Moulin Rouge star... La Goulue - actual footage!

[best12bars]

Posted: 8/31/08 at 11:07am

You all know her.

Even if you don't recognize her famous name from the Moulin Rouge. She helped to invent and popularize the Can-Can on Toulouse Lautrec's most famous poster...









Here is actual footage of her, as an old woman. She's far past her prime, but look how agile she is! This is so fascinating to me. It's a glimpse back in time. I can see the glory of the Moulin Rouge twinkling in her eyes. She is a window to the past.

She had an incredible life. Louise Weber became famous doing the Can-Can at the Moulin Rouge, and got the nickname "La Goulue" (the glutton) for taking drinks and food off of patrons' tables while she danced and entertained them.

She was a mega-star in her day, but (as often happens) her ego got the best of her. She thought she was bigger than the Moulin Rouge, and so she left it... at the height of the popularity and the height of her career. She took all her money and invested it in her own "tent show." After all, she was the STAR! Lautrec designed and painted the tent for her (both sections are now well-known works and on display in the Musee D'Orsay).



She ultimately lost everything, because audiences wanted to see her at the Moulin Rouge. They saw the two as intertwined. Without the Moulin Rouge as the setting, they weren't much interested in seeing La Goulue dance and carry on. She ended up poor, alcoholic, and aged beyond her years. She gained a lot of weight, and was virtually unrecognizable as the mega-star she had once been. She was actually spotted outside the Moulin Rouge (so they say) selling goods out of a cart. Only feet away from where she once had been the toast of Paris, and all of Europe! Incredible.




Anyway, the clip is brief... but it's pure movie magic (at least to me). Enjoy!

LINK

Updated On: 8/31/08 at 11:07 AM

[best12bars]

Posted: 8/31/08 at 9:09pm

Bump.

And a thread title change. Since it got such a "nothing" response...

[feinstein9]

Posted: 8/31/08 at 9:19pm

WOW! Thanks for sharing, b12b. I didn't know the person in the posters was a real person. Very interesting and sad story. Also, what a cool time in history! I think they really knew how to rock back then.

[best12bars]

Posted: 8/31/08 at 9:30pm

I agree, feinstein9!

I'm glad you liked it. I'm facinated with history. And with art. And with "partying," since I used to do a lot of it, back in my day, and don't anymore.

This was a window into a world I can only imagine.

I wonder what it was like...

Seeing the famous La Goulue, even past her prime, doing a little graceful dance for a motion picture camera, gave me goosebumps.

[Jane2]

Posted: 8/31/08 at 9:41pm

I loved watching that, Best,thanks! You know I'm always interestedin art and the people in the paintings.

Updated On: 8/31/08 at 09:41 PM

[best12bars]

Posted: 8/31/08 at 9:45pm

LOL, Jane. It looks to me like you're more drunk than she ever was!

Turns out you're just perpendicular.

[feinstein9]

Posted: 8/31/08 at 11:16pm

It really is fascinating. That era is definitely an intriguing one. I like history as well, so it's pretty cool to see stuff like that and imagine being there. At the risk of sounding like a 13 year-old MTV watching girl, I really do like the movie Moulin Rouge. It probably isn't the most historically accurate, but it does get your mind going about all the different things that were going on. The real bohemians. The dudes in tuxes who go to the Moulin Rouge to indulge in all the things they can't really talk about when they leave. Tell me, how cool was your partying in comparison? If you were in the disco age that makes you almost as cool. Studio 54 is almost as cool as the Moulin Rouge.

[TulitaPepsi]

Posted: 8/31/08 at 11:17pm

Here's another Lautrec subject and Moulin Rouge star, the American dancer Loie Fuller.

A short and rather plump woman, Fuller made a sensation at the Moulin Rouge with her wild cascades of flying, swooping fabric, which were illuminated from below with colored lights which changed like a Christmas Tree color wheel. Her rather extraordinary life and career can be read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loie_Fuller

Made by the LumieÌre Brothers in 1896, the film was hand-colored, frame by frame. The speed of the film as it appears here is way too fast.



(Lautrec)



(Jules Cheret)



("Pal")

Loie Fuller - Serpentine dance

Updated On: 8/31/08 at 11:17 PM

[zepka102]

Posted: 9/1/08 at 8:46am

This is all amazing. I'm a huge fan of the 2001 movie. I had the reproduction of the Lautrec painting of La Goulue and I didn't know she was a real person either. Thank you for sharing!!

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/1/08 at 9:26am

That Loie Fuller footage is great, TulitaPepsi (my, what a name!). Thanks for sharing it! I have the Lumiere Bros. DVD with that, plus around 80 other short films. Incredible stuff!

Here's the (absolutely brilliant) opening sequence from the 1952 film of "Moulin Rouge" that features actors playing La Goulue (Katherine Kath), Valentin (the comic dancer with the long nose and chin, played by Walter Chrisham) and Aicha, the black dancer and public foil for La Goulue. Aicha is played here by Muriel Smith, who was the original Carmen Jones on Broadway. She also dubs the singing for a very lovely Zsa Zsa Gabor (as chanteuse Jane Avril) in this movie.

Of all of these very real performers of the Moulin Rouge, only Aicha appears in Baz Luhrmann's 2001 film. I was disappointed when I first found out that there was no La Goulue in this movie, but then I realized he was being historically accurate. At the time the film takes place, La Goulue had already left the Moulin Rouge to go do her own show. And Valentin left with her to perform in that show. Baz's Moulin Rouge was VERY historically accurate, by the way. Even that crazy elephant in the courtyard was REAL, at one point. That's not just a "Baz weird thing." I don't think his version of the night club is accurate visually, however. He captured the essence and the excitement of the famous club, but it was an obvious extravagant fantasy.

Still, I love the early Moulin Rouge... before the club became so famous and a tourist trap. That's the club that Lautrec painted. That's what the opening sequence of the 1952 film captures so well.

Enjoy!
LINK