Madame Tussauds

It’s always all about the story. Particularly this story! I think you’ll find it interesting. But if you want to jump right to the suzyknowsLA $10 per ticket discount, just skip down to the bottom of the page to buy your tickets now!

And apart from the fact that Madame Tussauds is located on crazy Hollywood Blvd in crazy Hollywood, I still feel it is a great place to visit and worth the price of admission. The story behind this kitschy little museum is quite interesting.

Marie Tussaud was born as Marie Grosholtz in 1761 in Strasbourg, France. Her mother worked as a housekeeper for Dr. Philippe Curtius in Bern, Switzerland, who was a physician skilled in wax modelling, and who in turn taught Tussaud the art of wax modelling.

In 1777 Tussaud created her first wax sculpture of Voltaire. Other famous people whom she modelled at that time include Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin! During the French Revolution, she modelled many prominent victims. In fact, she claimed 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. How crazy must that have been!

Following Dr. Curtius’ death in 1794, she inherited the doctor’s vast collection of wax models and spent the next 33 years travelling around Europe. She married Francois Tussaud in 1795, and the show acquired a new name: Madame Tussauds. In 1802, she accepted an invitation from Paul Philidor, a magic lantern and “phantasmagoria pioneer” (a sequence of real or imaginary images like those seen in a dream) to exhibit her work alongside his show at the Lyceum Theatre in London. She did not fare particularly well financially, with Philidor taking half of her profits. Unable to return to France because of the Napoleonic Wars, she traveled throughout Great Britain and Ireland exhibiting her collection.

And the rest is history.

Did you know that each figure takes roughly three months to make? Madame Tussauds’ studio creatives and marketing specialists decide the pose, expression, and look of the particular subject. Over 250 precise measurements have to be taken, either from photographs or during sittings. Over the next three months their highly skilled sculptors, moulders, hair stylists, colorists, and makeup artists bring the measurements to life, from sculpting the smallest details in clay to fixing hairs… one strand at a time!

Replicating an A-list celebrity, world leader, or historical figure down to the tiniest detail is a real labor of love. These wax figures are amazing! Particularly the eyes and teeth!

A visit to Madame Tussauds can easily be part of an afternoon on Hollywood Blvd! So much to see and so little time 🙂

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https://www.madametussauds.com/hollywood/en/tickets/?promocode=733