Life, 1889-12-12 · page 7 of 16
Life — December 12, 1889 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis This page contains two distinct elements: **Main Article & Portrait**: An article about Sarah Bernhardt, the famous French actress. The text describes her career choices, personal eccentricities (keeping a pet tiger, sleeping in a coffin), and reveals her real name as Rosine Bernard. It notes she's in her mid-forties at publication. **"Sizing Him Up" Cartoon**: A small satirical sketch showing a figure reading the *Mail and Express* newspaper, appearing to predict "a death on Park Row pretty soon." The joke appears to reference sensationalist newspaper reporting—the reader is a "fool-killer" who finds such journalism absurd enough to warrant violent response. This mocks the exaggerated, melodramatic style of contemporary newspaper coverage. The cartoon uses dark humor typical of Life magazine's satirical approach to press criticism.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
SARAH BERNHARDT. ATURE was good to Sarah Bernhardt in fit- ting her for either of two artistic carcers. She chose, however, to be a great actress in pref- erence to dazzling the world as the greatest Living Skeleton of her time, It is harder work to bea great actress than to be a successful freak, but the re- wards are correspondingly greater. As she has a pretty faculty for spending money, and is likewise of Semitic descent, she naturally took her talents to the market where the shekels were plentiest. Had Sarah Bernhardt lived in Chicago her social position would doubtless have been better than it is, The French divorce mill grinds so slowly and so exceedingly fine that her transcendent genius could not brook its delays, and the original matri- monial schemes she devised for her own use do not meet with the approval of her neighbors, Her originality also extends to other matters and tends to weaken her popularity, Her habit of sleeping in a coffin casts a gloom over the neigh- borhood in which she lives, and her best-loved pet is a young tiger with an uncontrollable appetite for plump waiters. The proprietors of the hotels she visits do not like to have their best waiters turned into tiger meat, and therefore her patronage is not generally solicited. It is in bad taste, perhaps, even in a biography or an obituary, to expose a lady’s real age, but under the rule that a woman is only as old as she looks it will do no harm to reveal the fact that Sarah Bern- hardt, or, to use her real name, Rosine Bernard, is now in the forty-sixth year of her age, NEW BOOKs. UR BOOK. By Washington Frothingham and Charle- magne Tower. New York: G. W. Dillingham. Mike Fletcher. By George Moore. New York: Mi- nerva Publishing Co. A Mad Leve. By Emile Zola. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers. Mizora, New York: G. W. Dillingham. §© DY George! There'll be a death on Park Row pretty soon!" “Why so?” “TI just saw the fool-killer reading the Mail and Express.” . “SIZING HIMZUP.” LIFE'S GALLERY OF BEAUTIES. No. 28. : SARAH BERNHARDT, comicbooks.com