The year 1889 saw the opening of the Moulin Rouge in Paris. Over 130 years
since the very first patrons swept onto its dancefloor, the Moulin Rouge has survived fire,
two World Wars, and a near riot over a kiss. This is the untold truth of the Moulin Rouge.
You'll still find the Moulin Rouge at 82 Boulevard de Clichy in Montmartre , Paris. Once a rural
village, Montmartre was annexed by Paris in around 1860, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The New York Times explains that in 1864, the city lifted restrictions that had made opening
privately-owned theaters difficult, which led to a boom in cabaret and music venues. The area's
windmills went from symbolizing its farming roots to a trademark of music halls like the Moulin de
la Galette. Although Montmartre had traditionally been a working-class area, people of all classes
met and mingled at the cabarets and cafes. By the time the Moulin Rouge opened, Montmartre
had become a beacon for Parisians who wanted to escape rigid social structures and expectations.
The man who started the Moulin Rouge was Joseph Oller , a professional gambler and businessman who
owned other nightclubs in the city, including the Olympia, the oldest music hall in Paris. According
to the Moulin Rouge's website, the cabaret wasn't completed by the time of its planned opening
on October 6, 1889, but Oller insisted that the show must go on, and opened at 8 pm sharp anyway.
When you imagine a show at the Moulin Rouge today, you probably picture dancers doing the
can-can in ruffled skirts, but the Moulin Rouge offered more than an onstage dance display.
The main hall of the Moulin Rouge was designed by French architect Adolphe Willette,
complete with chandeliers, mirrored walls, and a huge dance floor so that patrons as well as
performers could show off their moves. It was all overlooked by a giant stucco elephant that
Joseph Oller bought from the 1889 Paris World's Fair. If you've seen Baz Luhrmann's 2001 musical
Moulin Rouge! you may remember that Nicole Kidman's character Satine greeted clients
inside a giant elephant. But in real life, it was rumored to be used as an opium den.
As for the performers, there were clowns, acrobats, ballerinas, tightrope walkers,
and singers, as well as can-can dancers. In keeping with the venue's status as a cabaret,
the Guardian reports that the songs at the shows were usually funny rather than bawdy,
at least during the Moulin Rouge's early days.
The performance that's most associated with the Moulin Rouge is the high-kicking,
quick-footed, audience-flashing can-can. The name can-can means scandal, and part of the
reason it was considered so scandalous was the dancers' crotchless underwear.
Over time, the can-can gained followers among professional dancers, whose endorsements made
it... not exactly family friendly, but at least socially acceptable at dances. The New York Times
reported that the can-can has been performed at the Moulin Rouge since it opened in 1889, and it's
still the venue's most famous choreography; during those early days, a dancer nicknamed
La Goulue would even use her high-kicking skills to kick men's top hats off their heads.
The can-can eventually became a gimmick. According to the BBC,
an early edition of the Oxford Companion to Music described the can-can as -
"A boisterous and latterly indecorous dance...
for the benefit of such British and American tourists as will pay well."
The can-can is also a notoriously dangerous dance, though, and the split jump at the end
is exactly as painful as it looks. One former Moulin Rouge dancer told the BBC,
"We all screamed throughout!"
"Bravo!"
Henri-Marie-Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec better known as Toulouse-Lautrec
,left his aristocratic upbringing to enter the bohemian world of Montmartre in the
mid-1880s. He first learned to draw as a child while recuperating from injuries to his legs, and
studied under several noteworthy artists before striking out on his own to document
the characters in Paris's underworld of cabarets, cafes, bars, and brothels.
After gaining a reputation for his drawings throughout Montmartre,
Toulouse-Lautrec was hired to create a poster for the Moulin Rouge in 1891. The poster was
plastered all over Paris to promote the venue — and it also made Toulouse-Lautrec famous.
Toulouse-Lautrec became a Moulin Rouge fixture. Since it was his favorite spot,
the venue reserved a seat for him every night and he befriended the dancers and the sex workers who
found clients among the patrons. Toulouse-Lautrec also frequented the Montmartre brothels,
and was so close to some of the madams that he occasionally stayed for months at a time.
Today he is best known for his portraits of dancers and sex workers, showing them
in an empathetic and non-judgmental yet unflinchingly honest light.
Toulouse-Lautrec died in 1900, aged just 36, of complications from alcoholism and syphilis.
In 1903, the Moulin Rouge got a makeover from architect Édouard Niermans , who
aimed to update the now 14-year-old venue to attract Paris's most stylish patrons.
But 12 years later, in 1915, disaster struck when the building burned down. It reopened in 1921,
now focused on musical performances from famous stars like Maurice Chevalier . The Moulin Rouge
closed again in 1929, this time to transform into a cinema with a nightclub where the ballroom had
been. It screened its first movie, Fox Movietone Follies, and caused yet another scandal: some
viewers were so angry about the poorly written French subtitles that they vandalized the venue.
The Moulin Rouge stayed open during World War II, when it was frequented by occupying German
officers, as well as locals. One bright spark for the French audience was Edith Piaf , who started
performing in the Moulin Rouge in 1944, just a few months before the city was liberated. The New York
Times reported that she met her lover and future superstar Yves Montand there on February 18.
Piaf escaped accusations of collaboration over her wartime performances, but many of the women
who worked at the Moulin Rouge were punished for supposedly fraternizing with the enemy.
The Moulin Rouge was reimagined yet again in 1951,
when it was restored it to its former life as a cabaret, while also hosting charity events.
The Moulin Rouge helped turn dancers into Parisian superstars. In the early days,
the queen of the can-can was Louise Weber, known as "the glutton" for her habit of
stealing patrons' drinks. Toulouse-Lautrec painted and drew her many times. Weber also
lived exuberantly offstage, which sadly caught up with her: after serving a jail
sentence she became a lion tamer, a traveling dancer, a laundress, and finally an alcoholic.
Another of Toulouse-Lautrec's favorites was Jane Avril, a red-headed dancer who had previously been
a bareback horse rider in a circus before being hired to work at the Moulin Rouge.
She was famous for her fast legs and sad expression that may have
reflected her hard life and the time she spent in a mental institution.
Of the generation of Moulin Rouge performers that succeeded Weber and Avril, the most famous was
Mistinguett. She debuted on the Moulin Rouge stage in 1907 and quickly became the venue's star. She
was also famous for her legs — which she insured for $1 million, according to the New York Times.
In addition to dancers and circus-style performances, the Moulin Rouge showcased a
performer with a very unique talent. While serving in the French army, Joseph Pujol learned that he
could inhale air through his, er, butthole. He realized this enabled him to rip truly epic farts,
and he spent years honing his technique until he could control the release of the air over
10 to 15 seconds at a time. He could also control the volume and the pitch.
Calling himself the Fartomaniac, he successfully auditioned for the Moulin Rouge in 1892,
and became a huge star. According to Caesar's Last Breath, Pujol would go on stage wearing a tuxedo
and proceed to do impressions. He could also fart-play the flute and blow smoke rings.
His finale was playing the French national anthem and then blowing out a candle.
Audiences loved this immature humor a little too much.
At least one audience member was reported to have had a heart attack during a Pujol performance,
and corset-wearing ladies would occasionally pass out from laughing too hard.
He became France's highest-paid performer. He retired in 1914 and died in 1945.
At the turn of the century, audiences flocked to the Moulin Rouge to see the
supposedly scandalous can-can and to trample on social norms by mingling across social classes.
But even these supposed rebels of their day were shocked by one performance in 1907.
Still famous even a century later, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette , better known by just
her last name, has been the subject of multiple films and TV shows. She was the most famous writer
in France in the early 20th century thanks in part to her real life, which was even more adventurous
than anything her characters got up to. Colette married three different men and had an affair with
the then-teenage son of one of those husbands. She also had relationships with women. As the
Guardian reports, her lover in the final six years of her first marriage was the Marquise
de Belbeuf , nicknamed Missy. The two took to the stage of the Moulin Rouge in 1907 for an act
called Egyptian Dream, in which Missy played an archaeologist and Colette played a mummy.
Colette unwound her bandages to reveal a jeweled bra, and then the two kissed.
The sight of two women kissing on stage nearly caused a riot among the outraged audience,
and according to the Moulin Rouge's website,
the chief of police threatened to close the cabaret down. The London Review of
Books writes that Colette and Missy performed one more time and then their act was canceled.
"I will continue to pursue this,
because I want to and if Paris won't have me then so be it I'll go elsewhere to make a living."
We've all missed the Moulin Rouge's heyday as the bohemian center of turn-of-the-century Parisian
nightlife, but the iconic cabaret is still open for business. In 2019, it celebrated its 130th
anniversary. Today, the only people dancing are the performers: the audience sits at tables around
the stage. Another change: children older than six are welcome. Tickets are over 100 euros,
and according to CBS, the venue is open 365 days a year, with 60 performers high-kicking
their way through two shows six days a week. In addition to dancing, the New York Times reported
that one section of the show featured a live snake and a dancer in a water tank.
Sadly the Moulin Rouge is mostly seen by Parisians as a tourist trap today.
Of the 600,000 visitors the venue draws in every year, half are foreigners.
In 2020, Covid-19 temporarily put an end to the close-quarters live performances
that made the Moulin Rouge famous, but the venue's owners looked to a different aspect
of its history, continuing its tradition of hosting an open-air rooftop cinema.
There's nothing sexy about the scandal the Moulin Rouge walked into in 2003.
The Independent reported that when Abdoulaye Marega , a black man from
Senegal , applied to work as a waiter at the cabaret, manager told him that the
Moulin Rouge only hired black people in the kitchens, not in the public-facing theater.
Marega's case caught the attention of French anti-racism group SOS-Racisme , who sent
another Black job applicant in to see if they'd receive the same treatment.
Unfortunately they were. The group then sued on Marega's behalf, and in 2003,
the Moulin Rouge was fined 6,800 euros, while the manager was also personally fined.
The investigation found that the Moulin Rouge had
not hired a non-white person as a waiter or performer for 40 years.
Moulin Rouge dancers make their moves look effortless, but underneath all the feathers,
crystals, and ruffles they are working extremely hard. Even before you have to land the splits on
stage, you have to land the job. Former performer Stacey Kenealy told DanceLife
in 2013 that her audition involved learning a long stretch of the show's choreography.
After that, the dancers spend a month rehearsing. Warming up is also essential:
the dancers typically take 90 minutes to stretch and do their make-up before showtime.
That's not the only challenge the performers face. According to the Guardian,
they only have about 90 seconds to change costumes between dances — and each dancer
has 10 to 15 costumes in the show, making a total of about 1,000 outfits.
Luckily, the dancers are very supportive of each other.
Moulin Rouge dancer Isabelle van den Bergh Cook told Glam,
"We're all in here every night working together:
I was surprised to find that it was actually a lovely atmosphere backstage."
"I feel so privileged to work here, it's such a treat. You can't find a better job
as a dancer really it's… it's such a gift to be able to like be a part of such a legacy."
The glamour, scandal and characters at the heart of the Moulin Rouge's
long history have made the cabaret the perfect setting for movies.
Directed by John Huston, 1952's Moulin Rouge is a fictionalized biopic of Toulouse-Lautrec,
starring José Ferrer as the artist with Zsa Zsa Gabor as Jane Avril. This version of
Moulin Rouge was nominated for seven Oscars and won two, for costume design and art direction.
The most famous movie interpretation, though, is 2001's Moulin Rouge!. Nicole Kidman played
fictional courtesan Satine, who falls in love with Ewan McGregor's tragically impoverished
writer Christian. Director Baz Luhrmann had been planning a musical inspired by the Orpheus myth,
and after visiting the Moulin Rouge, decided that its heyday in turn-of-the-century Paris
was the perfect setting for his story, according to the Guardian.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Grunge videos about your favorite historical social hotspots are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.