Indian history. He ruled the largest empire in India after the decline of the Delhi Sultanate. Presiding over the empire at its zenith, he is regarded as an icon by many Indians. Krishnadevaraya earned the titles "Karnatakaratna Simhasanadeeshwara" (lit. "Lord of the Jewelled Throne of Karnataka"), "Yavana Rajya Pratistapanacharya" (lit. "Establishment of the King to Bahmani Throne"), "Kannada Rajya Rama Ramana" (lit. "Lord of the Kannada Empire), "Andhra Bhoja" (lit. "Scholar of Andhra"), "Gaubrahmana Pratipalaka" (lit. "Protector of Brahmins and Cows") and "Mooru Rayara Ganda" (lit. "Lord of Three Kings"). He became the dominant ruler of the peninsula by defeating the sultans of Bijapur, Golconda, the Bahmani Sultanate and the Gajapatis of Odisha, and was one of the most powerful Hindu rulers in India.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: Krishna Deva Raya's rule was characterised by expansion and consolidation. This was the time when the land between the Tungabhadra and Krishna river (the Raichur doab) was acquired (1512), ruler of Odisha were subdued (1514) and severe defeats were inficted on the Sultan of Bijapur (1520)


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: When the Mughal Emperor Babur was taking stock of the potentates of north India, he rated Krishnadevaraya the most powerful, with the most extensive empire in the subcontinent. He earned the titles of 'Kannada Rajya Rama Ramana', 'Andhra Bhoja' and 'Mooru Rayara Ganda'. The Portuguese travellers Domingo Paes and Duarte Barbosa visited the Vijayanagara Empire during his reign, and their travelogues indicate that the king was not only an able administrator but also an excellent general, leading from the front in battle and even attending to the wounded. On many occasions, the king changed battle plans abruptly, turning a losing battle into victory. The poet Mukku Timmanna praised him as the 'Destroyer of the Turks.' Krishnadevaraya benefited from the counsel of his prime minister Timmarusu, whom he regarded as the father figure responsible for his coronation. Krishnadevaraya was also advised by the witty Tenali Ramakrishna, who was employed in his court.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: Krishna Deva Raya was the son of Tuluva Narasa Nayaka and his queen Nagamamba. Tuluva Narasa Nayaka was an army commander under Saluva Narasimha Deva Raya, who later took control to prevent the disintegration of the empire and established the Tuluva dynasty of the Vijayanagara Empire. He was married to Srirangapatna's princess Tirumala Devi and a famous and his royal dancer from Kodagu, Chinna Devi. He was father to Tirumalamba (from Tirumala Devi), Vengalamba (from Chinna Devi) and Tirumala Raya (from Tirumala Devi). His daughters were married to Prince Aliya Rama Raya of Vijayanagara and his brother Prince Tirumala Deva Raya.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: His main enemies were the Bahamani Sultans (who, though divided into five small kingdoms, remained a constant threat), the Gajapatis of Odisha, who had been involved in constant conflict since the rule of Saluva Narasimha Deva Raya, and Portugal, a rising maritime power which controlled much of the sea trade.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: The raid and plunder of Vijayanagar towns and villages by the Deccan sultans came to an end during the Raya's rule. In 1509, Krishnadevaraya's armies clashed with them and Sultan Mahmud was severely injured and defeated. Yusuf Adil Shah was killed and the Raichur Doab was annexed. Taking advantage of the victory, the Raya reunited Bidar, Gulbarga, and Bijapur into Vijayanagar and earned the title "establisher of the Yavana kingdom" when he released Sultan Mahmud and made him de facto ruler. The Sultan of Golconda Sultan Quli Qutb Shah was defeated by Timmarusu, the prime minister of Sri Krishnadevaraya.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: The Gajapatis of Odisha ruled a vast land comprising Bengal, Andhra region and Odisha. Krishna Deva Raya's success at Ummatur provided the necessary impetus to carry his campaign into Coastal Andhra region which was in control of the Gajapati Raja Prataparudra Deva. The Vijayanagar army laid siege to the Udayagiri fort in 1512. The campaign lasted for a year before the Gajapati army disintegrated due to starvation. Krishna Deva Raya offered prayers at Tirupati thereafter, along with his wives Tirumala Devi and Chinnama Devi. The Gajapati army was then met at Kondaveedu, where the armies of Vijayanagara, after establishing a siege for a few months, began to retreat due to heavy casualties. Then Timmarusu discovered a secret entrance to the unguarded eastern gate of the fort and launched a night attack that culminated with the capture of the fort and the imprisonment of Prince Virabhadra, the son of Prataparudra Deva. Vasireddy Mallikharjuna Nayak took over as governor of Kondaveedu thereafter.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: Krishnadevaraya planned an invasion of Kalinga, but Prataparudra, learned of this plan and formulated his own plan to defeat Krishandevaraya and the Vijayanagara Empire at the fort of Kalinganagar. But the wily Timmarusu discovered Prataparudra's plan by bribing a Telugu deserter from the service of Prataparudra. When the Vijayanagara Empire did invade, Prataprudra was driven to Cuttack, the capital of the Gajapati Kingdom. Prataparudra eventually surrendered to the Vijayanagara Empire, and gave his daughter, Princess Jaganmohini, in marriage to Sri Krishnadevaraya. Krishandevaraya returned all the lands that the Vijayanagara Empire had captured north of the Krishna River; this made the Krishna river the boundary between the Vijayanagar and Gajapati Kingdoms.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: Krishnadevaraya established friendly relations with the Portuguese in Goa in 1510. The Emperor obtained guns and Arabian horses from the Portuguese merchants. He also utilized Portuguese expertise to improve the water supply to Vijayanagara City.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: The complicated alliances of the empire and the five Deccan sultanates meant that he was continually at war. In one campaign, he defeated Golconda and captured its commander Madurul-Mulk, crushed Bijapur and its sultan Ismail Adil Shah, and restored the Bahmani sultanate to the son of .


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: The highlight of his conquests occurred on 19 May 1520 where he secured Raichur Fort from Ismail Adil Shah after a difficult siege in which 16,000 Vijayanagara soldiers were killed. The exploits of the military commander, Pemmasani Ramalinga Nayudu of the Pemmasani Nayaks, during the Battle of Raichur were distinguished and lauded by Krishnadevaraya. It is said that 700,000-foot soldiers, 32,600 cavalry, and 550 elephants were used. Portuguese contingent commanded by Cristovão de Figueiredo with the use of fireweapons help to conquer the fortress,


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: Krishnadevaraya was brutal towards Bahmani Generals of Raichur. Many Bahmani generals lost their lands. The other Muslim kings sent envoys to the emperor on hearing of his success and received a haughty reply.. The king conveyed that if Adil Shah would come to him, do obeisance, and kiss his foot, his lands would be restored to him. The submission never took place. Krishnadevaraya then led his army as far north as Bijapur and occupied it. He imprisoned three sons of a former king of the Bahmani dynasty, who had been held captive by the Adil Shah and he proclaimed the eldest as king of the Deccan.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: Finally, in his last battle, he razed to the ground the fortress of Gulburga, the early capital of the Bahmani sultanate.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: In 1524, Krishnadevaraya made his son Tirumala Raya the "Yuvaraja" (crown prince). The prince did not survive for long: he was poisoned. Suspecting Timmarusu, Krishna Deva Raya had him blinded. At the same time, Krishnadevaraya was preparing for an attack on Belgaum, which was in the Adil Shah's possession. Around this time, Krishnadevaraya fell ill and eventually died in 1529, succeeded by his brother, Achyuta Deva Raya.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: During his reign he kept strict control over his ministers, and dealt severely with any minister who committed misdeeds. He abolished obnoxious taxes such as the marriage fee. To increase revenues, he brought new lands under cultivation, ordering the deforestation of some areas and undertook a large-scale work to obtain water for irrigation around Vijayanagar. Foreign travellers such as Paes, Nunez and Barbosa who visited Vijayanagar spoke highly of the efficiency of his administration and the prosperity of the people during his reign.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: The administration of the empire was carried along the lines indicated in his Amuktamalyada. He was of the opinion that the King should always rule with an eye towards Dharma. His concern for the welfare of the people is amply proved by his extensive annual tours all over the empire, during which he studied everything personally and tried to redress the grievances of the people and punish evildoers. With regard to the promotion of the economic progress of his people, Krishnadevaraya says: "the extent of the kingdom is the means for the acquisition of wealth. Therefore even if the land is limited in extent, excavate tanks and canals and increase the prosperity of the poor by leasing him the land for low ari and koru, so that you may obtain wealth as well as religious merit."


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: Krishnadevaraya was noted to be linguistically neutral as he ruled a multilingual empire. He is known to have patronised poets and issued inscriptions in languages as varied as Sanskrit, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu. Krishna Deva Raya himself was a polyglot, fluent in Sanskrit, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu. The official language of the Vijayanagara court was Kannada.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: Krishnadevaraya patronized literature in various languages. The rule of Krishna Deva Raya was an age of prolific literature in many languages, although it is particularly known as a golden age of Telugu literature. Many Telugu, Kannada, Sanskrit, and Tamil poets enjoyed the patronage of the emperor, who was fluent in many languages. The king himself composed an epic Telugu poem Amuktamalyada. His Sanskrit works include ‘Madalasa Charita’, ‘Satyavadu Parinaya’, ‘Rasamanjari’ and ‘Jambavati Kalyana’.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: The Telugu poet Mukku Timmanna praised him as a great general and stated: "O Krishnaraya, you Man-Lion. You destroyed the Turks from far away with just your great name's power. Oh Lord of the elephant king, just from seeing you the multitude of elephants ran away in horror.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: The rule of Krishna Deva Raya is known as golden age of Telugu literature. Eight Telugu poets were regarded as eight pillars of his literary assembly and known as Ashtadiggajas. Krishna Dev Raya himself composed an epic Telugu poem Amuktamalyada.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: During the reign of Krishnadevaraya Telugu culture and literature flourished and reached their heyday. The great emperor was himself a celebrated poet having composed Amuktamalyada. In his court, eight Telugu poets were regarded as the eight pillars of the literary assembly. In the olden days, it was believed that eight elephants were holding the earth in eight different directions. The title Ashtadiggajas celebrates this belief and hence the court was also called Bhuvana Vijayam (Conquest of the World). This period of the Empire is known as the "Prabandha Period," because of the quality of the prabandha literature it produced.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: Other well-known poets were Sankusala Nrisimha Kavi, who wrote "Kavikarna Rasayana", Chintalapudi Ellaya, who wrote "Radhamadhavavilasa" and "Vishnumayavilasa", the poet Molla, who wrote a version of the "Ramayana", Kamsali Rudrakavi, who wrote "Nirankusopakhyana", and Addamki Gangadhara, who wrote "Tapatlsamvarana" and "Basavapurana". Manumanchi Bhatta wrote a scientific work on veterinary science called "Haya lakshanasara".


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: He patronised the Kannada poet Mallanarya, who wrote "Veera-shaivamruta", "Bhava-chinta-ratna" and "Satyendra Chola-kathe", Chatu Vittalanatha who wrote "Bhagavatha"' and Timmanna Kavi, who wrote a eulogy of his king in "Krishna Raya Bharata". Vyasatirtha, the great Dvaita saint from Mysore of the Madhva tradition was his "Rajaguru". "Krishna Deva Rayana Dinachari" in Kannada is a recently discovered work. The record highlights the contemporary society during Krishna Deva Raya's time in his personal diary. However, it is not yet clear if the record was written by the king himself.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: Purandara Dasa explored the Madhwa philosophy and the "Rajaguru" of Krishnadevaraya, emperor of the Vijayanagara Empire. According to Prof. Sambamoorthy, Srinivasa had his formal initiation at the hands of Vyasatirtha in 1525 when he was about 40 years old, with the name Purandara Daasa bestowed on him. Purandara Daasa traveled extensively through the length and breadth of the Vijayanagara Empire and Pandharapur in Maharashtra composing and rendering soul-stirring songs in praise of God. He spent his last years in Hampi and also sang songs in Krishnadevaraya's court.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: Krishna Deva Raya patronised the Tamil poet Haridasa, and Tamil literature soon began to flourish as the years passed by.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: In Sanskrit, Vyasatirtha wrote "Bhedo-jjivana", "Tat-parya-chandrika", "Nyaya-mrita" (a work directed against the Advaita philosophy) and "Tarka-tandava". Krishna Deva Raya, himself an accomplished scholar, wrote "Madalasa Charita", "Satyavadu Parinaya" and "Rasamanjari" and "Jambavati Kalyana".


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: Krishna Deva Raya respected all sects of Hinduism. He is known to have encouraged and supported various sects and their places of worship. He rebuilt the Virupaksha Temple and other Shiva shrines. He gave land grants to the temples of Tirumala, Srisailam, Amaravati, Chidambaram, Ahobilam, and Tiruvannamalai. He lavished on the Tirumala Venkateswara Temple numerous objects of priceless value, ranging from diamond studded crowns to golden swords to nine kinds of precious gems. Krishna Deva Raya made Venkateshwara his patron deity. He visited the temple seven times. Out of the around 1,250 temple epigraphs published by the Tirumala Devasthanam, 229 are attributed to Krishna Deva Raya. A statue of Krishna Deva Raya with two of his wives is found at the temple complex of Tirumala. These statues are still visible at the temple at the exit. He also contributed in building parts of the Srisailam temple complex where he had rows of mandapas built.


title: Krishnadevaraya

text: Krishna Deva Raya himself was formally initiated into the Sri Vaishnava Sampradaya. He wrote a Telugu work on Andal, a Tamil Sri Vaishnava female saint, called the Amuktamalyada. Venkata Tathacharya of the Sri Vaishnava sect was Krishna Deva Raya's "Kulguru," and he was considered influential. The Madhwa text "Vyasayogicarita" claims that the Madhwa seer Vyasatirtha was the "rajaguru" of Krishna Deva Raya. However, given the lack of supporting epigraphical evidence, this claim has been argued as "hyperbolic."


title: Ray (film)

text: Ray is a 2004 American biographical musical drama film focusing on 30 years in the life of rhythm and blues musician Ray Charles. The independently produced film was co-produced and directed by Taylor Hackford, and written by James L. White from a story by Hackford and White. It stars Jamie Foxx in the title role, along with Kerry Washington, Clifton Powell, Harry Lennix, Terrence Howard, Larenz Tate, Richard Schiff and Regina King in supporting roles. Along with Hackford, the film was also produced by Stuart Benjamin, Howard Baldwin and Karen Baldwin.


title: Ray (film)

text: It was released on October 29, 2004, by Universal Pictures. It received positive reviews from critics, with particular praise for Foxx's performance. It was also a commercial success, grossing $124.7 million worldwide against a production budget of $40 million.


title: Ray (film)

text: "Ray" received many accolades and nominations and was nominated in six categories at the 77th Academy Awards. For his performance, Foxx won the Academy Award for Best Actor as well as the Golden Globe, BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild, and Critics' Choice, becoming the second actor to win all five major lead actor awards for the same performance, and the only one to win the Golden Globe in the Musical or Comedy category, rather than in Drama.


title: Ray (film)

text: Charles had planned to attend a screening of the completed film but died of liver disease in June 2004, months prior to the premiere.


title: Ray (film)

text: Ray Charles Robinson is raised in poverty in Florida by his mother, Aretha. Learning to play piano at an early age, Ray is haunted by the accidental death of his younger brother George, who drowns in their mother's washbasin. Ray loses his vision and by age seven is completely blind. Aretha teaches him to be independent, eventually sending him to a school for the deaf and blind.


title: Ray (film)

text: In 1946, Ray joins a white country band and wears sunglasses to hide his damaged eyes. Two years later, he travels to Seattle and joins a nightclub band, though the club's owner demands sexual favors and controls his money and career. After discovering he is being exploited, Ray signs his own record deal and leaves the band. Touring on the Chitlin' Circuit as "Ray Charles", he is introduced to heroin.


title: Ray (film)

text: Ray is discovered by Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records and records his first hit with Ertegun's song "Mess Around". In Houston, Ray falls in love with Della Bea, a preacher's daughter. Though she and others are unhappy about Ray mixing gospel with his music, he marries Della and continues to gain fame with "I Got a Woman" and "Hallelujah I Love Her So".


title: Ray (film)

text: A pregnant Della finds Ray’s drug kit and confronts him. They reconcile after the birth of their first child, but Ray begins an affair with singer Mary Anne Fisher. In 1956, as Ray's popularity grows, he hires a trio to become "The Raelettes" and immediately falls for lead singer Margie Hendrix. They begin their own affair, and a jealous Mary Anne leaves.


title: Ray (film)

text: A few years later, when Ray's band finishes a set early and the club’s owner demands they play the remaining time, Ray performs "What'd I Say" on the spot. His popularity rises through the 1950s and he moves his family to Los Angeles but continues to use heroin, straining his relationships with Della and Margie. In 1960, he signs a better contract with ABC Records, negotiating to own his master tapes.


title: Ray (film)

text: Ray continues to experiment with his music, writing such hits as "Georgia on My Mind". Margie reveals she is pregnant, and cuts off their affair when Ray demands she end the pregnancy. He writes "Hit the Road Jack" with a solo by Margie, who uses her newfound recognition to embark on a solo career, while Ray struggles with his addiction.


title: Ray (film)

text: In 1961, Ray encounters civil rights protestors outside his concert in Augusta, Georgia. Deciding not to play at the segregated venue, he cancels the concert and is banned from playing in Georgia. After he allows black and white audience members to dance together onstage during a concert in Indianapolis, his hotel room is raided by police. His arrest for heroin possession is made public, to Della’s dismay, but his record label has the charges dismissed.


title: Ray (film)

text: In St. Louis, Ray performs the country-influenced "I Can't Stop Loving You" and is impressed by announcer Joe Adams, who joins his tour. Ray moves his family to Beverly Hills, and learns that Margie has died of an overdose. Joe alienates Ray’s band and his longtime friend and manager Jeff Brown, whom Ray fires.


title: Ray (film)

text: In 1965, Ray returns from a concert in Montreal and is again arrested for heroin possession. Dismissing his excuses, Della pleads with him to overcome his habit, and he is sentenced to drug rehabilitation. Suffering vivid nightmares during withdrawal, Ray has a vision of George and their mother, who chastises him for letting his addictions cripple him.


title: Ray (film)

text: By 1979, Ray has permanently quit heroin and receives an official apology from the state of Georgia, which names "Georgia On My Mind" the official state song. Ray goes on to have a long and successful career as a world-famous entertainer until his death in 2004.


title: Ray (film)

text: The film's production was entirely financed by Philip Anschutz, through his Bristol Bay Productions company. Taylor Hackford said in a DVD bonus feature that it took 15 years to make the film; or more specifically, as he later clarified in the liner notes of the soundtrack album, this is how long it took him to secure the financing. It was made on a budget of $40 million.


title: Ray (film)

text: Charles was given a Braille copy of the film's original script; he objected only to a scene showing him taking up piano grudgingly, and a scene implying that Charles had shown mistress and lead "Raelette" Margie Hendricks how to shoot heroin.


title: Ray (film)

text: Denzel Washington was offered to play the title role, but he passed on the project. As stated in the DVD commentary, Foxx does not sing as Charles with exception to cover versions Charles performs in his earlier years. Kanye West and Ludacris have since made songs with Foxx singing as Charles in their songs "Gold Digger" and "Georgia", respectively.


title: Ray (film)

text: Hackford stated in the DVD commentary that while Anschutz said the film would be made, he demanded that it be PG-13, and this caused him to walk away from the film five times. Because of Charles and Ahmet Ertegun asked him to make the movie, he agreed to do the film as a PG-13 rating. The film was rated PG-13 for "depiction of drug addiction, sexuality and some thematic elements".


title: Ray (film)

text: In the DVD commentary, Hackford stated that no studio was interested in backing the movie. After it was shot independently, Universal Pictures stepped in to distribute it. Part of the reason Universal Pictures released it was because one of its executives used to hitchhike to Ray Charles concerts.


title: Ray (film)

text: The film's score was composed by Craig Armstrong. "Ray" debuted at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival.


title: Ray (film)

text: "Ray" was released in theaters on October 29, 2004. The film went on to become a box-office hit, earning $75 million in the U.S. with an additional $50 million internationally, bringing its worldwide gross to $125 million.


title: Ray (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 80% based on 206 reviews, with an average rating of 7.30/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "An engrossing and energetic portrait of a great musician's achievements and foibles, "Ray" is anchored by Jamie Foxx's stunning performance as Ray Charles." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a rare "A+" grade.


title: Ray (film)

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" wrote: "The movie would be worth seeing simply for the sound of the music and the sight of Jamie Foxx performing it. That it looks deeper and gives us a sense of the man himself is what makes it special." Ebert gave it a full 4 out of 4 stars. Richard Corliss of "Time" praised the cast, saying "If there were an Oscar for ensemble acting, Ray would win in a stroll." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote: "Jamie Foxx gets so far inside the man and his music that he and Ray Charles seem to breathe as one."


title: Ray (film)

text: According to music critic Robert Christgau, "Foxx does the impossible—radiates something approaching the charisma of the artist he's portraying... that's the only time an actor has ever brought a pop icon fully to life on-screen."


title: Ray (film)

text: In the wake of his performance as Charles in the film, Foxx featured on hip-hop songs that sampled Charles' songs:


title: Ray (film)

text: The film's credits state that "Ray" is based on true events, but includes some characters, names, locations, and events which have been changed and others which have been "fictionalized for dramatization purposes." Examples of the fictionalized scenes include:


title: Jon Lovett

text: Jonathan Ira Lovett (born August 17, 1982) is an American podcaster, comedian, and former speechwriter. Lovett is a co-founder of Crooked Media, along with fellow former White House staffers during the Obama administration, Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. Lovett is a regular host of the Crooked Media podcasts "Pod Save America" and "Lovett or Leave It". As a speechwriter, he worked for President Barack Obama as well as for Hillary Clinton when she was a United States senator and a 2008 presidential candidate. Lovett also co-created the NBC sitcom "1600 Penn", and was a writer and producer on the third season of HBO's "The Newsroom".


title: Jon Lovett

text: Lovett was born in Woodbury, Long Island to a Reform Jewish family of Ukrainian ancestry that operated a box factory started by his grandfather. He attended Syosset High School. Lovett graduated from Williams College in 2004 with a degree in mathematics. His senior thesis, "Rotating Linkages in a Normed Plane", led to a related publication on the same topic in "American Mathematical Monthly". Lovett was the 2004 Williams College class speaker at his commencement. After graduation, Lovett spent a year working as a paralegal and doing stand-up comedy on the side.


title: Jon Lovett

text: In 2004, Lovett volunteered for John Kerry's presidential campaign. He was asked to write a statement for the candidate, and his work led to an offer of a writing internship. Then, he briefly worked in Jon Corzine's Senate office. He was hired in 2005 to assist Sarah Hurwitz as a speechwriter for then-Senator Hillary Clinton, and he continued to write speeches for her through her 2008 presidential campaign.


title: Jon Lovett

text: When Clinton lost the 2008 Democratic primary contest, Lovett won an anonymous contest to write speeches for President Barack Obama in the White House. Lovett wrote speeches in the Obama administration for three years, working closely with Jon Favreau and David Axelrod. Prominent speeches that he wrote include policy speeches on financial reform and don't ask, don't tell, as well as remarks at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.


title: Jon Lovett

text: Lovett secretly officiated the first same-sex marriage in the White House, before the Obama administration supported same-sex marriage.


title: Jon Lovett

text: Before Barack Obama ran for reelection, Lovett moved to California to become a screenwriter, citing a desire to write independently and focus on creative comedy full-time. Lovett collaborated with Josh Gad and Jason Winer on the television series "1600 Penn", of which Lovett was a co-creator, executive producer, and writer from 2012 until its cancellation in 2013. Lovett then worked as a writer, producer, and advisor on season three of HBO's "The Newsroom". From 2012 to 2015, Lovett also contributed opinion pieces to venues like "The Atlantic".


title: Jon Lovett

text: Starting in March 2016, Lovett co-hosted The Ringer's political podcast "Keepin' it 1600" with former fellow Obama staffers Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor. The podcast was intended to cover the 2016 presidential race, and not expected to continue after that. But after the November 2016 election, Lovett, Favreau and Vietor wished to become engaged in politics again without having to leave Los Angeles or return to political campaigning. So they founded a liberal media company, Crooked Media, with the flagship podcast "Pod Save America". Crooked Media, and "Pod Save America" in particular, has been compared to previous left-wing efforts like Air America to match America's Conservative talk radio, and Lovett has been characterized as providing comic relief to the programming. The company has since launched a range of podcasts, several of which regularly feature Lovett.


title: Jon Lovett

text: In March 2017, Lovett began hosting "Lovett or Leave It", a panel show podcast produced by Crooked Media. The podcast, typically recorded in front of a live audience in Los Angeles, with Lovett and Crooked Media, embarked on national and international tours featuring live versions of both "Pod Save America" and "Lovett or Leave It". Lovett was also involved in launching Crooked Media's voter recruitment and education project, Vote Save America.


title: Jon Lovett

text: Lovett is gay. He and investigative journalist and author Ronan Farrow have been romantically involved since 2011. In October 2019, Farrow published , where he publicly announced their engagement; he had proposed to Lovett in an earlier draft of the book.


title: Arlyn Phoenix

text: Arlyn Sharon Phoenix (; born December 31, 1944), commonly known as Heart Phoenix, is an American social activist and mother of actors River, Rain, Joaquin, Liberty, and Summer Phoenix.


title: Arlyn Phoenix

text: Phoenix was born on December 31, 1944, in The Bronx, New York City, the daughter of Margaret (née Lefkowitz; 1916–1998) and Meyer Dunetz (1910–1996). Arlyn was raised with her two sisters, Rhoda and Merle (Sun). Her mother's family was from Hungary, and her father's family was from Russia. Although Arlyn's family was Jewish and celebrated the Jewish culture and holidays, they did not attend synagogue.


title: Arlyn Phoenix

text: Phoenix left New York in 1968 and moved to California, where she met her future husband John Lee Bottom (April 5, 1947–2015, died of cancer).


title: Arlyn Phoenix

text: They traveled together along the West Coast, picking fruit and vegetables along the way, and their first son River was born August 23, 1970.


title: Arlyn Phoenix

text: Soon after their first daughter Rain was born in 1972, they joined the religious group The Children of God and toured Mexico, Puerto Rico and South America as missionaries of the cult for several years. It was during this time that their son and daughter Joaquin and Liberty (Libertad) were born. Arlyn and John renamed themselves for a brief period, taking the biblical names Jochebed and Amram, respectively.


title: Arlyn Phoenix

text: The couple eventually grew disillusioned with the Children of God and left in 1977. Arlyn would later state that she and her husband were opposed to the cult's increasingly distorted rules, particularly the practice of flirty fishing. They returned to the US in late 1977 and lived in Winter Park, Florida, where Arlyn gave birth to her youngest child, Summer. Around this time, they legally adopted the surname "Phoenix" (Arlyn later changed her name to "Heart" in 1988) and began to embrace veganism as their new diet and lifestyle.


title: Arlyn Phoenix

text: The parents took their five children and headed back to California, where Arlyn got a job as an executive secretary for NBC. She later hired an agent, Iris Burton, who eventually got all of her children acting work. John and Arlyn divorced in 1997. She is now married to her third husband, Jeffrey Weisberg.


title: Arlyn Phoenix

text: Phoenix was the Executive Director of The Florida School of Traditional Midwifery for five years, one of ten accredited direct entry midwifery schools in the country.


title: Arlyn Phoenix

text: In 2012, she co-founded the non-profit organization River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding which provides and promotes the best practices and principles of peacebuilding and global sustainability.


title: Arlyn Phoenix

text: She is on the Board of Directors of Peace Alliance, an organization which supports the creation of a United States Department of Peace.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Sarah Bernhardt (; born Henriette-Rosine Bernard; 22 or 23 October 1844 – 26 March 1923) was a French stage actress who starred in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including "La Dame Aux Camelias" by Alexandre Dumas "fils"; "Ruy Blas" by Victor Hugo, "Fédora" and "La Tosca" by Victorien Sardou, and "L'Aiglon" by Edmond Rostand. She also played male roles, including Shakespeare's Hamlet. Rostand called her "the queen of the pose and the princess of the gesture", while Hugo praised her "golden voice". She made several theatrical tours around the world, and was one of the first prominent actresses to make sound recordings and to act in motion pictures.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: She is also linked with the success of artist Alphonse Mucha, whose work she helped to publicize. Mucha would become one of the most sought-after artists of this period for his Art Nouveau style.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Henriette-Rosine Bernard was born at 5 rue de L'École-de-Médicine in the Latin Quarter of Paris on 22 or 23 October 1844. She was the illegitimate daughter of Judith Bernard (also known as Julie and in France as Youle), a Dutch Jewish courtesan with a wealthy or upper-class clientele. The name of her father is not recorded. According to some sources, he was probably the son of a wealthy merchant from Le Havre. Bernhardt later wrote that her father's family paid for her education, insisted she be baptised as a Catholic, and left a large sum to be paid when she came of age. Her mother travelled frequently, and saw little of her daughter. She placed Bernhardt with a nurse in Brittany, then in a cottage in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: 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. There, she acted in her first theatrical performance in the play "Clothilde", where she held the role of the Queen of the Fairies, and performed her first of many dramatic death scenes. While she was in the boarding school, her mother rose to the top ranks of Parisian courtesans, consorting with politicians, bankers, generals, and writers. Her patrons and friends included Charles de Morny, Duke of Morny, the half-brother of Emperor Napoleon III and President of the French legislature. At the age of 10, with the sponsorship of Morny, Bernhardt was admitted to Grandchamp, an exclusive Augustine convent school near Versailles. At the convent, she performed the part of the Archangel Raphael in the story of "Tobias and the Angel". She declared her intention to become a nun, but did not always follow convent rules; she was accused of sacrilege when she arranged a Christian burial, with a procession and ceremony, for her pet lizard. She received her first communion as a Roman Catholic in 1856, and thereafter she was fervently religious. However, she never forgot her Jewish heritage. When asked years later by a reporter if she were a Christian, she replied: "No, I'm a Roman Catholic, and a member of the great Jewish race. I'm waiting until Christians become better." That contrasted her answer, "No, never. I'm an atheist" to an earlier question by composer and compatriot Charles Gounod if she ever prayed. Regardless, she accepted the last rites shortly before her death.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: In 1859, Bernhardt learned that her father had died overseas. Her mother summoned a family council, including Morny, to decide what to do with her. Morny proposed that Bernhardt should become an actress, an idea that horrified Bernhardt, as she had never been inside a theatre. Morny arranged for her to attend her first theatre performance at the Comédie Française in a party which included her mother, Morny, and his friend Alexandre Dumas "père". The play they attended was "Britannicus", by Jean Racine, followed by the classical comedy "Amphitryon" by Plautus. Bernhardt was so moved by the emotion of the play, she began to sob loudly, disturbing the rest of the audience. Morny and others in their party were angry at her and left, but Dumas comforted her, and later told Morny that he believed that she was destined for the stage. After the performance, Dumas called her "my little star".


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Morny used his influence with the composer Daniel Auber, the head of the Paris Conservatory, to arrange for Bernhardt to audition. She began preparing, as she described it in her memoirs, "with that vivid exaggeration with which I embrace any new enterprise." Dumas coached her. The jury was composed of Auber and five leading actors and actresses from the Comédie Française. She was supposed to recite verses from Racine, but no one had told her that she needed someone to give her cues as she recited. Bernhardt told the jury she would instead recite the fable of the Two Pigeons by La Fontaine. The jurors were skeptical, but the fervor and pathos of her recitation won them over, and she was invited to become a student.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: 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. She wrote in her memoirs that Provost taught her diction and grand gestures, while Samson taught her the power of simplicity. For the stage, she changed her name from "Bernard" to "Bernhardt". While studying, she also received her first marriage proposal, from a wealthy businessman who offered her 500,000 francs. He wept when she refused. Bernhardt wrote that she was "confused, sorry, and delighted—because he loved me the way people love in plays at the theater."


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Before the first examination for her tragedy class, she tried to straighten her abundance of frizzy hair, which made it even more uncontrollable, and came down with a bad cold, which made her voice so nasal that she hardly recognised it. Furthermore, the parts assigned for her performance were classical and required carefully stylised emotions, while she preferred romanticism and fully and naturally expressing her emotions. The teachers ranked her 14th in tragedy and second in comedy. Once again, Morny came to her rescue. He put in a good word for her with the National Minister of the Arts, Camille Doucet. Doucet recommended her to Edouard Thierry, the chief administrator of the Théâtre Français, who offered Bernhardt a place as a "pensionnaire" at the theater, at a minimum salary.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Bernhardt made her debut with the company on 31 August 1862 in the title role of Racine's "Iphigénie". Her premiere was not a success. She experienced stage fright and rushed her lines. Some audience members made fun of her thin figure. When the performance ended, Provost was waiting in the wings, and she asked his forgiveness. He told her, "I can forgive you, and you'll eventually forgive yourself, but Racine in his grave never will." Francisque Sarcey, the influential theater critic of "L'Opinion Nationale" and "Le Temps", wrote: "she carries herself well and pronounces with perfect precision. That is all that can be said about her at the moment."


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Bernhardt did not remain long with the Comédie-Française. She played Henrietta in Molière's "Les Femmes Savantes" and Hippolyte in "L'Étourdi", and the title role in Scribe's "Valérie", but did not impress the critics, or the other members of the company, who had resented her rapid rise. The weeks passed, but she was given no further roles. Her hot temper also got her into trouble; when a theater doorkeeper addressed her as "Little Bernhardt", she broke her umbrella over his head. She apologised profusely, and when the doorkeeper retired 20 years later, she bought a cottage for him in Normandy. At a ceremony honoring the birthday of Molière on 15 January 1863, Bernhardt invited her younger sister, Regina, to accompany her. Regina accidentally stood on the train of the gown of a leading actress of the company, Zaïre-Nathalie Martel (1816–1885), known as Madame Nathalie. Madame Nathalie pushed Regina off the gown, causing her to strike a stone column and gash her forehead. Regina and Madame Nathalie began shouting at one another, and Bernhardt stepped forward and slapped Madame Nathalie on the cheek. The older actress fell onto another actor. Thierry asked that Bernhardt apologise to Madame Nathalie. Bernhardt refused to do so until Madame Nathalie apologised to Regina. Bernhardt had already been scheduled for a new role with the theater, and had begun rehearsals. Madame Nathalie demanded that Bernhardt be dropped from the role unless she apologised. Since neither would yield, and Madame Nathalie was a senior member of the company, Thierry was forced to ask Bernhardt to leave.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Her family could not understand her departure from the theater; it was inconceivable to them that anyone would walk away from the most prestigious theatre in Paris at age 18. Instead, she went to a popular theatre, the Gymnase, where she became an understudy to two of the leading actresses. She almost immediately caused another offstage scandal, when she was invited to recite poetry at a reception at the Tuileries Palace hosted by Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie, along with other actors of the Gymnase. She chose to recite two romantic poems by Victor Hugo, unaware that Hugo was a bitter critic of the emperor. Following the first poem, the Emperor and Empress rose and walked out, followed by the court and the other guests. Her next role at the Gymnase, as a foolish Russian princess, was entirely unsuited for her; her mother told her that her performance was "ridiculous". She decided abruptly to quit the theater to travel, and like her mother, to take on lovers. She went briefly to Spain, then, at the suggestion of Alexandre Dumas, to Belgium.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: She carried to Brussels letters of introduction from Dumas, and was admitted to the highest levels of society. According to some later accounts, she attended a masked ball in Brussels where she met the Belgian aristocrat Henri, Hereditary Prince de Ligne, and had an affair with him. Other accounts say that they met in Paris, where the Prince came often to attend the theater. The affair was cut short when she learned that her mother had had a heart attack. She returned to Paris, where she found that her mother was better, but that she herself was pregnant from her affair with the Prince. She did not notify the Prince. Her mother did not want the fatherless child born under her roof, so she moved to a small apartment on rue Duphot, and on 22 December 1864, the 20-year-old actress gave birth to her only child, Maurice Bernhardt.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Some accounts say that Prince Henri had not forgotten her. According to these versions, he learned her address from the theatre, arrived in Paris, and moved into the apartment with Bernhardt. After a month, he returned to Brussels and told his family that he wanted to marry the actress. The family of the Prince sent his uncle, General de Ligne, to break up the romance, threatening to disinherit him if he married Bernhardt. According to other accounts, the Prince denied any responsibility for the child. She later called the affair "her abiding wound", but she never discussed Maurice's parentage with anyone. When asked who his father was, she sometimes answered, "I could never make up my mind whether his father was Gambetta, Victor Hugo, or General Boulanger." Many years later, in January 1885, when Bernhardt was famous, the Prince came to Paris and offered to formally recognise Maurice as his son, but Maurice politely declined, explaining he was entirely satisfied to be the son of Sarah Bernhardt.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: To support herself after the birth of Maurice, Bernhardt played minor roles and understudies at the Porte Saint-Martin theatre, a popular melodrama theatre. In early 1866, she obtained a reading with Felix Duquesnel, director of the Théâtre de L'Odéon (Odéon) on the Left Bank. Duquesnel described the reading years later, saying, "I had before me a creature who was marvelous gifted, intelligent to the point of genius, with enormous energy under an appearance frail and delicate, and a savage will." The co-director of the theatre for finance, Charles de Chilly, wanted to reject her as unreliable and too thin, but Duquesnel was enchanted; he hired her for the theater at a modest salary of 150 francs a month, which he paid out of his own pocket. The Odéon was second in prestige only to the Comédie Française, and unlike that very traditional theatre, specialised in more modern productions. The Odéon was popular with the students of the Left Bank. Her first performances with the theatre were not successful. She was cast in highly stylised and frivolous 18th-century comedies, whereas her strong point on stage was her complete sincerity. Her thin figure also made her look ridiculous in the ornate costumes. Dumas, her strongest supporter, commented after one performance, "she has the head of a virgin and the body of a broomstick." Soon, however, with different plays and more experience, her performances improved; she was praised for her performance of Cordelia in "King Lear". In June 1867, she played two roles in "Athalie" by Jean Racine; the part of a young woman and a young boy, Zacharie, the first of many male parts she played in her career. The influential critic Sarcey wrote "... she charmed her audience like a little Orpheus."


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Her breakthrough performance was in the 1868 revival of "Kean" by Alexandre Dumas, in which she played the female lead part of Anna Danby. The play was interrupted in the beginning by disturbances in the audience by young spectators who called out, "Down with Dumas! Give us Hugo!". Bernhardt addressed the audience directly: "Friends, you wish to defend the cause of justice. Are you doing it by making Monsieur Dumas responsible for the banishment of Monsieur Hugo?". With this the audience laughed and applauded and fell silent. At the final curtain, she received an enormous ovation, and Dumas hurried backstage to congratulate her. When she exited the theatre, a crowd had gathered at the stage door and tossed flowers at her. Her salary was immediately raised to 250 francs a month.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Her next success was her performance in François Coppée's "Le Passant", which premiered at the Odéon on 14 January 1868, playing the part of the boy troubadour, Zanetto, in a romantic renaissance tale. Critic Théophile Gautier described the "delicate and tender charm" of her performance. It played for 150 performances, plus a command performance at the Tuileries Palace for Napoleon III and his court. Afterwards, the Emperor sent her a brooch with his initials written in diamonds.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: In her memoirs, she wrote of her time at the Odéon: "It was the theatre that I loved the most, and that I only left with regret. We all loved each other. Everyone was gay. The theatre was a like a continuation of school. All the young came there... I remember my few months at the Comédie Française. That little world was stiff, gossipy, jealous. I remember my few months at the Gymnase. There they talked only about dresses and hats, and chattered about a hundred things that had nothing to do with art. At the Odéon, I was happy. We thought only of putting on plays. We rehearsed mornings, afternoons, all the time. I adored that." Bernhardt lived with her longtime friend and assistant Madame Guérard and her son in a small cottage in the suburb of Auteuil, and drove herself to the theatre in a small carriage. She developed a close friendship with the writer George Sand, and performed in two plays that she authored. She received celebrities in her dressing room, including Gustave Flaubert and Leon Gambetta. In 1869, as she became more prosperous, she moved to a larger seven-room apartment at 16 rue Auber in the center of Paris. Her mother began to visit her for the first time in years, and her grandmother, a strict Orthodox Jew, moved into the apartment to take care of Maurice. Bernhardt added a maid and a cook to her household, as well as the beginning of a collection of animals; she had one or two dogs with her at all times, and two turtles moved freely around the apartment.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: In 1868, a fire completely destroyed her apartment, along with all of her belongings. She had neglected to purchase insurance. The brooch presented to her by the Emperor and her pearls melted, as did the tiara presented by one of her lovers, Khalid Bey. She found the diamonds in the ashes, and the managers of the Odéon organised a benefit performance. The most famous soprano of the time, Adelina Patti, performed for free. In addition, the grandmother of her father donated 120,000 francs. Bernhardt was able to buy an even larger residence, with two salons and a large dining room, at 4 rue de Rome.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War abruptly interrupted her theatrical career. The news of the defeat of the French Army, the surrender of Napoleon III at Sedan, and the proclamation of the Third French Republic on 4 September 1870 was followed by a siege of the city by the Prussian Army. Paris was cut off from news and from its food supply, and the theatres were closed. Bernhardt took charge of converting the Odéon into a hospital for soldiers wounded in the battles outside the city. She organised the placement of 32 beds in the lobby and the foyers, brought in her personal chef to prepare soup for the patients, and persuaded her wealthy friends and admirers to donate supplies for the hospital. Besides organising the hospital, she worked as a nurse, assisting the chief surgeon with amputations and operations. When the coal supply of the city ran out, Bernhardt used old scenery, benches, and stage props for fuel to heat the theater. In early January 1871, after 16 weeks of the siege, the Germans began to bombard the city with long-range cannons. The patients had to be moved to the cellar, and before long, the hospital was forced to close. Bernhardt arranged for serious cases to be transferred to another military hospital, and she rented an apartment on rue de Provence to house the remaining 20 patients. By the end of the siege, Bernhardt's hospital had cared for more than 150 wounded soldiers, including a young undergraduate from the École Polytechnique, Ferdinand Foch, who later commanded the Allied armies in the First World War.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: The French government signed an armistice on 19 January 1871, and Bernhardt learned that her son and family had been moved to Hamburg. She went to the new chief executive of the French Republic, Adolphe Thiers, and obtained a pass to go to Germany to return them. When she returned to Paris several weeks later, the city was under the rule of the Paris Commune. She moved again, taking her family to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. She later returned to her apartment on the rue de Rome in May, after the Commune was defeated by the French Army.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: The Tuileries Palace, city hall of Paris, and many other public buildings had been burned by the Commune or damaged in the fighting, but the Odéon was still intact. Charles-Marie Chilly, the co-director of the Odéon, came to her apartment, where Bernhardt received him reclining on a sofa. He announced that the theaters would reopen in October 1871, and he asked her to play the lead in a new play, "Jean-Marie" by André Theuriet. Bernhardt replied that she was finished with the theatre and was going to move to Brittany and start a farm. Chilly, who knew Bernhardt's moods well, told her that he understood and accepted her decision, and would give the role to Jane Essler, a rival actress. According to Chilly, Bernhardt immediately jumped up from the sofa and asked when the rehearsals would begin.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: "Jean-Marie", about a young Breton woman forced by her father to marry an old man she did not love, was another critical and popular success for Bernhardt. The critic Sarcey wrote, "She has the sovereign grace, the penetrating charm, the I don't know what. She is a natural artist, an incomparable artist." The directors of the Odéon next decided to stage "Ruy Blas", a play written by Victor Hugo in 1838, with Bernhardt playing the role of the Queen of Spain. Hugo himself attended all the rehearsals. At first, Bernhardt pretended to be indifferent to him, but he gradually won her over and she became a fervent admirer. The play premiered on 16 January 1872. 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.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: "Ruy Blas" played to packed houses. A few months after it opened, Bernhardt received an invitation from Emile Perrin, Director of the Comédie Française, asking if she would return, and offering her 12,000 francs a year, compared with less than 10,000 at the Odéon. Bernhardt asked Chilly if he would match the offer, but he refused. Always pressed by her growing expenses and growing household to earn more money, she announced her departure from the Odéon when she finished the run of "Ruy Blas". Chilly responded with a lawsuit, and she was forced to pay 6,000 francs of damages. After the 100th performance of "Ruy Blas", Hugo gave a dinner for Bernhardt and her friends, toasting "His adorable Queen and her Golden Voice."


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: She formally returned to the Comédie Francaise on 1 October 1872, and quickly took on some of the most famous and demanding roles in French theatre. She played Junie in "Britannicus" by Jean Racine, the male role of Cherubin in "The Marriage of Figaro" by Pierre Beaumarchais, and the lead in Voltaire's five-act tragedy Zaïre. In 1873, with just 74 hours to learn the lines and practice the part, she played the lead in Racine's "Phédre", playing opposite the celebrated tragedian, Jean Mounet-Sully, who soon became her lover. The leading French critic Sarcey wrote, "This is nature itself served by marvelous intelligence, by a soul of fire, by the most melodious voice that ever enchanted human ears. This woman plays with her heart, with her entrails." "Phédre" became her most famous classical role, performed over the years around the world, often for audiences who knew little or no French; she made them understand by her voice and gestures.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: In 1877, she had another success as Doña Sol in "Hernani", a tragedy written 47 years earlier by Victor Hugo. Her lover in the play was her lover off-stage, as well, Mounet-Sully. Hugo himself was in the audience. The next day, he sent her a note: "Madame, you were great and charming; you moved me, me the old warrior, and, at a certain moment when the public, touched and enchanted by you, applauded, I wept. The tear which you caused me to shed is yours. I place it at your feet." The note was accompanied by a tear-shaped pearl on a gold bracelet.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: She maintained a highly theatrical lifestyle in her house on the rue de Rome. She kept a satin-lined coffin in her bedroom, and occasionally slept in it or lay in it to study her roles, though, contrary to the popular stories, she never took it with her on her travels. She cared for her younger sister who was ill with tuberculosis, and allowed her to sleep in her own bed, while she slept in the coffin. She posed in it for photographs, adding to the legends she created about herself.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Bernhardt repaired her old relationships with the other members of the Comédie Française; she participated in a benefit for Madame Nathalie, the actress she had once slapped. However, she was frequently in conflict with Perrin, the director of the theatre. In 1878, during the Paris Universal Exposition, she took a flight over Paris with balloonist Pierre Giffard and painter Georges Clairin, in a balloon decorated with the name of her current character, "Doña Sol". An unexpected storm carried the balloon far outside of Paris to a small town. When she returned by train to the city, Perrin was furious; he fined Bernhardt a thousand francs, citing a theatre rule which required actors to request permission before they left Paris. Bernhardt refused to pay, and threatened to resign from the Comédie. Perrin recognised that he could not afford to let her go. Perrin and the Minister of Fine Arts arranged a compromise; she withdrew her resignation, and in return was raised to a "societaire", the highest rank of the theater.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Bernhardt was earning a substantial amount at the theatre, but her expenses were even greater. By this time she had eight servants, and she built her first house, an imposing mansion on rue Fortuny, not far from the Parc Monceau. She looked for additional ways to earn money. In June 1879, while the theatre of the Comédie Française in Paris was being remodeled, Perrin took the company on tour to London. Shortly before the tour began, a British theatre impresario named Edward Jarrett traveled to Paris and proposed that she give private performances in the homes of wealthy Londoners; the fee she would receive for each performance was greater than her monthly salary with the Comédie. When Perrin read in the press about the private performances, he was furious. Furthermore, the Gaiety Theatre in London demanded that Bernhardt star in the opening performance, contrary to the traditions of Comédie Française, where roles were assigned by seniority, and the idea of stardom was scorned. 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. He scheduled Bernhardt to perform one act of "Phèdre" on the opening night, between two traditional French comedies, "Le Misanthrope" and "Les Précieuses".


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: On 4 June 1879, just before the opening curtain of her premiere in "Phèdre," she suffered an attack of stage fright. She wrote later that she also pitched her voice too high, and was unable to lower it. Nonetheless, the performance was a triumph. Though a majority of the audience could not understand Racine's classical French, she captivated them with her voice and gestures; one member of the audience, Sir George Arthur, wrote that "she set every nerve and fibre in their bodies throbbing and held them spellbound." In addition to her performances of "Zaïre", "Phèdre", "Hernani", and other plays with her troupe, she gave the private recitals in the homes of British aristocrats arranged by Jarrett, who also arranged an exhibition of her sculptures and paintings in Piccadilly, which was attended by both the Prince of Wales and Prime Minister Gladstone. While in London, she added to her personal menagerie of animals. 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.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Back in Paris, she was increasingly discontented with Perrin and the management of the Comédie Française. He insisted that she perform the lead in a new play, "L'Aventurière" by Emile Augier, a play which she thought was mediocre. When she rehearsed the play without enthusiasm, and frequently forgot her lines, she was criticised by the playwright. She responded, "I know I'm bad, but not as bad as your lines." The play went ahead, but was a failure. She wrote immediately to Perrin, "You forced me to play when I was not ready... what I foresaw came to pass... this is my first failure at the Comédie and my last." She sent a resignation letter to Perrin, made copies, and sent them to the major newspapers. 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. She did not settle the debt until 1900. Later, however, when the Comédie Française theatre was nearly destroyed by fire, she allowed her old troupe to use her own theatre.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: In April 1880, as soon as he learned Bernhardt had resigned from the Comédie Française, the impresario Edward Jarrett hurried to Paris and proposed that she make a theatrical tour of England and then the United States. She could select her repertoire and the cast. She would receive 5,000 francs per performance, plus 15% of any earnings over 15,000 francs, plus all of her expenses, plus an account in her name for 100,000 francs, the amount she owed to the Comédie Française. She accepted immediately.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Now on her own, Bernhardt first assembled and tried out her new troupe at the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Lyrique in Paris. She performed for the first time "La Dame aux Camélias", by Alexandre Dumas "fils". 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. She played the role more than a thousand times, and acted regularly and successfully in it until the end of her life. Audiences were often in tears during her famous death scene at the end.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: She could not perform "La Dame aux Camélias" on a London stage because of British censorship laws; instead, she put on four of her proven successes, including "Hernani" and "Phèdre", plus four new roles, including "Adrienne Lecouvreur" by Eugène Scribe and the drawing-room comedy "Frou-frou" by Meilhac-Halévy, both of which were highly successful on the London stage. In six of the eight plays in her repertoire, she died dramatically in the final act. When she returned to Paris from London, the Comédie Française asked her to come back, but she refused their offer, explaining that she was making far more money on her own. Instead, she took her new company and new plays on tour to Brussels and Copenhagen, and then on a tour of French provincial cities.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: She and her troupe departed from Le Havre for America on 15 October 1880, arriving in New York on 27 October. On 8 November in New York City, she performed Scribe's "Adrienne Lecouvreur" at Booth's Theatre before an audience which had paid a top price of $40 for a ticket, an enormous sum at the time. Few in the audience understood French, but it was not necessary; her gestures and voice captivated the audience, and she received a thunderous ovation. She thanked the audience with her distinctive curtain call; she did not bow, but stood perfectly still, with her hands clasped under her chin, or with her palms on her cheeks, and then suddenly stretched them out to the audience. After her first performance in New York, she made 27 curtain calls. Although she was welcomed by theatre-goers, she was entirely ignored by New York high society, who considered her personal life scandalous.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Bernhardt's first American tour carried her to 157 performances in 51 cities. She travelled on a special train with her own luxurious palace car, which carried her two maids, two cooks, a waiter, her maître d'hôtel, and her personal assistant, Madame Guérard. It also carried an actor named Édouard Angelo, whom she had selected to serve as her leading man, and, according to most accounts, her lover during the tour. From New York, she made a side trip to Menlo Park, where she met Thomas Edison, who made a brief recording of her reciting a verse from "Phèdre," which has not survived. She crisscrossed the United States and Canada from Montreal and Toronto to Saint Louis and New Orleans, usually performing each evening, and departing immediately after the performance. She gave countless press interviews, and in Boston posed for photos on the back of a dead whale. She was condemned as immoral by the Bishop of Montreal and by the Methodist press, which only increased ticket sales. She performed "Phèdre" six times and "La Dame Aux Camélias" 65 times (which Jarrett had renamed "Camille" to make it easier for Americans to pronounce, despite the fact that no character in the play has that name). On 3 May 1881, she gave her final performance of "Camélias" in New York. Throughout her life, she always insisted on being paid in cash. When Bernhardt returned to France, she brought with her a chest filled with $194,000 in gold coins. She described the result of her trip to her friends: "I crossed the oceans, carrying my dream of art in myself, and the genius of my nation triumphed. I planted the French verb in the heart of a foreign literature, and it is that of which I am most proud."


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: No crowd greeted Bernhardt when she returned to Paris on 5 May 1881, and theatre managers offered no new roles; the Paris press ignored her tour, and much of the Paris theatre world resented her leaving the most prestigious national theatre to earn a fortune abroad. When no new plays or offers appeared, she went to London for a successful three-week run at the Gaiety Theater. This London tour included the first British performance of "La Dame aux Camelias" at the Shaftesbury Theatre; her friend, the Prince of Wales, persuaded Queen Victoria to authorise the performance. Many years later, she gave a private performance of the play for the Queen while she was on holiday in Nice. 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. She recited the "Marseillaise", dressed in a white robe with a tricolor banner, and at the end dramatically waved the French flag. The audience gave her a standing ovation, showered her with flowers, and demanded that she recite the song two more times.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: With her place in the French theatre world restored, Bernhardt negotiated a contract to perform at the Vaudeville Theatre in Paris for 1500 francs per performance, as well as 25 percent of the net profit. She also announced that she would not be available to begin until 1882. She departed on a tour of theatres in the French provinces, and then to Italy, Greece, Hungary, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Austria, and Russia. In Kyiv and Odessa, she encountered anti-Semitic crowds who threw stones at her; pogroms were being conducted, forcing the Jewish population to leave. However, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, she performed before Czar Alexander III, who broke court protocol and bowed to her. During her tour, she also gave performances for King Alfonso XII of Spain, and the Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. The only European country where she refused to play was Germany, due to the German annexation of French territory after the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War. Just before the tour began, she met Jacques Damala, who went with her as leading man and then, for eight months, became her first and only husband.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: When she returned to Paris, she was offered a new role in "Fédora", a melodrama written for her by Victorien Sardou. It opened on 12 December 1882, with her husband Damala as the male lead, and received good reviews. Critic Maurice Baring wrote, "a secret atmosphere emanated from her, an aroma, an attraction, which was at once exotic and cerebral ... She literally hypnotised her audience." Another journalist wrote, "She is incomparable ... The extreme love, the extreme agony, the extreme suffering." However, the abrupt end of her marriage shortly after the premiere put her back into financial distress. She had leased and refurbished a theatre, the Ambigu, specifically to give her husband leading roles, and made her 18-year-old son Maurice, who had no business experience, the manager. "Fédora" ran for just 50 performances and lost 400,000 francs. She was forced to give up the Ambigu, and then, in February 1883, to sell her jewellery, her carriages, and her horses at an auction.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: 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. She renewed her relationship with the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. When they returned to Paris, Bernhardt leased the theatre of Porte Saint-Martin and starred in a new play by Richepin, "Nana-Sahib", a costume drama about love in British India in 1857. The play and Richepin's acting were poor, and it quickly closed. Richepin then wrote an adaptation of "Macbeth" in French, with Bernhardt as Lady Macbeth, but it was also a failure. The only person who praised the play was Oscar Wilde, who was then living in Paris. He began writing a play, "Salomé," in French, especially for Bernhardt, though it was quickly banned by British censors and she never performed it.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Bernhardt then performed a new play by Sardou, "Theodora" (1884), a melodrama set in sixth-century Byzantine Empire. Sardou wrote a nonhistoric but dramatic new death scene for Bernhardt; in his version, the empress Theodora was publicly strangled, whereas the historical empress died of cancer. Bernhardt travelled to Ravenna, Italy, to study and sketch the costumes seen in Byzantine mosaic murals, and had them reproduced for her own costumes. The play opened on 26 December 1884 and ran for 300 performances in Paris, and 100 in London, and was a financial success. She was able to pay off most of her debts, and bought a lion cub, which she named Justinian, for her home menagerie. She also renewed her love affair with her former lead actor, Philippe Garnier.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: "Theodora" was followed by two failures. In 1885, in homage to Victor Hugo, who had died a few months earlier, she staged one of his older plays, "Marion de Lorme", written in 1831, but the play was outdated and her role did not give her a chance to show her talents. She next put on "Hamlet", with her lover Philippe Garnier in the leading role and Bernhardt in the relatively minor role of Ophelia. The critics and audiences were not impressed, and the play was unsuccessful. Bernhardt had built up large expenses, which included a 10,000 francs a month allowance paid to her son Maurice, a passionate gambler. Bernhardt was forced to sell her chalet in Sainte-Adresse and her mansion on rue Fortuny, and part of her collection of animals. 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 was on tour for 15 months, from early 1886 until late 1887. On the eve of departure, she told a French reporter: "I passionately love this life of adventures. I detest knowing in advance what they are going to serve at my dinner, and I detest a hundred thousand times more knowing what will happen to me, for better or worse. I adore the unexpected."


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: In every city she visited, she was feted and cheered by audiences. The actors Edouard Angelo and Philippe Garnier were her leading men. Emperor Pedro II of Brazil attended all of her performances in Rio de Janeiro, and presented her with a gold bracelet with diamonds, which was almost immediately stolen from her hotel. The two leading actors both fell ill with yellow fever, and her long-time manager, Edward Jarrett, died of a heart attack. Bernhardt was undaunted, however, and went crocodile hunting at Guayaquil, and also bought more animals for her menagerie. Her performances in every city were sold out, and by the end of the tour, she had earned more than a million francs. The tour allowed her to purchase her final home, which she filled with her paintings, plants, souvenirs, and animals.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: 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. In 1888, she toured Italy, Egypt, Turkey, Sweden, Norway, and Russia. She returned to Paris in early 1889 with an enormous owl given to her by the Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich, the brother of the Czar. Her 1891–92 tour was her most extensive, including much of Europe, Russia, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and Samoa. Her personal luggage consisted of 45 costume crates for her 15 different productions, and 75 crates for her off-stage clothing, including her 250 pairs of shoes. She carried a trunk for her perfumes, cosmetics and makeup, and another for her sheets and tablecloths and her five pillows. After the tour, she brought back a trunk filled with 3,500,000 francs, but she also suffered a painful injury to her knee when she leaped off the parapet of the Castello Sant' Angelo in "La Tosca". The mattress on which she was supposed to land was misplaced, and she landed on the boards.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: When Bernhardt returned from her 1886–87 tour, she received a new invitation to return to the Comédie Française. The theatre management was willing to forget the conflict of her two previous periods there, and offered a payment of 150,000 francs a year. The money appealed to her, and she began negotiations. However, the senior members of the company protested the high salary offered, and conservative defenders of the more traditional theatre also complained; one anti-Bernhardt critic, Albert Delpit of "Le Gaulois", wrote, "Madame Sarah Bernhardt is forty-three; she can no longer be useful to the Comédie. Moreover, what roles could she have? I can only imagine that she could play mothers..." Bernhardt was deeply offended and immediately broke off negotiations. 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. The play was staged at the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre, opening on 24 November 1887. It was extremely popular, and critically acclaimed. Bernhardt played the role for 29 consecutive sold-out performances. The success of the play allowed Bernhardt to buy a new pet lion for her household menagerie. She named him Scarpia, after the villain of "La Tosca". The play inspired Giacomo Puccini to write one of his most famous operas, "Tosca" (1900).


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Following this success, she acted in several revivals and classics, and many French writers offered her new plays. In 1887, she acted in a stage version of the controversial drama "Thérèse Raquin" by Emile Zola. Zola had previously been attacked due to the book's confronting content. Asked why she chose this play, she declared to reporters, "My true country is the free air, and my vocation is art without constraints." The play was unsuccessful; it ran for just 38 performances. She then performed another traditional melodrama, "Francillon" by Alexandre Dumas "fils" in 1888. A short drama she wrote herself, "L'Aveu", disappointed both critics and the audience and lasted only 12 performances. She had considerably more success with "Jeanne d'Arc" by the poet Jules Barbier, in which the 45-year-old actress played Joan of Arc, a 19-year-old martyr. Barbier had previously written the librettos for some of the most famous French operas of the period, including "Faust" by Charles Gounod and "The Tales of Hoffmann" by Jacques Offenbach. Her next success was another melodrama by Sardou and Moreau, "Cleopatra", which allowed her to wear elaborate costumes and finished with a memorable death scene. For this scene, she kept two live garter snakes, which played the role of the poisonous asp which bites Cleopatra. For realism, she painted the palms of her hands red, though they could hardly be seen from the audience. "I shall see them," she explained. "If I catch sight of my hand, it will be the hand of Cleopatra."


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Bernhardt's violent portrayal of Cleopatra led to the theatrical story of a matron in the audience exclaiming to her companion "How unlike, how very unlike, the home life of our own dear Queen!"


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Bernhardt made a two-year world tour (1891–1893) to replenish her finances. Upon returning to Paris, she paid 700,000 francs for the Théâtre de la Renaissance, and from 1893 until 1899, was its artistic director and lead actress. She managed every aspect of the theatre, from the finances to the lighting, sets, and costumes, as well as appearing in eight performances a week. She imposed a rule that women in the audience, no matter how wealthy or famous, had to take off their hats during performances, so the rest of the audience could see, and eliminated the prompter's box from the stage, declaring that actors should know their lines. She abolished in her theatre the common practice of hiring "claqueurs" in the audience to applaud stars. She used the new technology of lithography to produce vivid color posters, and in 1894, she hired Czech artist Alphonse Mucha to design the first of a series of posters for her play "Gismonda". He continued to make posters of her for six years.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: In five years, Bernhardt produced nine plays, three of which were financially successful. The first was a revival of her performance as Phédre, which she took on tour around the world. In 1898, she had another success, in the play "Lorenzaccio", playing the male lead role in a Renaissance revenge drama written in 1834 by Alfred de Musset, but never before actually staged. As her biographer Cornelia Otis Skinner wrote, she did not try to be overly masculine when she performed male roles: "Her male impersonations had the sexless grace of the voices of choirboys, or the not quite real pathos of Pierrot." Anatole France wrote of her performance in "Lorenzaccio": "She formed out of her own self a young man melancholic, full of poetry and of truth." This was followed by another successful melodrama by Sardou, "Gismonda", one of Bernhardt's few plays not finishing with a dramatic death scene. Her co-star was Lucien Guitry, who also acted as her leading man until the end of her career. Besides Guitry, she shared the stage with Édouard de Max, her leading man in 20 productions, and Constant Coquelin, who frequently toured with her.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: In April 1895, she played the lead role in a romantic and poetic fantasy, "Princess Lointaine", by little-known 27-year-old poet Edmond Rostand. It was not a monetary success and lost 200,000 francs, but it began a long theatrical relationship between Bernhardt and Rostand. Rostand went on to write "Cyrano de Bergerac" and became one of the most popular French playwrights of the period.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: In 1898, she performed the female lead in the controversial play "La Ville Morte" by the Italian poet and playwright Gabriele D'Annunzio; the play was fiercely attacked by critics because of its theme of incest between brother and sister. Along with Émile Zola and Victorien Sardou, Bernhardt also became an outspoken defender of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer falsely accused of betraying France. The issue divided Parisian society; a conservative newspaper ran the headline, "Sarah Bernhardt has joined the Jews against the Army", and Bernhardt's own son Maurice condemned Dreyfus; he refused to speak to her for a year.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: At the Théâtre de la Renaissance, Bernhardt staged and performed in several modern plays, but she was not a follower of the more natural school of acting that was coming into fashion at the end of the 19th century, preferring a more dramatic expression of emotions. "In the theatre," she declared, "the natural is good, but the sublime is even better."


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Despite her successes, her debts continued to mount, reaching two million gold francs by the end of 1898. Bernhardt was forced to give up the Renaissance, and was preparing to go on another world tour when she learned that a much larger Paris theater, the Théâtre des Nations on Place du Châtelet, was for lease. The theatre had 1,700 seats, twice the size of the Renaissance, enabling her to pay off the cost of performances more quickly; it had an enormous stage and backstage, allowing her to present several different plays a week; and since it was originally designed as a concert hall, it had excellent acoustics. On 1 January 1899, she signed a 25-year lease with the City of Paris, though she was already 55 years old.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: She renamed it the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, and began to renovate it to suit her needs. The façade was lit by 5,700 electric bulbs, 17 arc lights, and 11 projectors. She completely redecorated the interior, replacing the red plush and gilt with yellow velvet, brocade, and white woodwork. The lobby was decorated with life-sized portraits of her in her most famous roles, painted by Mucha, Louise Abbéma, and Georges Clairin. Her dressing room was a five-room suite, which, after the success of her Napoleonic play "L'Aiglon", was decorated in Empire Style, featuring a marble fireplace with a fire Bernhardt kept burning year round, a huge bathtub that was filled with the flowers she received after each performance, and a dining room fitting 12 people, where she entertained guests after the final curtain.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Bernhardt opened the theatre on 21 January 1899 with a revival of Sardou's "La Tosca", which she had first performed in 1887. This was followed by revivals of her other major successes, including "Phédre", "Theodora", "Gismonda", and "La Dame aux Camélias", plus Octave Feuillet's "Dalila", Gaston de Wailly's "Patron Bénic", and Rostand's "La Samaritaine," a poetic retelling of the story of the Samaritan woman at the well from the Gospel of John. On 20 May, she premiered one of her most famous roles, playing the titular character of "Hamlet" in a prose adaptation which she had commissioned from Eugène Morand and Marcel Schwob. She played Hamlet in a manner which was direct, natural, and very feminine. Her performance received largely positive reviews in Paris, but mixed reviews in London. 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"."


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: In 1900, Bernhardt presented "L'Aiglon", a new play by Rostand. She played the Duc de Reichstadt, the son of Napoleon Bonaparte, imprisoned by his unloving mother and family until his melancholy death in the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. "L'Aiglon" was a verse drama, six acts long. The 56-year-old actress studied the walk and posture of young cavalry officers and had her hair cut short to impersonate the young Duke. The Duke's stage mother, Marie-Louise of Austria, was played by Maria Legault, an actress 14 years younger than Bernhardt. The play ended with a memorable death scene; according to one critic, she died "as dying angels would die if they were allowed to." 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. The play inspired the creation of Bernhardt souvenirs, including statuettes, medallions, fans, perfumes, postcards of her in the role, uniforms and cardboard swords for children, and pastries and cakes; the famed chef Escoffier added Peach Aiglon with Chantilly cream to his repertoire of desserts.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Bernhardt continued to employ Mucha to design her posters, and expanded his work to include theatrical sets, programs, costumes, and jewellery props. His posters became icons of the Art Nouveau style. To earn more money, Bernhardt set aside a certain number of printed posters of each play to sell to collectors.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: After her season in Paris, Bernhardt performed "L'Aiglon" in London, and then made her sixth tour to the United States. On this tour, she travelled with Constant Coquelin, then the most popular leading man in France. Bernhardt played the secondary role of Roxanne to his Cyrano de Bergerac, a role which he had premiered, and he co-starred with her as Flambeau in "L'Aiglon" and as the first grave-digger in "Hamlet".


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: She also changed, for the first time, her resolution not to perform in Germany or the "occupied territories" of Alsace and Lorraine. In 1902, at the invitation of the French ministry of culture, she took part in the first cultural exchange between Germany and France since the 1870 war. She performed "L'Aiglon" 14 times in Germany; Kaiser William II of Germany attended two performances and hosted a dinner in her honour in Potsdam.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: During her German tour, she began to suffer agonising pain in her right knee, probably connected with a fall she had suffered on stage during her tour in South America. She was forced to reduce her movements in "L'Aiglon". A German doctor recommended that she halt the tour immediately and have surgery, followed by six months of complete immobilisation of her leg. Bernhardt promised to see a doctor when she returned to Paris, but continued the tour.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: 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. However, she quickly came back with another hit, "La Sorcière" by Sardou. She played a Moorish sorceress in love with a Christian Spaniard, leading to her persecution by the church. This story of tolerance, coming soon after the Dreyfus affair, was financially successful, with Bernhardt often giving both a matinee and evening performance.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Between 1904 and 1906, she appeared in a wide range of parts, including in "Francesca di Rimini" by Francis Marion Crawford, the role of Fanny in "Sapho" by Alphonse Daudet, the magician Circe in a play by Charles Richet, the part of Marie Antoinette in the historic drama "Varennes" by Lavedan and Lenôtre, the part of the prince-poet Landry in a version of "Sleeping Beauty" by Richepin and Henri Cain, and a new version of the play "Pelléas and Mélisande" by symbolist poet Maurice Maeterlinck, in which she played the male role of Pelléas with the British actress Mrs Patrick Campbell as Melissande. She also starred in a new version of "Adrienne Lecouvreur", which she wrote herself, different from the earlier version which had been written for her by Scribe. During this time, she wrote a drama, "Un Coeur d'Homme", in which she had no part, which was performed at the Théâtre des Arts, but lasted only three performances. She also taught acting briefly at the Conservatory, but found the system there too rigid and traditional. Instead, she took aspiring actresses and actors into her company, trained them, and used them as unpaid extras and bit players.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Bernhardt made her first American Farewell Tour in 1905–1906, the first of four farewell tours she made to the US, Canada, and Latin America, with her new managers, the Shubert brothers. She attracted controversy and press attention when, during her 1905 visit to Montreal, the Roman Catholic bishop encouraged his followers to throw eggs at Bernhardt, because she portrayed prostitutes as sympathetic characters. The US portion of the tour was complicated due to the Shuberts' competition with the powerful syndicate of theatre owners which controlled nearly all the major theatres and opera houses in the United States. The syndicate did not allow outside producers to use their stages. As a result, in Texas and Kansas City, Bernhardt and her company performed under an enormous circus tent, seating 4,500 spectators, and in skating rinks in Atlanta, Savannah, Tampa, and other cities. Her private train took her to Knoxville, Dallas, Denver, Tampa, Chattanooga, and Salt Lake City, then on to the West Coast of the United States. She could not play in San Francisco because of the recent 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but she performed across the bay in the Hearst Greek Theatre at the University of California at Berkeley, and gave a recital, titled "A Christmas Night during the Terror", for inmates at San Quentin penitentiary.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: Her tour continued into South America, where it was marred by a more serious event: at the conclusion of "La Tosca" in Rio de Janeiro, she leaped, as always, from the wall of the fortress to plunge to her death in the Tiber. This time, however, the mattress on which she was supposed to land had been positioned incorrectly. She landed on her right knee, which had already been damaged in earlier tours. She fainted and was taken from the theatre on a stretcher, but refused to be treated in a local hospital. She later sailed by ship from Rio to New York. When she arrived, her leg had swollen, and she was immobilised in her hotel for 15 days before returning to France.


title: Sarah Bernhardt

text: In 1906–1907, the French government finally awarded Bernhardt the Legion d'Honneur, but only in her role as a theatre director, not as an actress. However, the award at that time required a review of the recipients' moral standards, and Bernhardt's behavior was still considered scandalous. Bernhardt ignored the snub and continued to play both inoffensive and controversial characters. In November 1906, she starred in "La Vierge d'Avila, ou La Courtisane de Dieu", by Catulle Mendes, playing Saint Theresa, followed on 27 January 1907 by "Les Bouffons", by Miguel Zamocois, in which she played a young and amorous medieval lord. In 1909, she again played the 19-year-old Joan of Arc in "Le Procès de Jeanne d'Arc" by Émile Moreau. French newspapers encouraged schoolchildren to view her personification of French patriotism.