Queer Places:
Cimetiere de Montmartre
Paris, City of Paris, Île-de-France, France Show Map
La Goulue (pronounced [la gulu] and meaning The Glutton),
was the
stage
name of Louise Weber (12 July 1866 – 29 January 1929), a French
can-can
dancer who was a star of the
Moulin Rouge, a popular cabaret in the Pigalle district of Paris, near
Montmartre.[1]
Weber became known as La Goulue because as an
adolescent, she was known for guzzling cabaret patrons' drinks while
dancing.[2]
She also was referred to as the Queen of Montmartre.[3]
Very little is known about her early childhood, but it is believed that Louise Weber was born into a Jewish family from Alsace that eventually moved to Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, near Paris. Her mother worked in a laundry. As an impoverished young girl who loved to dance, Weber is said to have enjoyed dressing up in laundry customers' expensive clothing and pretending to be a glamorous star on a great stage. At age 16, she was working with her mother in the laundry, but behind her mother's back began sneaking off to a dance hall dressed in a customer's "borrowed" dress.[4]
Dancing at small clubs around Paris, Weber quickly became a popular personality, liked for both her dancing skills and her charming, audacious behavior. In her routine, she would tease the male audience by swirling her raised dress to reveal the heart embroidered on her knickers and would do a high kick while flipping off a man's hat with her toe.[5] Because of her frequent habit of picking up a customer's glass and quickly downing its contents while dancing past his table, she was affectionately nicknamed La Goulue (The Glutton).[6] Eventually she met the Montmartre painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who introduced her to a group of models who earned extra money posing for the community's artists and photographers. Achille Delmaet, husband of Marie Juliette Louvet, would later find fame as the photographer who had taken many nude photographs of La Goulue.[7]
Louise Weber was taken under the wing of Jacques Renaudin (1843–1907), a wine merchant who danced in his spare time under the stage name Valentin le Désossé.[9] They danced at the renowned Moulin Rouge in Montmartre when it first opened, performing an early form of the cancan known as the chahut.[10] The two were instant stars, but it was Weber who stole the show with her outrageously captivating conduct. Booked as a permanent headliner, La Goulue became synonymous with the can-can and the Moulin Rouge nightclub.[11] The toast of Paris and the highest paid entertainer of her day, she became one of the favorite subjects for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, immortalized by his portraits and posters of her dancing at the Moulin Rouge.[12] Her lover was Andrée Helleng, stage name La Môme Fromage (The Cheesy Girl), born 1870, another famous cancan dancer at the Moulin Rouge.[13]
La Goulue y La Môme Fromage, ca.1885, Fotografía de Louis Victor Paul
Bacard, Musée d´Orsay. Paris
Having achieved both fame and fortune, Weber decided to part company with the Moulin Rouge in 1895 and strike out on her own.[14] She invested a considerable amount of money into a show that traveled the country as part of a large fair; but her fans who had lined up to buy tickets at the Moulin Rouge did not take to the new setting, and her business venture turned into a dismal failure. Following the closure of her show, La Goulue disappeared from the public eye. Suffering from depression, she drank heavily and dissipated the small fortune she had accrued while dancing.[15][16][17]
Alcoholic and destitute, La Goulue returned to Montmartre in 1928.[18] She eked out a living selling peanuts, cigarettes, and matches on a street corner near the Moulin Rouge; few recognized the severely overweight and haggard former Queen of Montmartre. She died a year later at age 62 in the 10th arrondissement of Paris and was buried in the Cimetière de Pantin in the Paris suburb of Pantin, but later her remains were transferred to the Cimetière de Montmartre.[19][20]
My published books:
