Vintage Everyday

Sarah Bernhardt in the Famous Coffin in Which She Sometimes Studied Roles and Occasionally Slept or Rested Inside It

2026-11-09T23:22:35.216+07:00

Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923), widely considered one of the greatest French stage actresses of the 19th and early 20th centuries, was famous for her eccentric personal life and dramatic flair. She famously kept a custom, satin-lined rosewood coffin in her bedroom during the late 19th century, using it to sleep, study her theatrical roles, and pose for dramatic promotional photographs.

This eccentric habit was both a profound personal obsession with mortality and a brilliant, pioneering masterclass in public relations. According to historical accounts, Bernhardt initially purchased the coffin in her youth after a doctor predicted she would die young from tuberculosis. Rather than giving in to fear, she decided to own her mortality. She frequently traveled with the coffin, slept in it to experience what death might feel like, and used the quiet, enclosed space to completely immerse herself in the minds of the tragic characters she portrayed on stage.

Realizing the public’s intense curiosity, she famously allowed photographer Achille Mélandri to capture images of her lying peacefully inside it with her eyes closed, draped in white shroud-like clothing. She sold these photographs as postcards, successfully generating international mystique and securing her legacy as one of the world’s first true global celebrities.

40 of the Best Portraits of Hedy Lamarr From the 1940s

2026-11-09T17:05:30.973+07:00

Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler; November 9, 1914 – January 19, 2000) was an Austrian and American actress and inventor. During the 1940s, she achieved the peak of her Hollywood fame as a glamour icon while simultaneously co-inventing pioneering technology that laid the groundwork for modern wireless communications like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. Managed by MGM and heavily promoted as the “World’s Most Beautiful Woman,” she lived a remarkable double life as a box-office star by day and an avid inventor by night.

Lamarr starred in a string of major commercial hits throughout the decade, including Boom Town (1940), Ziegfeld Girl (1941), and White Cargo (1942). She capped off the decade starring as Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille’s lavish biblical epic Samson and Delilah (1949). The film became a massive commercial phenomenon and the highest-grossing movie of 1950. Despite her intelligence, Hollywood studio executives heavily pigeonholed her into exotic, seductive roles, prioritizing her physical aesthetic over her technical acumen.

Disturbed by the ongoing threat of German submarines during World War II, Lamarr sought to aid the Allied forces by developing an un-jammable radio guidance system for torpedoes. Alongside avant-garde composer George Antheil, she co-invented a “Secret Communication System” in 1941. Inspired by synchronized player piano rolls, the mechanism rapidly switched radio signals across 88 different frequencies so enemy forces could not intercept them.

The duo was granted U.S. Patent 2,292,387 in August 1942. However, the U.S. Navy dismissed the invention at the time, shelving the paperwork and advising Lamarr that she could better serve the war effort by using her celebrity status to sell war bonds—which she did, raising millions of dollars. Though her patent expired before she could profit from it, the U.S. military eventually adopted the principles of spread-spectrum technology during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Decades later, her self-taught genius was fully realized, securing her a posthumous induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Vintage Everyday

Sarah Bernhardt in the Famous Coffin in Which She Sometimes Studied Roles and Occasionally Slept or Rested Inside It

40 of the Best Portraits of Hedy Lamarr From the 1940s

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