Original subtitles

(Madame Tussaud speaking foreign language)

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- [Male Narrator] At the age of nearly 80,

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

a remarkable woman set out to dictate her memoirs.

- [Female Narrator] Madame Tussaud

was born in Bern in 1761.

Since coming to England, she has taken full advantage

of its benefits.

Her talents have been appreciated

by a generous and enlightened public.

- [Male Narrator] In an astonishing life

that spanned both the French and Industrial Revolutions,

this extraordinary mother and entrepreneur

traveled across the channel to England

to create a unique brand based on famous people

modeled in wax.

Determined to leave an account of who she was

and the time she lived through,

her memoirs, letters, and papers

offer a unique insight into the creation

of the world famous empire

which bears her name, Madame Tussaud.

- Madame Tussaud, I think, was an amazing businesswoman.

- To me, Madame Tussaud represents a creative force.

(Madame Tussaud speaking foreign language)

- But what she said about her life

is not necessarily the truth,

so I feel that in her hands,

the truth itself is as molten as wax.

(light orchestral music)

- [Male Narrator] In 1838, at her home in Baker Street,

Madame Tussaud dictated her memoirs

to her friend Francis Herve.

Written in the third person,

she sought to create a lasting legacy.

- [Female Narrator] Her father, who died before her birth,

was of the military profession,

and his name Grosholtz was renowned.

- Marie Tussaud seemed to mind about her social status

to the extent that she rather embellished

her family background, so for example,

even something as straightforward as place of birth

and parentage, as presented by her,

proves to be incorrect.

(light piano music)

- [Male Narrator] Marie Tussaud's story

begins in Strasbourg, not the well to do Bern

as she claimed, where she was born

into a far from illustrious family.

- [Male Narrator] When Marie's father died

before she was born, her mother turned for support

to her brother-in-law, a local doctor

and anatomist turned wax modeler in Bern.

- [Kate] Phillippe Curtius is crucial to her story

for the following reasons.

He employed her mother as a domestic housekeeper.

He became very attached to the young girl,

and he clearly taught her her skills.

- [Male Narrator] Philippe Curtius

was something of a celebrity in Bern.

He was consulted for his medical and anatomical knowledge,

and his wax models were very much in demand.

- Philippe Curtius has learned anatomy

and taught himself to make wax anatomical models

because in the mid-18th century,

it became less easy to secure dead corpses

to chop up, so people started to make wax models

to learn about anatomy and to teach about anatomy.

(light music)

- [Female Narrator] During that period,

modeling in wax was very much in vogue.

Representations were often most beautifully executed

and to such perfection.

- So Marie, as a small child in Paris, watched Curtius.

He allowed her to try out working with wax,

found that she was a very apt and quick learner

and taught her the trade.

- He was an extremely accomplished modeler,

and the tinting of the wax, so that it replicated flesh,

he passed that skill onto her,

so she was an apprentice almost

to this enigmatic man.

- [Male Narrator] As his fame grew,

Curtius decided to open a second exhibition

in the Boulevard du Temple.

(light music)

Alongside the criminals,

Curtius placed busts of the celebrities of the day,

a formula that would later make Marie Tussaud

world famous herself.

Now an accomplished model maker,

Marie was fully involved in the making of the wax works.

As her skills increased, so too did her reputation,

at least according to her memoirs.

(Madame Tussaud speaking foreign language)

- [Female Narrator] Among the members

of the royal family, who would often call in

at the apartments and admire Curtius's works

and those of his niece.

(Madame Tussaud speaking foreign language)

Was Madame Lizabeth, the king's sister,

wishing to learn the art of modeling in wax,

she asked the young Marie to teach it to her.

The princess ended up liking her so much

that she asked Monsieur Curtius to permit her

to join her at the Palace of Versailles,

so she could permanently enjoy her pleasant company.

- This seems extremely unlikely.

She appears nowhere in official records.

Marie Grosholtz, the name is nowhere.

(ominous orchestral music)

Even a cursory look at the formality

of this very codified and controlled hierarchical system

which was the household, someone who was making money

out of a commercial exhibition in Paris as Curtius,

would never have access to that intimate circle,

but it's very amusing in her memoir

because she says things like the king said to me

don't get up my dear.

Well, you know again, this is extremely unlikely,

to put it mildly.

- [Male Narrator] The memoirs then take

a dramatic turn.

The young Marie's life was about to be turned upside down.

- [Female Narrator] Few events in history

have ever caused so intense and permanent a sensation

throughout Europe as the French Revolution of 1789.

The records of this short, but exciting, period

teemed with examples of the most diabolical ferocity.

(soft orchestral music)

- [Male Narrator] Rumors of trouble brewing

soon reached the waxworks workshop.

Like Marie, Philippe Curtius was a monarchist,

but as a savvy businessman,

he knew he had to change his style to survive.

(rhythmic drumming)

On the 14th of July, 1789,

the Bastille was stormed.

It was now too dangerous for Marie and her uncle

to keep the busts of the royal family on view.

- [Female Narrator] The first event

that may be cited as the sanguinary commencement

of the revolution, Madame Tussaud but too well remembers.

(tense orchestral music)

The public began to assemble in the streets

demanding the busts of the idols of the people.

(crowd shouting in foreign language)

They were persuasive petitioners

whose appearance was certainly such as plainly indicated

they were not to be denied.

(crowd shouting in foreign language)

- This was a way in which people knew

what was happening in the revolution.

It was a bit like the 10 o'clock news on television today.

Instead of having that, you would go to a wax exhibition

to see who was in charge now in the revolution.

It was a fast changing environment as well,

so he had to keep swapping the heads around.

- [Male Narrator] In January 1793,

Louis XVI himself was guillotined.

In March, the Revolutionary Tribunal was created.

In September, the Reign of Terror began

with mass executions plunging France

into a bloodbath.

(Madame Tussaud speaking foreign language)

(Herve speaking foreign language)

- [Female Narrator] A decapitated head

would be immediately taken to Madame Tussaud

whose feelings can be easier conceived than described.

Shrinking with horror, she was compelled to take a cast.

- Marie tells us in her memoirs how she sat on the steps

of the exhibition making wax models of decapitated,

guillotined victims of the revolution.

It sounds amazing that Marie could do that,

and you think this is a tall story,

load of rubbish, but actually, it's substantiated

by accounts that other people gave, Astley,

and we know that the exhibition did indeed include

the heads of wax models of the decapitated revolutionaries,

and somebody had to make them,

and who was going to make them if Marie didn't?

- [Male Narrator] Although in her memoirs

Marie claims to have been forced to make death masks

of the executed, no doubt the grisly displays

of the most famous victims would've attracted

even more appreciative crowds to her exhibition.

Marie was ever the opportunist.

- This was all part of a very elaborate self-propaganda

of suffering and hardship.

She very much cast herself as a victim

of terrible terrible trials and imprisonment

and being forced to have bloody heads

on her lap to make models of.

Also, she gave people through her own account

a vicarious experience of proximity to celebrity,

and it's that vicarious experience

of proximity to celebrity that's the foundation

of the whole thing.

(tense orchestra music)

- [Male Narrator] In 1794, Robespierre,

chief architect of the Reign of Terror,

was himself guillotined.

The country was at war both internally

and beyond its borders.

As the chaos in France worsened,

Marie's uncle was called up to serve

as a translator with the French army.

(Philippe speaking foreign language)

(soft orchestral music)

After a few months, Curtius returned very ill.

He died shortly after leaving Marie as his sole heir.

- Curtius left his entire estate to Marie,

which meant a house in Versailles

and the Boulevard du Temple establishment,

Palais Royal having gone, you see,

and Marie became, then, the chief of the business.

- [Male Narrator] Without her mentor,

Marie would have to cope alone

in a France in turmoil.

Fortunately, the waxworks exhibition she had inherited

was still a profitable business,

and she wasn't alone for very long.

- She married an engineer who lived locally,

presumably she'd known him for some time,

we don't know.

What he liked to do was to buy shares in,

invest in theaters, and he was,

frankly as a husband, a liability.

He'd married her unquestionably, not for her looks,

but for her money.

- [Male Narrator] Marie could finally lose the name

of a family of executioners.

As Mademoiselle Grosholtz became Madame Tussaud.

- She didn't make a very good choice of husband.

He's wasting her money.

He's not interested in running the waxworks.

He leaves her to do that.

- [Male Narrator] Marie was already 37

when her first child Joseph was born.

But her married life wasn't a happy one,

and thanks to the revolution,

the waxworks business was in trouble too.

(soft music)

- The revolution made a waxwork far less attractive

because for tourists, Paris became

rather a dangerous place to be,

and people had less money, Parisians had less money,

the economy of Paris was run down during the revolution

as well, and the wealthy people

who might've gone to the waxworks

to have a look at each other in wax

were no longer there.

(soft music)

- [Male Narrator] Marie lost her second child,

a little girl to be called Marie, at birth.

A second son, Francois, was born the following year.

The salon's fortune continued to decline.

That could've been the end of the Tussaud story,

but one morning in October 1802,

a meeting with a family friend was to change

the course of Marie's life.

(Paul speaking foreign language)

Paul Philipsthal was an entertainer from Germany

who claimed to conduct seances.

Exposed as a charlatan there,

he had come to Paris to look for

a much more susceptible audience

keen to contact the dead.

The magic lantern was a development

of the camera obscura,

the forerunner of today's slide projector.

During the 17th century,

it became a fascinating distraction

for Europe's well to do.

- Paul de Philipsthal was quite well off.

He'd traveled all over Europe presenting these

magic lantern shows which he called The Phantasmagoria.

If we look at the word phantasmagoria,

it means basically a gathering of ghosts.

What happened was an audience would be invited

into a room, plunged into complete darkness,

and they'd be bombarded by a whole series of images

of ghosts and evil spirits.

(Paul making silly noises)

(lighthearted music)

- [Male Narrator] Philipsthal was looking for other elements

to add to his show and thought Marie's wax portraits

were just what he needed.

He asked Marie to go with him to England.

- Marie, who was at the end of her tether

with her husband, accepted the offer of Philipsthal

who said he would take his magic lantern show

to London, and she could go with him

with some of her models,

and he would pay the costs.

He'd take half of her profits,

but she'd be better off than struggling on in Paris.

- Philipstal was very much a kind of salon magician

to begin with, and it was during the time

of the Enlightenment suddenly

when there were quite a lot of Freemasons around

who had these kind of private clubs,

and they were very keen to entertain anybody

who had any interest in the new sciences,

and of course, Philipstal could puff himself up

and say that he was really a professor of science,

and he was a charlatan in many ways

and not a particularly good man

in as much as his, really his only focus was on money.

(lighthearted music)

(tense orchestral music)

- [Male Narrator] When Marie arrived in England in 1802

with her young son and her waxworks,

there was little in her favor.

She did not speak English and only read and wrote French

with difficulty.

(soft orchestral music)

But what she did have was a real talent for wax and business

and a sheer determination to succeed.

She discovered in the England of the 1800s

a country in total transformation

and one with a fascination and disgust

for all things French.

- The French were depicted by British caricaturists

like Gillray and Cruikshank very much as the enemy.

Murderous, hostile to the church,

hanging churchmen, eating babies.

The cartoons are utterly horrific,

and Napoleon, as the Emperor of France

between 1804 and 1815, was the absolute central figure

of detestation for the British.

He created this huge empire on the continent,

he fought Britain at sea,

he was a real threat, so the British saw him

as their chief enemy, but they were also fascinated

by the power that he exercised in France

because he was, after all, a dictator.

The revolution had been rolled up

in a man of five foot six.

- [Male Narrator] Napoleon's wax figure

became the centerpiece of her exhibition.

As always, the importance of conveying character

was top of her mind.

- [Female Narrator] As Napoleon once said

it is not the exactness of traits,

a wart on the nose that makes a likeness.

It is the character, what animates a person,

that it is necessary to portray.

- When she arrived in England,

one of her unique selling points

was that with the Napoleonic Wars,

the fascination with Napoleon,

she acquired a lot of relics of Napoleon's.

For example, Napoleon's actual carriage

was a sensation, and I think it can be said

that the main man in her life,

the best relationship with a man

was with Napoleon because he served her very well

for richer, for richer, for richer.

- [Male Narrator] But Marie's relationship with Philipstal

had become a different matter altogether.

- [Female Narrator] He holds my nose to the grindstone

seeking only to flout and ruin me,

so he can take all.

(soft piano music)

- In 1803, when the Lyceum season

was considered to be finished,

Philipstal decides that he's going to move into

the theater circuit of Britain,

and Edinburgh will be their next stop.

- [Female Narrator] It's a beautiful little city

from which one can see snow covered mountains.

I have discovered some compatriots at the castle,

and one lady in waiting has spent all her life in France.

- Why Edinburgh?

Edinburgh is obviously the Scottish capital.

It's also a big center for emigres.

That's where the French emigres

have gone for preference, and so the idea is

that a show that is exhibiting the king and queen

in all their glory, Napoleon as a real villain,

and the revolutionaries as decapitated former villains

will be attractive to the emigres.

(lighthearted music)

- [Male Narrator] Marie soon heard about the performances

of Henri Charles, a renowned French ventriloquist,

and went along to see his show.

Henri and his puppet had already established

a strong following amongst the many French emigres

living in Edinburgh at the time,

and Marie, whose son Joseph loved the show,

saw an opportunity for her to do the same.

(audience applauding)

- When Madame Tussaud arrived in Edinburgh,

discovering that Philipstal had not actually paid

for the actual freight of her exhibition,

she met up with Charles and asked him

to loan her some money.

I think he loaned her something like 30 pounds,

which was quite a lot of money,

and Charles really did befriend her in a big way,

and there was another move to Ireland.

(lively music)

- Marie tours in Ireland,

and she follows the pattern of the theater companies,

how they toured during the season,

during the season of the wealthy elite

who in the summer months would go to Dublin

and to Limerick and to different cities in Ireland.

- These fairs were marks of trade,

they were commerce, people went from all over Europe

to sell their wares, you would go by cloth,

and there was always a rule

that the entertainment cannot commence

until the trading has stopped.

There was also the selling of livestock

alongside theater shows, magic shows, illusion shows,

waxwork shows.

- [Male Narrator] Marie learned not only from the fairs,

but from the theater trade as well.

- Marie learned very quickly

from how the theater companies operated.

She was very careful when she moved from one town

to another to only move when she was not making money.

Until 1808, she continued to call it

the Curtius Cabinet of Curiosities,

and when she arrived, she would produce,

her posters produced saying specially for your town,

here is the Curtius Cabinet of Curiosities

for your enjoyment.

But only for a very limited seating.

She would always say that.

She didn't say we're here until we ain't making any money,

which is what she really meant.

Marie had carriages in which she transported

all the equipment, but the move, of course,

was itself a good advert because each of the carriages

had your name on them, and it would indicate

where you were going next.

So there was traveling adverts.

- [Male Narrator] As she traveled around the country,

Marie was careful to always consult

the showman's almanac.

- [Female Narrator] Owen's Book of Fairs,

a complete and authentic account.

Newark, Friday in Midland May the 14th,

wheat Tuesday, August the 2nd,

and every other Wednesday for cattle and sheep.

- [Pamela] There was a book published every year

called the Owen Book of Fairs

which was actually an almanac

of all the fairs that takes place in the United Kingdom.

It tells you what date they're in,

it tells you when they move,

it tells you the distance in miles between each place,

and that's what Tussaud's would've used

to get from place to place.

(light orchestral music)

- [Male Narrator] The new monied middle classes

were the people Marie Tussaud wanted

at her exhibition, and she needed grand venues

to attract them.

She was always careful

to pick the very best rooms,

unlike many of the other traveling shows at the time.

- [Female Narrator] A nice salon, well furnished

and decorated, for two pounds a month.

Everyone is astonished by my figures,

the equal of which no one has seen here.

I am regarded as a great lady here

and have everyone on my side.

- Her exhibitions would be in the assembly rooms,

big high ceilinged, large rooms

where you could set out the models,

and people could walk amongst the models

and have a feel at the material

and touch the hair dresses and sit down

and natter to each other,

listen to the little orchestra that was playing,

but if there was not an assembly room,

she would use a local theater,

and the theater would be boarded over,

and the models would be set up there.

- [Male Narrator] In choosing well-appointed

exhibition halls, Marie Tussaud stole a march

on her competitors who worked the fairs.

- Waxworks were common place when Marie Tussaud

came to this country, but they were much more

associated with the popular entertainment of the fair

and anatomical waxes, sensational things,

and she very much raised the tone

of how waxworks could be for a much more middle class,

educational, aspirational form of entertainment

and information.

When she went on the bad roads,

you could say she was a traveling tabloid.

She was taking sensation to parts of the country

where they were desperate for news.

- [Male Narrator] Marie knew how important

good marketing was.

She would take particular care of the announcements

and catalogs for her exhibitions

which went into remarkable detail.

- When you see the catalogs that Marie Tussaud did,

she's looking for an educated audience.

She's looking for an audience that could read or write.

A lot of people who went to fairs at that time

wouldn't be able to read and write.

The advertisements you'd get for the fairs at that time

are quite cheap, are more illustrative,

but the tradition Marie Tussaud is going into

is more then exhibition tradition

rather than the fairground tradition.

- [Pamela] She's quite an innovator with these catalogs,

would give quite a lot of detail

about the different characters,

several pages on Marie Antoinette for instance.

Catalogs would run to 80 pages.

Not the sort of single sheet that tell you nothing

that you get today.

It was really informative.

- [Male Narrator] The cost of producing these catalogs

was underpinned by a very clever pricing policy.

- The price that she charged

was a price that would only be tolerable

for a comfortably off, middle class elite,

so sixpence to look at the exhibition,

another sixpence to look at the separate room,

the chamber of horrors, another sixpence

for the catalog, which was very good value.

You got your money's worth for your sixpence.

She was criticized for her appealing only to elite,

and there's a funny poster that you can see

where she says that for a special moment,

poorer people, working class people,

can come to the exhibition for half price,

but only between 9:15 PM and 10 PM.

The exhibition closed at 10 PM.

(light music)

- [Male Narrator] Marie's tours

around the entire United Kingdom

were becoming ever more profitable.

She continued to send money to her husband

who had remained in France

to look after their younger son's education,

but he was spending the family silver

with little regard to their son's future.

The letters he exchanged with Marie

were more often about money than anything else.

(orchestral music)

Eventually the money ran out,

and in 1812, Francois was forced

to sell the waxworks exhibition

in the Boulevard du Temple to one of his creditors.

- [Female Narrator] We shall not write to you

about our plans.

Adieu, adieu.

We can each go our own way.

(Narrator speaking in foreign language)

- [Male Narrator] Five years later,

her youngest son decided to join his mother and brother.

Marie hadn't seen him since she left for England

with Philipstal and Joseph 15 years earlier.

(light music)

He turned up at the studio

carrying a keepsake to confirm his identity.

(light music)

- Marie's second son, Francois,

arrived in London in 1817

when he himself was 17,

and then both sons helped in making models.

- [Male Narrator] Francois had been trained

as an apprentice carpenter in Paris.

This gave him a ready made role

in his mother's business.

He would get the job of making arms and legs in wood

to add realism to the waxwork busts.

- They had to do what she said.

They had to obey her instructions,

and they were paid virtually nothing.

They were virtually her slaves.

- [Male Narrator] To recognize their skill

and business sense, the waxworks exhibition

took the name Madame Tussaud and Sons.

- Marie Tussaud kept a very tight control

on the purse strings and the apron strings

of the business, i.e., she established

a matriarchal business.

Her sons worked for her, but right up until her death,

she was a presence at the exhibition

and very much involved in counting the money,

and in the ledgers, keeping absolute careful track

of expenditure.

(lively music)

- And she kept a little account book

where she wrote down everyday what she spent

on candles, what she spent on repairing gowns, et cetera,

what she spent on the special adverts,

and this is what she spent most money on,

on the adverts, the posters, and the adverts

in the newspapers.

- [Male Narrator] By 1835, after three decades

traveling the roads of the United Kingdom,

the Madame Tussaud and Sons exhibition

had become a prosperous business.

Marie finally had the means to hire an exhibition hall

right in the middle of London in Baker Street.

- Marie had toured from 1803,

she constantly toured adding to the family

more and more grandchildren,

and they must've got really fed up with the touring,

and when Madame Tussaud moved to Baker Street in 1835,

she didn't at the time know it was going to be

a permanent center, but to her,

it was a sort of apex of being in a fashionable,

growing, bourgeois cultural area.

The assumption was that they'd maybe only stay

in Baker Street just like they'd stayed

in other places for a few weeks,

but because they continued to make money, they stayed.

(lively orchestral music)

- For the 27 years that she was a traveling exhibition,

she was so skillful about publicizing her exhibition

that when she decided she could settle in London,

she had established through all that promotional,

all the posters and her trail in the newspapers,

it meant that she'd established herself as a brand.

(lively orchestral music)

- When she settled here, where she arrived,

was a very fashionable center for London.

Oxford Street, the shops were beginning to be constructed.

Central London is changing very much at the time.

Railways are beginning to be built.

It's a time of real transition.

- [Male Narrator] Ever inventive,

Marie was determined to keep the public coming in,

and she knew exactly what to do.

- [Female Narrator] The most extraordinary relic

in the world, the original knife and lunette,

the identical instrument that decapitated 22,000 persons.

- Marie might like to talk about education and history

in her general catalog, but what most people went

to the waxworks for was to be shocked

and frightened and look at the dead villains.

(ominous music)

- When Madame Tussaud's came,

she introduced an incredibly finer tradition

that her workmanship and her knowledge,

and I think also the subject matter.

The terrors in France had created a kind of

appetite for death and sensation

in early Regency London.

(eerie music)

- [Male Narrator] Marie's Chamber of Horrors

combined the bloody violence of the French Revolution

with figures of renowned murderers.

- [Vanessa] There's nothing like a good murder

to attract the crowds, so the Chamber of Horrors

by its very nature is about murder,

and it's all about the great criminals.

And when you read the catalogs throughout the 19th century,

the Chamber of Horrors becomes even more detailed,

becomes really the reason people go.

- She packaged the gore so that it was cautionary or moral.

She dressed it up so there wasn't just

making people feel they're wails of horror.

It was moral.

These are murderers, you know, bad men,

and you know, it had an ethical packaging somehow,

so it wasn't just cheap thrills is the point.

- [Male Narrator] Her exhibition allowed visitors

a glimpse into the hidden world

of crime and punishment.

- And what made that particularly interesting

was when actual executions were no longer public,

so if you were going to see someone who'd been

a particularly nasty murderer,

it was at a waxworks that you'd see them,

and you could be fairly sure

that the model had been made from the dead head.

- [Male Narrator] Marie had adapted well

to the revolution in France, but at heart,

she was still a monarchist.

Now in 1837, a new queen sat on the British throne,

the young Victoria.

Marie Tussaud saw an opportunity.

- [Pamela] Queen Victoria was enormously important

for Madame Tussaud and her exhibition.

- [Male Narrator] Perhaps because Marie was a royalist,

the new queen allowed herself to be modeled in wax

complete with replicas of her coronation robes,

accurate to the last detail.

For Marie, it was the recognition she had sought

all her life, and whatever the truth

about her stay in Versailles,

this time, it was for real.

- Queen Victoria was, undoubtedly,

among the monarchs, the central picketh, the apex.

She was so pleased with the result

that she was not at all disturbed

when she appeared on the front of the 1841 catalog,

and when she started to have children of her own,

she took them to the exhibition.

This became a tradition with her.

She had lots of children as you know,

and apparently they all saw the exhibition,

and she encouraged other royals

when they were visiting London to go to the exhibition

as well.

Marie Tussaud undoubtedly epitomized Victorian ideas

on recreational education, on utter respectability.

She did typify all that was seen as positive

and attractive about Victorian life.

(light music)

- In the heyday of the waxworks,

when it established itself as a major London landmark

and leading attraction, a leading exhibition

of the metropolis was how Punch described it,

it was a place of great sophistication,

a place of refinement, a place that the Duke of Wellington

would like to go to, so it was a completely different pitch

from the serpentine queue and looking at the waxworks today.

- [Male Narrator] Surrounded by her sons,

Marie established what has since become a landmark

for Londoners and visitors from all around the world.

- [Female Narrator] Since Madame Tussaud's

residence in the country, not only have her works

received the mead of praise from its inhabitants,

but her talents have been justly appreciated

by a generous and discerning public.

(Madame Tussaud speaking foreign language)

- When you look at when she wrote her memoirs,

it was when she was promoting her permanent new exhibition

in London, so it was a brilliant celebrity memoir.

It's name dropping, name dropping, name dropping,

and about her early life.

(Madame Tussaud speaking foreign language)

- [Female Narrator] After 36 years of residence,

including the last five in London,

Madame Tussaud is more in fashion than ever.

She has escaped massacres, been freed from prison,

been spared the threat of the guillotine,

and has now reached a peaceful retirement.

Safe and sound, she here takes leave of her readers.

- It's, in a way, a load of tripe,

a load of absolute rubbish.

On the other hand, it's a very good portrayal

of what she wanted people to think about her,

and that's the value of the memoirs.

- [Kate] We're all our own myth makers to a degree,

but she takes it to a different level.

- [Vanessa] Every great showman creates a myth

and a reality at the same time.

That's what stands them above anyone else.

Madame Tussaud's is probably the earliest woman

who creates that myth at the same time

as the reality.

- [Male Narrator] Marie Tussaud died in her London home

on the 15th of April 1850 at the age of 89.

She was laid to rest in the Church of St. Mary

in Cadogan Street.

- At the moment of her death,

she was obituaried in pretty well

all the journals and newspapers,

and they agreed without exception

that Madame Tussaud was a national institution,

which may sound a bit odd,

but that was the highest praise you could give for someone,

to describe them as a national institution,

and to describe a foreigner, a French woman,

as a national institution.

That was praise indeed.

(driving orchestral music)