![]() In an astonishing life that spanned both the French and Industrial Revolutions this extraordinary mother and entrepreneur travelled across the Channel to England to create a unique brand based on famous people modelled in wax. Madame Tussaud was born in Berne in 1761. Narrator: At the age of nearly eighty a remarkable woman set out to dictate her memoirs. There are lots of quotes from the Tussaud Memoirs (with suitably dramatic shots of the elderly lady dictating them). The basic format consists of dramatic sequences and the occasional short location sequence combined with third person narrative and filmed commentary from the various historians. Here is a transcript and some notes on the first part of the film. The first part, on Marie Tussaud's early life in France, is less convincing, though this is perhaps inevitable given the lack of sources apart from the Tussaud memoirs. The second part of the programme, which deals with the development of the Tussaud empire in England, the business strategies employed and the marketing of the waxworks, is relatively sophisticated, and is particularly strong on the importance of the early English fairs. She was, says Nina Barbier, "sculptress, fairground showman, designer of publicity and businesswoman", but above all "the creator of her own legend". The film follows her through her early apprenticeship in pre-Revolutionary France, her emigration to London, her years in the fairs and public venues of the English provinces, and finally the creation of permanent premises in Baker Street in 1835. As Nina Barbier herself explains, the programme's primary focus is Madame Tussaud's achievement as an entrepreneur and "pioneer of the leisure industry", her business and marketing strategies and, ultimately, her metamorphosis into a British "national treasure".
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