Marie Tussaund was born as
Marie Grosholtz in 1760 in Strasmourg, France. Her
mother worked as a housekeeper for Dr.Phillipe Curtius in Bern ,
Switzerland, who was aphysician skilled in wax
modelling. Curtius taught Tussaud the art of wax modelling.
Tussaud created her first wax
sculpture, of Voiltaire, in 1777. Other famous people she modelled at
that time include Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin
Franklin. During the French
Revolution she modelled many prominent victims. In her memoirs
she claims that she would search through corpses to find the severed heads of
executed citizens, from which she would make death masks.
Her death
masks were held up as revolutionary flags and paraded through the streets of
Paris. Following the doctor's death in 1794, she inherited his vast collection
of wax models and spent the next 33 years travelling around Europe. She married
to Francois Tussaud in 1795 lent a new name to the show: Madame Tussaud's. In
1802 she went to London, having accepted an invitation from Paul Philidor, a magic lantern and phantasmagoria pioneer, to
exhibit her work alongside his show at the Lyceum Theatre,
London.
She did not fare particularly well financially, with Philidor taking half of
her profits. As a result of the Napoleonic Wars, she was unable to return to
France, so she traveled throughout Great Britain and Ireland exhibiting her
collection. From 1831 she took a series of short leases on the upper floor of
"Baker Street Bazaar" (on the west side of Baker Street, Dorset Street
and King Street), which later featured in the Druce-Portland case sequence of
trials of 1898–1907. This became Tussaud's first permanent home in 1836. One
of the main attractions of her museum was the Chamber
of Horrors.
By 1835 Marie had settled down in Baker Street, London, and
opened a museum. This part of the exhibition included victims of the
French Revolution and newly created figures of murderers and other criminals.
The name is often credited to a contributor to Punch in 1845, but Marie
appears to have originated it herself, using it in advertising as early as
1843.
Other famous people were added to the exhibition, including Horatio Nelson, and Sir Walter Scott. Some of the
sculptures done by Marie Tussaud herself still exist. The gallery originally
contained some 400 different figures, but fire damage in 1925, coupled with German bombs in 1941, has rendered
most of these older models defunct. The casts themselves have survived
(allowing the historical waxworks to be remade), and these can be seen in the
museum's history exhibit. The oldest figure on display is that of Madame du Barry. Other faces from
the time of Tussaud include Robespierre and George III. In 1842, she made a self portrait which is now
on display at the entrance of her museum. She died in her sleep on 15 April
1850.
By 1883 the restricted space and rising cost of the Baker
Street site prompted her grandson (Joseph Randall) to commission the building
at its current location on Marylebone Road. The new exhibition galleries
were opened on 14 July 1884 and were a great success.However, the building
costs, falling so soon after buying out his cousin Louisa's half share in the
business in 1881, meant the business was under-funded. A limited company was
formed in 1888 to attract fresh capital but had to be dissolved after
disagreements between the family shareholders, and in February 1889 Tussaud's
was sold to a group of businessmen led by Edwin Josiah Poyser. Edward
White,
an artist dismissed by the new owners to save money, allegedly sent a parcel
bomb to John Theodore
Tussaud in
June 1889 in revenge. The first sculpture of a young Winston Churchill was made in
1908, with a total of ten made since.
Madame Tussaud's wax museum has now grown to become a major tourist attraction in London,
incorporating (until 2010) the London Planetarium in its west
wing. It has expanded and will expand with branches in Amsterdam, Bangkok, Berlin, Blackpool, Hollywood, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, New York City, Shanghai, Sydney, Vienna, Washington, D.C., Wuhan, Tokyo and a temporary museum
in Busan (Korea) with locations coming to Beijing, Prague, Singapore, Orlando
and San Francisco. Today's wax figures at Tussauds include historical and royal
figures, film stars, sports stars and famous murderers. Known as "Madame
Tussauds" museums (no apostrophe), they are owned by a leisure company
called Merlin
Entertainments, following the acquisition of The Tussauds Group in May 2007.
In July 2008, Madame Tussauds' Berlin branch became
embroiled in controversy when a 41-year-old German man brushed past two guards
and decapitated a wax figure depicting Adolf Hitler. This was believed to be an
act of protest against showing the ruthless dictator alongside sports heroes,
movie stars, and other historical figures. However, the statue has since been
repaired and the perpetrator has admitted he attacked the statue to win a bet. The
original model of Hitler, unveiled in Madame Tussauds London in April 1933 was
frequently vandalised and a replacement in 1936 had to be carefully guarded.
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