The pioneering French stage star Sarah Bernhardt was one of the world’s most famous women by the time of her death in 1923 — a status she owed not just to acting talent but her modern instinct for self-publicizing and using the press to brand her image.
A century later, a French museum opened an exhibit on the eccentric, scandalous and multihyphenate performer known as “La Divine,” whom many consider the world’s first celebrity.
