Vulgar History - Rachel： The One-Named Jewish Actress and her Many, Many Lovers

00:00:00.000 hello and welcome to vulgar history a feminist women's history comedy podcast my name is anne 0.52

00:00:17.340 foster and this is our festive seasonal tits out holiday spectacular which is you know i started

00:00:24.780 this podcast four years ago in 2019. And one of the traditions that we have established is I always

00:00:30.960 do something special at around Halloween and something special in December. And the vibe,

00:00:37.060 I think I explained this in the episode, but the vibe of the Tits Out Festive Holiday Spectacular

00:00:40.800 is just kind of like, this can be a stressful time for some people or a joyous time for some people.

00:00:46.000 And what I wanted to do is just have some episodes. These are just nice episodes. They're

00:00:51.560 sort of like, it's a story that you can just like relax. You don't have to worry. Like there's not

00:00:55.200 too many shitty men trapping women in towers or whatever. There's not going to be, there might be 0.99

00:01:01.940 some murders, but not like of the main character. Like these are just kind of like nice stories to

00:01:07.400 just like curl up with some hot cocoa. Or I guess if you're in Australia, curl up with some iced tea

00:01:13.200 and just sort of like vibe out and just know that it's going to be like an okay time. It's going to

00:01:19.240 be somebody who's going to die of natural causes. Anyway, for this one, this was a suggestion by a

00:01:25.380 Tits Out Brigade member named Momo from our Discord server, which is we have a Discord on

00:01:32.200 the Patreon for anyone who's at the $5 or more level. Although anyone can give me a suggestion

00:01:37.080 anywhere that just happens to be where this one came from. And I mean, you know, I'm going to

00:01:41.860 explain in the episode who it is and why we're talking about them, but I think you're going to

00:01:46.340 really enjoy this episode. And I think you will understand pretty much right away why I invited

00:01:52.340 the guest who I invited to join me for this one. And so I hope you can all have a nice time

00:01:57.480 listening to the story of Rochelle. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Vulgar History,

00:02:09.880 feminist women's history comedy podcast hosted by me, Anne Foster. And every year,

00:02:14.400 every year i've been doing the podcast for four years which is bananas to me to think about

00:02:19.580 but the years 2020 and 2021 don't count for anyone so it's really just two years anyway i

00:02:26.240 started a tradition of doing a festive tits out holiday spectacular which when i look back at the

00:02:32.080 people i've discussed in this so far so the first one was latisse knolls and then the second was

00:02:36.900 princess cecilia the pirate princess from sweden then last year was donia gracia nasi and when i

00:02:41.780 looking at like this year and who am I going to cover and kind of what is the theme? You know,

00:02:46.000 I do the Halloween specials, which is always just like, who's a spooky bitch. And I am running out 1.00

00:02:51.220 of spooky bitches because for Halloween, I don't want to be like, and here's a person who's accused 0.98

00:02:56.420 of being a witch. And then she was murdered at the end. Like I want it to be a nice story. So 1.00

00:03:00.040 I'm running out of things. So I was like, what am I doing for the holiday spectaculars? And I think

00:03:03.820 it's similar where it's just like, let's do a story that is tits out, but also nice. I want

00:03:09.440 this to be like a nice story because it's a stressful time of year for everybody even in a

00:03:15.920 non-chaos year of international events so here's just a nice story you can listen to and just vibe

00:03:21.180 out and just be like this person's going to be okay there's not going to be murders there's not

00:03:25.500 going to be well i was going to say there's not going to be executions and there are executions

00:03:30.660 but not of this person they're just happening around this person anyway it's a nice story

00:03:35.340 and the way the timing worked out as well is that this episode is coming out just before the first

00:03:40.540 night of Hanukkah so it's kind of like tits out festive holiday spectacular Hanukkah edition in

00:03:46.920 that way and also a request that I get every I get I don't know I get suggestions from people I get

00:03:53.360 when people ask for requests sometimes I take that more seriously than a suggestion

00:03:57.360 because it's like someone has a need you know like this is someone's culture and they want to hear

00:04:01.500 that reflected back in the podcast. I'm like, I want to find someone, you know? And so for Jewish

00:04:06.620 people, I've had like requests like, oh, I'd love it if you did more Jewish people on the podcast.

00:04:11.960 I'm like, I would love to. I would love to do more non-British royal white Christians in general. 0.74

00:04:19.580 And the challenge in that to me is just like most of the history I have access to as an English 0.93

00:04:25.100 speaking person is white Christian. Well, I mean, just royal people in Western Europe are all 0.97

00:04:30.640 christian i think i feel fairly confident in that anyway but then somebody in the discord who goes

00:04:38.980 by the name momo don't know your real name but momo thank goodness for you because you were like

00:04:44.920 well what about rochelle and i was like well who's rochelle and then i read about rochelle and i'm

00:04:48.900 like this is amazing this is like it's a jewish person but it's also like a nice story so that

00:04:53.300 fits for the festive holiday celebration and then i was just like oh no this is 19th century france

00:04:58.620 this is not everyone's called louis i don't know what's going on and that's why i've invited

00:05:03.080 friend of the podcast allison epstein welcome allison hello i am here as the unofficial 19th

00:05:10.240 century france correspondent thank goodness because i even just preparing this i was like

00:05:16.020 allison this revolution is this the les mis thing and you're like no and then you you've made a

00:05:20.800 spreadsheet with a flowchart i did i made anna flowchart of the louises just for for reference

00:05:27.020 for the sheer number of men in this story named Louis.

00:05:31.740 And honestly, also named Napoleon, but we'll get to that.

00:05:34.820 I truly did not realize.

00:05:36.580 I just have done most of the research I've ever done

00:05:40.680 has been about England-related things,

00:05:42.480 and I've sort of avoided France partially

00:05:44.420 because they're all called Louis, and that's confusing to me.

00:05:46.460 Did not realize how chaotic the 19th century was in France. 0.98

00:05:50.200 It's a fucked-up time to be French, I'll tell you what. 0.98

00:05:53.600 There's a lot going on. 0.99

00:05:54.800 So this is like the backdrop of the saga we're telling.

00:05:57.580 And so, but can't avoid talking about it because it becomes involved, like anyone who's living

00:06:02.880 through world events, kind of unavoidably.

00:06:05.000 But then also there's a Jewish aspect of this.

00:06:07.300 So Rochelle, the person I'm talking about is a Jewish person.

00:06:09.620 And so you also have done all this research because various reasons, including that your

00:06:13.560 next book is like about, tell people what your next book is about and why you've done

00:06:17.120 this research.

00:06:18.300 Yes, I've been researching the history of Jewish people in Europe and such for the last

00:06:24.280 several years because I'm working on a book that is a retelling of Oliver Twist from Fagin's

00:06:29.240 perspective. So trying to untangle Dickens's antisemitism is what I've been working on. And

00:06:34.160 I'm like, okay, I've been doing this as historical fiction. I need to know a lot about what it was

00:06:37.960 like to be Jewish in Europe at this time. And if you want to know the most depressing kind of 1.00

00:06:42.660 research to do, it's being Jewish in Europe in the 19th century. There's very few good stories 1.00

00:06:48.580 in that research. So I am thrilled, Anne, for a happy Jewish 19th century France story.

00:06:54.680 This is the thing too. And I mean, we're talking specifically about a Jewish person

00:06:58.240 on the Jewish experience today. But in general, when I'm trying to find stories for this podcast,

00:07:02.760 not just for like, you know, like a feel good story for the holidays, but also in general.

00:07:08.540 And I talked about this when I was talking with Alice Rutkowski about Louisa May Alcott.

00:07:12.720 and she mentioned, Alice did, like, it's hard to be scandalous or tits out when your family

00:07:18.900 is relying on you for income, when you're a marginalized person, when you're a lower class,

00:07:23.080 it's just like, yeah, like that's, I like to tell stories on this podcast. Like there's,

00:07:27.060 there's so many great podcasts out there that tell stories of heroines and people doing great

00:07:31.060 things. But I tell stories of dirtbags who do stupid things. And we love them for it. 1.00

00:07:38.100 And it's harder to find stories like that

00:07:41.940 from somebody who's not the dominant culture, right?

00:07:45.520 Because you've got way more leeway

00:07:47.160 if you're the daughter of the king.

00:07:48.900 You can do whatever you want.

00:07:49.820 Princess Cecilia of Sweden being an excellent example.

00:07:52.320 The very same.

00:07:53.200 Yeah.

00:07:53.840 And comma, at the same time,

00:07:55.440 like I have come across stories.

00:07:56.860 The interview, I love,

00:07:58.560 Alison's listened to every episode of Vulgar History

00:08:00.380 so I can throw stuff out.

00:08:01.420 And you're like, yeah, I've heard that.

00:08:02.700 But the interview I did with Nikki Taylor

00:08:06.040 who wrote her book about like enslaved black women who killed their employers there was the 0.93

00:08:12.120 one dirtbag who was like an enslaved black woman in america who would just be like yeah i'm going 1.00

00:08:16.660 to bible study and then she'd like steal the money from the house and go gambling on riverboats 0.96

00:08:21.500 what a legend like you can be a dirtbag in various ways it's just and people were but my challenge

00:08:28.200 as this podcast host is to find those people and it's just harder to find them anyway rochelle

00:08:34.240 So again, Momo from the Discord group, if you want to join the Discord group,

00:08:37.900 sometimes people are like, you should start a Discord.

00:08:39.500 I'm like, I did.

00:08:40.520 Anyone who joins the Patreon at patreon.com, such an Anne Foster writer,

00:08:44.720 at the $5 or more level, you get into the Discord and we chat.

00:08:48.440 But you can also recommend things to me in all kinds of ways without joining the Patreon. 0.65

00:08:51.360 That just happens to be where I learned about Rochelle.

00:08:54.280 What a gift. 0.99

00:08:55.840 So Rochelle.

00:08:56.820 And one of the first things I think I told you, Alison, is that her name is just Rochelle.

00:09:01.240 it's no it's like Cher Zendaya just Rochelle iconic which is like right away I'm like oh

00:09:08.500 I'm interested she's also aka um La Grande Rochelle even better sometimes just La Grande

00:09:16.080 and sometimes Mademoiselle Rochelle I think La Grande Rochelle is the greatest thing a person

00:09:23.540 could ever be called I will be waiting for a better detail on the story so she's French so

00:09:29.060 which is why i'm pronouncing her name rochelle it's spelled r-a-c-h-e-l so to me it's just like

00:09:33.560 rachel which to me is such a everyday name that just so many people have it's just it's like if

00:09:38.260 you were just like oh i'm allison it's like when your name's allison you can't just go by allison

00:09:42.120 like that if your name is zendaya sure but it's it's someone just being like oh i'm john like

00:09:48.760 you're gonna have to go on i know so i love that she's just rochelle which i will also mention and

00:09:54.900 i've told you before when we were doing the american scott season you remember there was

00:09:58.720 a servant called French Paris. I sure do. And I did have more than one instance where I was

00:10:04.420 fact-checking some stuff and I just went on the old google.com and I was like French Paris and

00:10:09.200 guess what does not come up information about that person because guess what those words have

00:10:14.160 other meanings that are more common. So I did have that incident at least once perhaps no more than

00:10:19.280 once when I was researching I was just like Rochelle it's like date of death it's just like

00:10:24.420 you can't just type in Rachel, like the name Rachel. And this is also, I was like, am I the

00:10:30.680 first podcast that's done an episode about Rochelle? So I was looking up like, cause if you go to Apple

00:10:35.140 podcasts or whatever, you can do like an episode search, but I'm just like, how do I search this?

00:10:38.500 I'm like, has anyone done an episode about Rochelle? Let me just type in Rachel. Oh, there's

00:10:44.340 anyways. I don't know if anyone's done a podcast about her before. I was typing in Legrand Rochelle,

00:10:49.100 mademoiselle rochelle anyway so my main reference for this podcast is a biography that's sort of

00:10:59.100 like an interpretive biography of rochelle which is you know what the vibes of course that's how

00:11:05.440 she's written about so anyway it's a book called tragic muse rochelle of the comedy francaise and

00:11:10.840 this is by rachel brownstein and she does it's the sort of biography where like her experience

00:11:16.060 researching it as part of the narrative. And so she talks about calling up the French archives

00:11:19.760 because she wrote in the 90s. There's not email. And she told them her name was Rachel. And they're

00:11:24.120 like, oh, I see why you're researching this. I'm laughing, but you did just interview an expert,

00:11:29.780 first of all, because her last name was Foster. So sometimes that is what happens.

00:11:33.180 Sometimes that is true. And that is part of why Rachel Brownstein was interested in this story.

00:11:38.180 Anyway, so then I also looked at, there's a couple of articles. So there's one by Irina

00:11:42.540 Rabinovich from recently, from 2022, unpacking Rachel Felix's constructed and self-constructed 0.87

00:11:49.280 Jewishness. And then an article about Rochelle from the Jewish Women's Archive and also from

00:11:54.600 jewishencyclopedia.com. And all those links will be in the show notes as well. I will say that

00:11:58.920 Rachel Brownstein's book is out of print as a book, but you can acquire it as an ebook or

00:12:03.360 used copies. So, I mean, we're going to get into this and I just want to, I don't know,

00:12:07.920 anti-semitism will occur comma but this is still a nice story so i don't know that's fair it's the

00:12:18.300 19th century i think that went implied okay okay i don't think trigger warnings are required here

00:12:23.720 is what i'm saying so rochelle i have been so excited to tell allison this story for so long

00:12:31.200 i keep almost like dming you the entire story because i just want to tell i'm like no you

00:12:36.540 have to save it. So I'm just excited to finally be here and able to tell you the story. Rochelle

00:12:41.800 was born February 28th, 1821. A couple of things about that date. This was 11 days after the birth

00:12:50.120 of Lola Montez in Ireland. What a year to be alive. What was happening astrologically?

00:12:58.720 They were both born under the sign of messy bitch. And I love that. I love it. I love it. And 0.99

00:13:04.380 And there's a couple points in this story where I'm going to like, I don't know that these two ever encountered each other, but there's points where their stories really paralleled each other. So I feel like what I ended up thinking is this is sort of like in Star Wars, it's like the light and the dark force have to balance. So it's like Lola Montez was born. And so Rochelle had to be born to somehow balance the universe.

00:13:26.820 or the other important detail is that two months and a bit after both of them were born napoleon 0.88

00:13:33.300 died so yay i think you had first suggested that just the combination of the tits out energy

00:13:40.640 of lola montez and rochelle both entering the world it took a few months to get to saint helena

00:13:46.420 it was a ways away yeah he's near angola you gotta wait for the trade wins but after that

00:13:52.160 yeah the sheer energy he's just like oh no two two tits up women have been born i must depart

00:13:57.840 he can't he can't stand up to that can't do it okay so rochelle so her name like eventually

00:14:03.600 she just becomes rochelle but i'll explain how she got to that point so her name was um

00:14:08.820 she was she was born to itinerant jewish peddlers on the roads in switzerland so like

00:14:16.780 there wasn't a birth certificate yeah she was born we do know that we do know that

00:14:21.820 later on the birth certificate was supplied but anyway so her name was maybe elisa slash rochelle

00:14:27.500 or rochelle slash elizabeth or dash so like a hyphenated name which because her siblings had

00:14:34.100 names that were like that where it's kind of like an old testament name and a new testament name

00:14:37.700 or like a jewish name and a christian name like her sister was called sophie sarah which i think

00:14:43.640 is probably something where it's just like the parents wanted to give them options you know it's

00:14:48.900 like to code switch depending where you're going absolutely i think there's still people who do

00:14:53.420 that now yeah let me get my non-jewish name out for the for the paperwork yeah so her parents her

00:15:00.480 father was called jacques and her mother was therese esther haya triple names and their last

00:15:06.700 name was felix so f-e-l-i-x which is a french you're also here as somebody who knows french

00:15:13.720 a bit more than me a bit i did i knew a lot of french five years ago so so felix is a french

00:15:20.420 name slash word that means basically like happiness it's latin for like luck right

00:15:26.080 yeah and so the jewish last name baruch has the same meaning yeah so chances are their last name

00:15:33.180 was baruch and then they changed it to felix to be like i don't know if there's got all this stuff

00:15:38.400 like napoleon or somebody was like jewish people can be citizens but you have to have french names

00:15:43.700 names so like maybe at that point they changed it we'll translate our own names into latin

00:15:49.340 languages yeah just to be safe yeah so and this is part of where it's like she became just rochelle

00:15:55.740 it's like yeah like was what did her last you know like yeah i don't think she was ever really

00:15:59.940 committed to this as a last name to begin with anyway so her parents jacques and therese ester

00:16:04.180 haya were jewish peddlers who sold secondhand clothes from a wagon they used as both home

00:16:09.040 and warehouse she was born on the road basically literally in switzerland in the swiss town of

00:16:16.360 mumf which which is spelled m-u-m-p-f spelled like it sounds mumf so switzerland at this point

00:16:23.900 so 1821 somewhat risky territory for jewish peddlers because they were legally barred from

00:16:29.000 residing or establishing businesses in the country but her mother was in labor and so she had to be

00:16:35.120 born and so there were some like shitty biographies written about her in the early 20th century

00:16:41.460 in the rachel brownstein book she's just kind of like well here's what might have happened but like

00:16:46.200 a weird combination of like glorification of her but also this kind of like look how jewish she was

00:16:52.400 so some of the stories of her birth really sound like the nativity story in the sense of like it's

00:16:56.840 these two this jewish husband or wife and she has to have a baby but there's no room at the inn

00:17:01.540 but instead of like herod is doing a census or whatever it's like jewish people aren't allowed

00:17:06.520 to go into inns so anyway i mean yeah but then there was a whole thing about like she was born

00:17:12.760 and then at some point she might have like fallen out of the wagon and then she was saved by this

00:17:16.980 dog and or maybe she was saved by like a lot of this stuff was like retroactively trying to show

00:17:23.440 like and this is why she became such a legendary person so they really these weird biographies

00:17:28.040 like really mythologized her birth to show like she was destined i think it was something like

00:17:33.660 a french person caught her falling off the wagon and that was like how they knew that she would be

00:17:38.920 the savior of all of france spoiler and seems like the guy who caught the baby should be the

00:17:44.260 savior of all of france like quick hands knock over there either a dog or a french person saved

00:17:49.800 her if a dog's touching babies i want to talk to the dog not the baby yeah true okay so there was

00:17:55.200 also four other siblings born so she had an older sister Sophie Sarah and then she had four other

00:17:59.160 siblings Raphael one name Rebecca one name Adelaide Leah two names and Melanie Dinah so I think I feel

00:18:07.380 like all of them like the names are flexible the names are like guidelines okay so her dad Jacques

00:18:12.540 this is where it gets like the people in this story are dirtbags and then the way that they're

00:18:19.560 talked about sometimes is anti-semitic and so I'm trying to be like here's what they're like 0.95

00:18:25.120 and i don't know so her dad was kind of a shitty stage dad type energy he was also a grifter

00:18:33.900 because you got it like if he's a hustler like if he's just like i'm selling secondhand clothes

00:18:39.600 out of a wagon that i also live in it's like yeah he's gonna be you know what's not gonna make you

00:18:44.060 a lot of money selling a bunch of secondhand clothes on the streets where the only thing

00:18:48.220 that's going on is a dog catches babies sometimes a guy's gotta hustle no exactly so he's like got a

00:18:54.060 lot of um strategies to make money he's like multiple entrepreneurship which can be interpreted

00:19:00.720 as being like oh he's money hungry or whatever it's like no he's just no he would like enough

00:19:04.640 money to feed his five to six children yeah yeah probably yeah exactly so he's like he's hustling

00:19:10.700 and it's like of course he was because otherwise they would all die anyway so he realized so they're

00:19:16.480 just like the family's doing everything they can to make money um and one of the things is that

00:19:19.740 Sophie, Sarah and Rochelle would go out on the streets and Sophie, Sarah would play a guitar

00:19:24.000 and then Rochelle would sing and they would make money like busking basically. But then he was

00:19:30.180 like, wait a minute. And this is kind of like, I don't, I'm going to guess you haven't read

00:19:33.580 Britney Spears' memoir, The Woman in Me. Not yet. It is on my TBR though. It's really good.

00:19:40.000 It's like really interesting and well-written, but kind of like Britney Spears' father. He was

00:19:44.260 like, wait a minute. My daughter Rochelle is actually talented. Like this kid, I can make

00:19:49.180 money from this yeah so the family went to lyon l-y-o-n-s lyon yeah lyon france france where there

00:20:01.240 was a pre-existing jewish community of people and so as so this is i don't know 1830 or something

00:20:07.580 by now but since 1791 i wanted to mention this so the french revolution happened and there was like

00:20:14.040 the republic and everything um and as part of that in 1791 three kinds of people were allowed

00:20:20.580 to be french citizens that weren't before and those types of people were jewish people

00:20:25.460 protestants and actors i didn't know that yeah that's really funny yeah this comes up because

00:20:34.240 rochelle is going to be an actor obviously yep and this is where the article i read just recently

00:20:40.080 like i put these notes together then i found another article that was helpful the one by 0.92

00:20:44.900 arena rabinovich um was talking about so for rochelle like um just in terms of being like

00:20:51.380 marginalized from society it's like she's a woman and she's jewish and she's an actor it's like

00:20:56.540 three strikes that's a lot that's extra extra level up in terms of just like the challenges

00:21:02.120 of her daily life but as we'll see she crushes it so anyway one day rochelle and sophie sarah

00:21:09.520 were out playing guitar and singing on the street. They were like ages eight and 10 or something like

00:21:14.060 that. And side note, as an adult, Rochelle would proudly display a guitar in her home and say,

00:21:20.120 this was the guitar that I was playing when I was a young urchin. And she sold it for a lot of money

00:21:27.100 to one of her lovers. Knowing Rochelle and just her family's ability to just like find a way to 0.97

00:21:35.180 make money and i don't mean that in an anti-semitic way i mean that you know that listen as someone 0.96

00:21:40.100 who has been researching jewish dirtbags for years you don't worry about it okay i just want 0.90

00:21:43.940 everybody to know like she and her family are like really good like the kardashians like they just

00:21:49.400 find an opportunity in everything so i feel like rochelle where she's like oh yes that's the guitar

00:21:53.680 i played when i was a child she was not bitch that's just a guitar you found in a second-hand 0.83

00:21:58.940 shop somewhere and you're like as soon as she sold it she would replace it with another one 0.96

00:22:03.160 and then saw that one that's the vibe anyway so um one day so she and her sister and they were

00:22:09.560 maybe singing close to like brothels or like whatever i don't know like a lot of the so this

00:22:16.020 is part of where like a kind stranger was like oh wow like look at these like talented young girls

00:22:21.380 i need to rescue them from this life of singing outside of brothels i mean fair that's not great 1.00

00:22:27.700 for an eight-year-old no but it does have a bit of a this guy who like discovered them like the

00:22:32.840 vibe is a bit of like white savior because it's like how much like their life was not amazing but

00:22:38.120 how much was he just like oh i must save these young ethnic children but also he was just like 0.64

00:22:42.820 oh shit this is like a young britney spears like this rochelle like oh my gosh like this is yeah 0.94

00:22:47.400 maybe i can stage manage this precocious eight-year-old and guess what this yeah 0.97

00:22:52.000 so anyway so the guy who discovered them was this parisian musician slash educator named

00:22:57.600 Etienne Couron. And he was like, these two girls should attend my acting school in Paris.

00:23:04.020 And so the family went to Paris in 1831. This is one year after the July Revolution

00:23:10.900 had installed a guy called Louis Philippe as King of the French.

00:23:15.780 Yes. This is why you brought me onto the podcast.

00:23:19.420 So there was the French Revolution.

00:23:22.120 there was this was in 1789 yeah so that was about what is that 40 years ago yes yeah yeah 1831

00:23:33.220 yeah yeah so 40 years ago there was the french revolution in which marie antoinette was killed 0.93

00:23:38.440 all the shit went down guillotines and her husband who was the king but whatever 0.63

00:23:42.720 you know mostly marie antoinette her husband yeah yes and so like that was that was the french 0.99

00:23:49.320 revolution and there was a period of about like what 10 15 years where they were like okay let's

00:23:55.500 try to figure out what it would be like to have a republic let's try to create some kind of a

00:23:59.860 parliament let's do our best to like ride this democracy thing out and then as we all know

00:24:06.180 napoleon said however i could be the emperor that sure would be easier for everybody involved

00:24:12.540 And Napoleon was emperor for, like, a cool decade.

00:24:16.640 Yeah.

00:24:17.500 And then this is, like, then after he died.

00:24:22.000 So Napoleon was exiled for the actual final time in, like, 1815.

00:24:28.280 So still 15 years before all of this.

00:24:30.680 And so then they're like, okay, we don't have an emperor.

00:24:33.480 We don't have a parliament.

00:24:35.080 We got to find somebody else to be in charge of France again.

00:24:38.740 and the monarchists who were like things sure were better before we had the french revolution

00:24:43.920 were like okay we're gonna put another king so they're like they're looking at the family tree

00:24:49.220 on a scroll they're just like this guy's dead this guy's huh who's the yeah this guy louis

00:24:54.660 philippe so he's not like directly well there is we didn't get to louis philippe quite yet i'm so

00:25:00.200 sorry but first they went to louis the 16th younger brother okay they were like let's just

00:25:05.680 go to directly next guy in line as if this were all just done.

00:25:09.240 Sorry, I was confused because everyone is called Louis.

00:25:12.960 You know, this is a different Louis.

00:25:14.420 This is Louis, the 18th younger brother of Louis, the 16th, not Louis Philippe.

00:25:19.280 Can you believe those are three different men?

00:25:22.260 How could I not keep track of that?

00:25:24.540 That's so straightforward.

00:25:26.260 So like French Revolution, guillotined king.

00:25:29.600 His younger brother is king for a while.

00:25:31.600 Okay. 0.91

00:25:32.700 Then he dies.

00:25:33.420 and his brother Charles becomes king. Charles is king in 1830. Charles is extremely unpopular.

00:25:42.900 Nobody likes Charles. And he tries to like deal with this lack of popularity by cracking down

00:25:49.980 on like journalists and public assembly and freedom of speech and stuff. And the French

00:25:54.980 are like, well, we just had a revolution 40 years ago, sir, we can do it again. So they take to the 1.00

00:26:02.120 streets they make barricades they yell at the king and the king who would prefer not to get

00:26:07.500 guillotined like his older brother louis the 16th runs away with his son and they're like absolutely

00:26:15.260 not we're gonna go live he goes to england for a while he actually lives in uh holy rude palace

00:26:21.420 for a little while which i thought was dope where rizzio was murdered the very same okay okay so

00:26:28.320 he's traveling europe and now they have to find somebody else and so that's where louis philippe

00:26:33.180 comes up he's like this is where you unfurl the scroll and you unfurl the scroll and you go all

00:26:38.680 the way back up the french family tree back to like they're going grandfathers up to the louis

00:26:45.580 cator's who was the sun king famously known to be extremely fancy and extravagant and had loads

00:26:51.600 of mistresses he was the one in the affair of the poisons if you remember oh we're going to talk

00:26:56.020 about him in a bit yeah wonderful because if you go back up the family tree of the french

00:27:01.280 to louis the 14th he had legitimate sons that got all of those other louises and then he had a

00:27:09.380 famous mistress madame de montespan who if you remember from the la voisin episode was the

00:27:17.160 mistress who tried to murder a bunch of babies in a black magic ritual to make the king fall in love

00:27:21.920 with her allegedly allegedly yeah not allegedly i mean i think it would have yes that's canon on

00:27:30.600 this podcast that is canon that is a historical fact so she and louis cators had their own line

00:27:37.960 of descendants and louis louis philippe is descended from her okay is he the one who's 0.97

00:27:44.180 called the citizen king yes because he was not like he's like way off there on the fucking family 0.94

00:27:50.940 tree like you have to you have to throw a dart to catch him on the family tree so like he's just 0.93

00:27:56.240 one of the guys he's just one of the people he's not he's like a direct descendant of the king but

00:28:01.520 that's how they were trying to market him because the french were very upset with kings at this

00:28:06.360 point but that's the july revolution in terms of what you just said i need to tell everybody

00:28:10.440 because i'm in canada commonwealth country on our currency is the monarch of great britain and it

00:28:17.120 was just released what the charles coins are gonna look like barf and it's like charles but

00:28:22.520 he's wearing not a crown it's his like profile his face profile he's wearing not a crown and

00:28:26.920 he's wearing you can tell just from like the bus like a suit so it's like well that just looks like

00:28:31.440 some guy like the queen on the coins she's wearing like pearls and a crown it's just like

00:28:36.400 well that looks like a queen this just looks like you put some guy on my money people are saying

00:28:40.280 they're gonna call him the chuck buck um it's the citizen king of the present day well and that's

00:28:46.460 that's when the theory i think is that he wants to be like i'm not like the old king i'm a cool

00:28:51.180 king where it's like okay so you're on my coin not wearing a crown but you're still on my coin

00:28:56.080 exactly yes this is exactly what it was like yeah the citizen king is like i'm not like the other

00:29:01.840 kings i'm a cool king it's like but you're still you're still a king yeah yeah yes so louis philippe

00:29:09.580 like listeners this is why allison is here she's gonna explain stuff but like rochelle

00:29:13.040 we love her but she's living in this time of like rapid turnover of who is in charge of France and

00:29:20.380 it becomes very pertinent to her life so at this point she's a little girl going to acting school

00:29:25.500 little child star so she and her family settled in Paris in the Marais district which was like

00:29:31.120 the Jewish neighborhood and I think still is the Jewish neighborhood it's real bougie now oh is it 1.00

00:29:36.000 like yeah that's very expensive to live there now it did not used to be because that's how 0.88

00:29:40.400 gentrification they lived across the street from the morgue well michelle and her family i bet

00:29:46.220 people were just dying to get in there and so anyway she and her sister sophie sarah attended

00:29:52.740 this etienne's school for like child stars or whatever and they were trained in acting and

00:29:59.100 music and so this is like very important and this is i don't know what your background is on this

00:30:02.860 but i'm hoping you know something about it which is the tradition of classical drama in france

00:30:08.400 do you know anything about that probably not that i am willing to try okay so at this time

00:30:15.780 one of the most popular sorts of plays to be performed were plays about napoleon okay

00:30:21.540 that's why i don't know anything about it because i refuse to learn i love that this episode is

00:30:27.760 coming out around the same time that movie napoleon is coming out so this is like i'm not

00:30:33.020 But anyway, France was like, Napoleon had only just died like 10 years ago.

00:30:37.920 And they're all just like, let's like, they're already like, that's retro, like Napoleon vintage.

00:30:42.100 They're just like, remember Napoleon was the emperor.

00:30:44.240 It's like, you kicked him out.

00:30:46.860 Well, they've had four kings since then.

00:30:48.920 Like it's been a busy time.

00:30:50.360 So they're like, in retrospect, was he so bad?

00:30:52.700 Yes.

00:30:53.220 Yes, he was.

00:30:54.060 So plays about Napoleon were really popular at the time.

00:30:58.600 Did this imprint on Rochelle in some ways.

00:31:00.740 we'll talk later about her psychology and her choice of lovers anyway plays in general were

00:31:06.000 really popular and this is kind of the first time in france potentially in anywhere where performers

00:31:12.760 became celebrities and stars like when we're talking about like your first book like kit

00:31:18.480 marlowe and like william shakespeare times which is england not france but it's just like oh

00:31:22.220 there are the players they're the actors but they weren't like fetted by yeah they were like no one

00:31:28.360 wanted to associate yeah they were like yeah so this is where a couple things like i mentioned

00:31:33.380 richelle woman jewish actor like she slid in like she was born in exactly the right time to like 1.00

00:31:40.500 make a go of things because actors were starting to become wealthy celebrities who could hang out 0.98

00:31:47.600 with the aristocracy and also jewish people had more rights than they ever had before in france 0.95

00:31:52.320 question mark so good timing on her part to be born under the lola montez moon so on the side

00:31:59.240 of the road next to a dog like jesus no room at the inn okay so 18 so at around this time there's

00:32:09.160 something like 9 000 jewish people in paris which is three times as many as there had been 0.92

00:32:13.840 a couple decades before like jewish people were coming there because it's like guess what change

00:32:18.160 your last name, you can be a citizen. Napoleon had in fact appointed some sort of government,

00:32:24.380 like self-government for Jewish people. So this like encouraged Jewish people, like intentionally 1.00

00:32:29.220 he wanted immigration from Jewish people to come to France and more of them did, and then kind of

00:32:33.420 developed like a neighborhood. And so the general aim of the Jewish community in Paris was to retain

00:32:38.100 religious identity while attaining social assimilation. So they were not under pressure

00:32:44.600 officially to like convert and they were allowed to sort of like have your like jewish neighborhood

00:32:51.120 so remember how only recently jewish people and actors were allowed to be citizens

00:32:56.560 so the way that both were treated like their rights were really similar actors

00:33:01.420 and jewish people so both actors and jews were denied christian marriage and burial

00:33:07.640 okay one of those makes sense for i don't know somehow a lot of jewish people started entering 0.84

00:33:16.420 the theater community maybe because it's like well none of us can get buried so we pay as well

00:33:22.220 i don't know it's like well these are it's not going to change what we can or can't do our rights

00:33:26.360 are the same as actors so let's all be actors so jewish actresses and models became like trendy

00:33:31.400 at this time when rochelle is coming of age so it's like this is setting the stage for her to

00:33:37.360 succeed in this really interesting unanticipated to me way of just like you know what's really hot

00:33:43.360 right now jewish actresses like what okay she's like guess what guess who i am okay so she's in

00:33:49.180 like child star acting school in france so 1834 she's like 13 an american actor named edwin forest

00:33:55.820 went was just like around and there was like a showcase for like emerging young talent and he

00:34:01.480 saw her and he wrote this like not later knowing how famous she would be at the time he wrote

00:34:06.260 okay and I need to just make it clear to everybody that Rochelle was like very thin 0.65

00:34:10.600 because of starvation reasons it's similar to what I've read about Audrey Hepburn who like during

00:34:18.640 World War II she was so undernourished that she just became really thin and then just was really

00:34:23.600 thin the rest of her life like it affects you in a lifelong way when you're starvation living anyway

00:34:29.100 so rochelle was always a very very very small thin person i want to preface this because edwin

00:34:34.540 forrest wrote that little bag of bones rude with the marble face and flaming eyes is how he 0.52

00:34:43.400 described her and he says in her he could see demonical power if she lives and does not burn

00:34:49.360 out too soon she will become something wonderful and this is not dissimilar to how people talked

00:34:55.940 about her as an actor her acting was so intense and I don't know I was trying to think of someone

00:35:02.680 to compare her to and I can't because it's just like she was so intense with acting that everyone

00:35:08.820 was just like holy shit oh my god like like all I can think of is to compare it to like a singer

00:35:14.580 who's really powerful or something like yeah her intent like she's this little tiny person 0.66

00:35:19.660 but she's so intense that everyone's just like like as we're gonna see it's that's her style

00:35:26.100 it's just tiny but intense so when she was age 15 she left acting school to go make a go of it

00:35:31.640 her dad was her manager and so she went to the theater moliere where she received additional

00:35:38.960 training. And then she was admitted to the prestigious conservatoire. And then she soon

00:35:44.360 left the conservatoire for higher paying work at the Théâtre de la Gimnaise, which looks like the

00:35:50.400 theater of gymnastics, but it's not. I was going to say, it looked like the gym theater. That's

00:35:55.420 okay. Which is, by the way, is what we had in my middle school, which is the theater was just a

00:35:59.980 little stage at the very far end of the gym underneath the basketball hoop. So that's what

00:36:03.320 I'm going to think about. Yeah. Sort of like the cafetorium. Yeah. Exactly. Basically, she's going

00:36:08.060 place-to-place learning theater acting training and i think i write about this later but i'll

00:36:12.020 describe it to you now when i say she's getting theater acting training she's being trained in

00:36:15.660 the classical repertoire which is like the plays that were popular when louis the sun king was

00:36:22.500 around these are plays that all glorify france and it's like the national french identity are

00:36:28.480 these plays which are very old-fashioned and not very popular but it's like the official theater

00:36:33.080 of france so this is what and they're trained in it's like here's how you say your lines and

00:36:36.980 here's this, you're trained in like, you learn the like hand movements. So it's like every time

00:36:41.700 you see these plays performed by anyone, they're doing the same hand movements as someone a hundred

00:36:45.820 years ago doing the same part. That's wild. Yeah. So it's like frozen in amber, like acting like

00:36:52.000 it's 1640 or whatever. Yeah. So like, this is the training she's receiving. It's like very specific

00:36:58.080 to perform only these plays in this specific way. But what she brings to it is intensity.

00:37:06.980 anyway so then later she began so this is like she's like 15 by the time she's 16 she's taking

00:37:13.880 private lessons with a guy called joseph isadora samson who i mentioned is 43 at the time just

00:37:21.280 because the phantom of the opera i'm assuming based on the way he lives in the sewers

00:37:27.180 the phantom of the cafetorium yes so um there's a lot of like older men

00:37:34.640 father figure type people in her life which some of the other biographies that were written

00:37:40.840 closer to when she was alive were like well surely she was just their pawn she was their

00:37:45.980 puppet like these men with ambitions were like using her where it's just like or was she just 0.76

00:37:51.200 like so weirdly god level talented that they all just wanted to be her manager and make money

00:37:57.480 like it's a britney spears situation anyway so samson so he became it's kind of like there's

00:38:04.320 Samson. And then there's her dad. And they were often compared like by, she's going to become

00:38:09.380 famous very shortly. So this is why I'm saying like everyone knew about them, but it's like

00:38:14.860 they were portrayed as sort of like rivals to manage her for control over her career.

00:38:21.000 Samson versus her dad, which is going to heat up. Anyway, when she's 17, she signs a contract

00:38:26.540 at the most prestigious institution of the French stage, the Comédie Française.

00:38:30.720 this is the official state theater where samson himself was an actor and so she signed on as like

00:38:36.840 a pensioneer which basically means okay i'll explain this so this is france's principal

00:38:43.660 stage company created in 1680 by louis the 14th that is that right that sounds right i don't know

00:38:51.040 i don't was that the sun king 14th yes 14th was the sun king that guy so anyway and he invented

00:38:58.060 it to preserve the great dramatic works written during his reign that's the thing the sun king

00:39:03.520 would do correct yeah it's like the greatest plays of all time are the ones written for me

00:39:08.140 for me about me while i was watching exactly and so that's what's like do these plays exactly the

00:39:14.260 same for the rest of time only these plays and act them in this way so these tragedies were

00:39:19.820 written in rhyming verse of 12 syllables following the rules of art invented by aristotle in ancient

00:39:25.160 Greece. So the plays were based usually on classical mythical stories. So it's like

00:39:29.800 Clytemnestra and I don't know, all those people that people are writing novels about now,

00:39:35.880 those Medea, like all those things. So all these sorts of stories and the plays all

00:39:40.720 had a minimum of togas, or sorry, a minimum of characters, a maximum of togas. Everyone wore

00:39:48.240 togas. This is, I sent you a number of pictures of Rochelle, Alison.

00:39:53.380 Yes, I was going to ask you

00:39:54.600 why she was in togas in all of them.

00:39:56.240 And now I feel like I know, sort of.

00:39:58.700 So these plays, they're just,

00:40:01.940 everyone does these hand gestures.

00:40:04.080 They say these lines in exactly the same way.

00:40:06.620 And they wear togas all the time,

00:40:08.280 which is where, so there's,

00:40:09.600 I'll post a bunch of pictures on Instagram too.

00:40:11.240 But like Rochelle herself,

00:40:12.520 in all her portraits, she's wearing a toga.

00:40:14.420 In the like political cartoons of her,

00:40:16.340 it's like, how will they know it's Rochelle? 0.97

00:40:18.300 We'll put her in a toga. 0.99

00:40:19.660 Like she did wear regular clothes 0.99

00:40:21.840 when she was performing but when she was performing all togas and you know what

00:40:29.760 comfortable like a muumuu sure honestly if i could wear a toga to work i would exactly okay

00:40:37.000 so each of the actors working for the comedy francaise specialized in a certain type of

00:40:41.280 character because the plays were just like here's the hero and here's the ingenue it's like here's

00:40:45.880 so the same actor would always play the same sort of role which is yeah the same way that it's like

00:40:51.460 and they would do these hand gestures and they went it's all very like here's the rules and this

00:40:56.500 is what we follow very formulaic okay so after the french revolution the first one the main one

00:41:04.380 so before these plays were only allowed to be performed at the comedy francaise but after the

00:41:08.800 french revolution they're like republic anyone can perform these plays they're for the people

00:41:13.480 but still do the same hand gestures yes but the actors at the comedy francaise were recognized

00:41:18.560 as the best in France. And so this is like the ultimate place you wanted to go. And also for

00:41:23.080 actors, you wanted to go there because at the Comédie Française, you had to share in the

00:41:26.680 decisions and profits of the company. It was kind of a union. They paid into a pension for retired

00:41:32.040 members. At the other theaters, like you were treated not that well. So this is like the

00:41:37.160 ultimate place you want to go. And she got there age 17. Like she was signed on as a pensionnier.

00:41:42.180 Like she was paying into the union, pension fund. She's got her equity card.

00:41:48.400 she's ready to go no she's good and this is where they were like what is your name and age and she's

00:41:52.400 like i don't have a birth certificate i was born on the road in month so this is where like she and

00:41:59.960 her father like made up a birth certificate but this is where it's like is that when she was born

00:42:04.200 is that what her name was when she was born but they needed something because there's a whole

00:42:07.840 thing also about like is she underage or not oh that's coming up anyway so napoleon this is

00:42:14.180 another reason i brought you on to this episode also okay he is dead but he looms large okay so

00:42:20.840 there was like during his time as emperor he was a fan of the hand gestures and the tokens well of

00:42:27.240 course because that was ancient france when it was powerful and great yeah like him so it was this

00:42:33.240 genre had like a bit of a revival under him but then he wanted exile it went out of fashion because

00:42:38.880 like, yeah, if someone now was like, I perform plays as they were done in 1862, it would be like,

00:42:45.240 no one wants to see that. But suddenly these tragedies became the most popular thing in France

00:42:50.060 because of Rochelle. So she's 17 years old. She made her debut at the Comédie Française that

00:42:56.640 June, 1838. And then a couple of months later, that September, the influential theater critic,

00:43:01.780 Jules Janin, saw her perform for the first time and wrote two rave reviews. And then suddenly

00:43:06.520 box office ticket sales increased drastically he was just like this bag of bones he's so intense

00:43:12.900 I can't like her performances you know there's like portraits of her and photographs but like

00:43:18.540 the way that everyone writes about her performance is just like I can't I truly I don't know what to

00:43:23.280 compare it to I don't know like I keep saying Britney Spears but it's like someone just coming

00:43:27.880 out of nowhere and being so good at something it's like maybe I don't know like within my lifetime

00:43:33.580 like lady gaga just suddenly yeah appeared and it's like where did she and she was also like

00:43:39.140 not a child star before like someone who just arrives and is so freakishly good i don't know

00:43:46.820 rochelle just like there's no one like rochelle marilyn monroe maybe like she just anyway so as

00:43:54.160 soon as these reviews came out i was just like we all need to go see rochelle and it was like rich

00:43:57.440 people poor people like the jewish people wanted to support her like everyone was just going to

00:44:02.120 the theater to see her do the hand gestures they're all just like rachel's teenage bag of 0.96

00:44:07.120 bones anyway she was so successful that the theater gave her a golden wreath um which is a

00:44:13.000 thing that the theater comedy française gave to their most successful stars citizen king louis

00:44:19.360 philippe came to see her perform he personally complimented her for bringing back classical

00:44:24.240 french tragedy as a gift he gave her a library of the classics okay she's like thanks money would

00:44:31.020 have been better yeah she's like can i have another like beat up guitar that i could sell

00:44:34.600 on ebay could you read you know yes yes oh god okay so there's a thing about the weird but again

00:44:42.520 i have to emphasize i didn't read these books but rachel brownstein talks about them the weird

00:44:46.280 early 1900s biographies that were just like rochelle was this like child jesus person

00:44:52.320 like apparently as a young toddler she spontaneously recited the ballad of the wandering jew

00:44:58.960 okay um like that sort of yeah I think her parents in their like van slash home had books and I think

00:45:08.500 she read them as a girl but then also for sure like she went to acting school and she learned

00:45:11.680 to read there she was immediately acclaimed as the most amazing actress ever to perform these

00:45:17.040 roles and suddenly suddenly the plays were popular again because of her 17 years old intensity so

00:45:25.600 and she was and that's the thing so it's like she's performing these rhyming scripts of these

00:45:29.000 old-fashioned plays using these generational hand movements but her passion suddenly made

00:45:34.200 them interesting and vital and people cared again because there wasn't a lot of room for her to like

00:45:39.340 change things like she had to perform it in this way but her passion she was visibly wracked by

00:45:46.680 her performances like she was really performing her little heart out 17 years old i just want to

00:45:53.460 emphasize that because this is wild. So her dad and Samson fought over who would oversee her career

00:45:59.300 because she was making so much money for the theater. So during an argument between them

00:46:04.120 about the dad wanted more money for Rochelle and himself. So at this point, she had made 200,000

00:46:09.660 francs in six months for the company. And so he was like the dad reasonably was like your cost

00:46:16.180 sharing. Like I love your union and your pension, but like, shouldn't Rochelle get paid a bit more

00:46:20.220 since she's the only reason anyone is coming that's a lot of money i'm bad at conversion rates

00:46:25.940 but like that's a lot of money 200 000 francs in like the 19th century like yeah so i think it's

00:46:33.300 like what i was thinking is like you know the taylor swift eras tour yes it's like taylor swift

00:46:38.180 is making more money than the backup dancers because if she wasn't there no one would go

00:46:43.980 it's profit sharing but it doesn't have to be equal profit sharing yeah if you are the one

00:46:48.620 So Samson was like, oh, but when you signed the contract, when she was 15, you said that she would do equal profit sharing.

00:46:57.060 And then Samson threw the dad down a flight of stairs.

00:47:00.100 Oh, OK.

00:47:02.600 So then the dad took Samson to court and he went because the contract Rachel had signed as a minor was invalid because she was invalid because she was a minor.

00:47:11.100 But that's where it's like, well, how old was she?

00:47:12.720 When was she born?

00:47:13.780 Like when you gave the birth certificate, what year did you write on it?

00:47:16.460 And was that intentional?

00:47:17.680 anyway well good for the dad because i would sue anyone who threw me down a flight of stairs

00:47:22.180 yeah well and also it's like and this is all portrayed in the press at the time being like oh

00:47:26.360 rochelle and her dad they're so money hungry because they're jewish it's like no they're

00:47:30.200 just people who want to be paid for their work like so there's a lot of this sort of stuff

00:47:34.800 throughout her life anyway rochelle also wanted to maximize her income basically by performing

00:47:40.940 in like the suburbs of paris like at other theaters samson was like that like degrades 0.98

00:47:45.360 the sanctity of the Comedie Francaise. Oh, shut up, sir. Yeah. And she's just like, I am making a 0.98

00:47:52.060 lot of money. So fuck you. What are you going to do without me? Like, do you want me to be in your 1.00

00:47:56.600 company? Then you also have to let me do this, basically. But being part of the company meant

00:48:00.980 you only got so many days or weeks off per year to tour. So that sort of got in the way of her

00:48:05.500 doing other performances. She was also encouraged to distance herself from her family and therefore

00:48:11.940 from her jewish roots but she never did and she was always very loyal to her family and she never

00:48:17.420 changed her religion even though people are constantly trying to make her do that good for

00:48:21.040 her yeah she gave generously to her family at one point she bought her sister sophie sarah a fully

00:48:26.680 furnished home i love that that's like what everyone says they're gonna do like you can buy

00:48:32.080 my mom i'm on the house yeah well i love buying her a home that was furnished you know like she

00:48:37.880 could just walk in the door and live there it's not yeah she also always helped support her mother

00:48:43.360 at one point she went on tour around england and a duchess gave her a shawl and then she gave the

00:48:48.340 shawl to her mom like she was always really giving back to her family in a really genuine way which i

00:48:53.280 like to see because like they grew up in this caravan like yeah with nothing and she was always

00:48:59.440 grateful to them and taking care of them she was also next time any of us is asked like if you're

00:49:05.720 throwing a dinner party. Who do you invite? Rochelle. So she was hilarious, witty, clever,

00:49:10.120 and fun to be around. And now we're just going to take a break for a word from our sponsors.

00:49:15.800 The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered

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00:50:13.560 welcome to the realms of peril and glory explore the mechanically magical vistas of vale

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00:50:50.960 Ever look at someone at the top and wonder, do they even remember where they started?

00:50:55.920 What did it take to get there?

00:50:57.700 I do on every episode.

00:51:00.100 I'm Evelyn, and on my podcast, Reppin', the people the world thinks it knows,

00:51:04.940 gets to say who they actually are.

00:51:08.080 The grit, the doubt, the moments nobody sees.

00:51:11.740 And everything they learn getting there,

00:51:14.160 it's yours for the taking.

00:51:16.780 Reffin, find us wherever you listen.

00:51:19.440 Go get it now.

00:51:23.080 The world of Sonic the Hedgehog

00:51:25.620 has been thrust into a not-so-dark,

00:51:28.440 not-so-stormy, hard-boiled detective story

00:51:31.400 that probably nobody saw coming.

00:51:34.940 Follow Sonic and the Intrepid Chaotix Detective Agency as they take on their biggest case yet.

00:51:42.060 This high-flying, action-packed adventure will take them across the world, fighting for every quill they can fight.

00:51:49.640 It's one heck of a tale.

00:51:52.280 Which is good, because this story might be the only thing that can save their lives.

00:51:59.840 Well, if that's all, I can just dispose of you.

00:52:02.660 Wait, what?

00:52:04.940 all will be revealed in sonic the hedgehog presents the chaotix case files listen now

00:52:14.780 wherever you get your podcasts and we're back this is also a specific time and place where

00:52:26.860 because of the like republican ideals or something it was like people were inherently

00:52:33.180 the station that they were, by which I mean, Rochelle carried herself with gravitas and with

00:52:41.200 importance because of she doing acting and I'm sure her posture was like wild, but she seemed

00:52:48.440 like a rich, important person. And they're like, yes. And because of humanism, we believe that she

00:52:53.120 is, even though she was born poor, she's allowed to be elevated into these aristocratic spaces. 0.91

00:52:59.040 So a generation ago, they would have been like, no, you can't come in here. You're Jewish, 0.89

00:53:02.400 you're poor but now they're like no people are inherently who they are so right and it's been 0.90

00:53:08.220 such a tumultuous time like the last 40 years in regards to like who's in charge and who's important

00:53:14.100 and who's not important that i really feel like humanism was just them throwing up their hands

00:53:18.060 being like we don't know let's try it see what happens like it's the perfect time for her to be

00:53:23.800 no exactly exactly and france versus england because in england that was not the vibe

00:53:28.200 but in france it was so she was elevated and she but then also she was so funny and witty and like

00:53:34.200 at dinner parties everybody loved her there's i didn't write any of them down because they did

00:53:38.040 not make sense to me but there's various jokes that people reported that she made and maybe in

00:53:41.760 french they were funny maybe in french they were funny 200 years ago probably doesn't translate 0.55

00:53:46.740 real well these hand gestures yeah exactly like the jokes were the same anyway so she was just

00:53:51.680 like a cool person that everybody enjoyed she was like very pleasant and then when she acted

00:53:56.800 she was so intense so much i don't know katherine hepburn maybe like i'm just trying to think of

00:54:02.980 like someone who like has this kind of like weird energy okay 1840 what i'm not sure it's happening

00:54:09.620 vis-a-vis the world oh louis philippe still citizen still there yeah he's got a couple

00:54:14.560 more years spoiler okay 1840 napoleon's body was returned to paris and there's this big funeral

00:54:20.180 march thing to be like he died in exile but now retro vintage napoleon fans are like we like him

00:54:29.580 again let's celebrate his death let's get him back from that tiny island where the wallpaper killed

00:54:34.980 him and let's bury him ostentatiously somewhere in paris yeah so this is like him now exactly

00:54:40.540 exactly mary shelley was in town at this point i just wanted to mention but she had to miss the

00:54:45.200 funeral because it was too cold and snowy for her liking but she wrote like i know i missed like a

00:54:49.400 thing that would have been cool but it was cool so i didn't go and this is the first of many vulgar

00:54:54.780 history cameos of people in the story anyway so napoleon's body i guess was on saint helena this

00:55:01.720 whole time yeah they buried him because he died okay so then they were like oh no now we'll bring

00:55:06.640 him back okay so i'm gonna just foreshadow something so his body was returned by louis

00:55:12.780 philippe's one of his sons the prince of joinville who was a guy who was like a military captain

00:55:18.660 but he had a beard

00:55:19.940 even though military captains

00:55:21.080 weren't allowed to have beards

00:55:22.060 but he was Louis-Philippe's son

00:55:23.640 so he was allowed to have a beard.

00:55:25.160 Anyway,

00:55:25.620 and he was among the procession.

00:55:27.460 I mean,

00:55:28.320 I won't even foreshadow.

00:55:29.140 Spoiler,

00:55:29.780 he is soon to become

00:55:30.500 Rochelle's lover,

00:55:31.480 the Prince of Joinville.

00:55:32.560 This man with a beard.

00:55:33.560 Yes.

00:55:34.420 And this is,

00:55:35.120 do you remember

00:55:35.580 in the Catalina de Arezzo episode,

00:55:37.480 I think you started doing a tally

00:55:38.520 of how many cousins

00:55:39.500 she kept running into?

00:55:41.160 Yeah.

00:55:41.540 I think here

00:55:42.200 we're going to need to keep a tally

00:55:43.740 of how many lovers 0.98

00:55:44.600 who are Napoleon adjacent.

00:55:47.440 Okay.

00:55:47.740 I will keep track on a little piece of scratch paper.

00:55:50.660 This is one.

00:55:51.560 The Prince of Joinville is one

00:55:52.980 because he was the one who recovered the body

00:55:55.720 and was in the procession.

00:55:57.400 Anyway, so this same year, oh my God,

00:55:59.600 this is part of where I was just like,

00:56:00.600 Rochelle, I'm obsessed.

00:56:02.120 So there's a list on her Wikipedia page

00:56:04.000 of just like every role she ever played around this time.

00:56:06.440 So she's, I don't know what, 18 at this point.

00:56:08.120 She played Mary Queen of Scots.

00:56:10.560 Yes.

00:56:12.080 In a play that was like Mary Queen of Scots versus Elizabeth.

00:56:16.000 She played Mary Queen of Scots

00:56:16.820 because she always later on she played fredegand in a play of fredegand and brunhild incredible

00:56:23.960 yeah i was like she played what i was like wait fredegand does that does that french name mean

00:56:29.480 is that my fredegand fredegand it was she played cleopatra i was just like she's doing all the

00:56:36.560 tits out ladies from my podcast but i love that she was in this play mary kum scott's and elizabeth

00:56:40.960 and she played mary like she was in fredegand and brunhild and she played fredegand like she was

00:56:45.520 the roles i would want on the side of vulgar history yes yes vulgar history coded anyway so

00:56:52.080 then she was invited to perform in london so she went there to do like five performances because

00:56:56.200 remember she only has like a certain amount of time she's allowed to be away from the comedy

00:56:59.160 francaise she went there to do five performances all of which sold out she was basically the same

00:57:04.260 age as queen victoria by the way queen victoria was like two years older than her and she just

00:57:09.180 barely become queen queen victoria loved her she invited rochelle to dine and perform at windsor

00:57:14.620 castle and gave her an engraved bracelet that said something like from victoria to rochelle

00:57:22.860 thanks victoria but in french so it's like victoria uh rochelle was in the bracelet so

00:57:29.380 i just pictured like taylor so i have friendship bracelets yes the duke of wellington is that

00:57:35.180 from napoleon the battle of waterloo yes he's the one who beat napoleon he's a very tiresome man but

00:57:42.360 he did beat napoleon so shout out to him for that he had such a crush on rochelle oh and

00:57:48.780 france was like ha ha ha france rules like look the duke of willington defeated napoleon but now

00:57:55.740 rochelle has defeated the duke of willington i love that for her yeah yeah yes great so basically

00:58:02.680 she conquered england even though not everyone there understood french but they still were just

00:58:07.220 like her intensity transcends language she's so intense okay so then she had this other lover

00:58:14.800 whose name is he's not napoleon adjacent he's just some guy he's one of these like old men

00:58:19.280 father figures who i think were maybe all her lovers lovers quote unquote anyway this one guy

00:58:25.220 dr veron for some reason he was just being hilarious at a dinner party like they had

00:58:30.980 written some like sexy letters back and forth and he read some letters from her at a dinner party

00:58:35.100 and so she was like remember a teenager and so immediately her reputation went from like

00:58:40.160 Rochelle this like chaste virgin role model to like who are who are John Knox's ghost

00:58:47.920 from the wings of the Mary Queen of Scots play it's yelling absolutely so again like it's I 0.68

00:58:55.420 don't know like I just kind of like Britney Spears it's like she went from like this like

00:59:00.060 virgin to this who are but Rochelle like Britney Spears was like okay I can vibe with this so

00:59:04.620 she's like okay i'll just be like a femme fatale now which i already was so moving on so this like

00:59:10.340 affair of the letters was like a huge deal in the newspapers like rochelle oh my god she wrote sexy

00:59:14.880 letters like she's like you haven't seen anything yet sexy letters absolutely queen victoria was 1.00

00:59:22.080 like doesn't bother me because queen victoria literally never stopped fucking albert for a 1.00

00:59:27.040 single second her whole life queen victoria was yeah getting it on she's just like get it girl 0.92

00:59:32.640 love that i know queen victoria was just like relatable anyway i mean okay here's some actual

00:59:38.620 foreshadowing 1841 so she's like 20 years old and she retroactively we know that this is when

00:59:44.240 she showed the first signs of vulgar histories traditional malady tuberculosis there it is

00:59:51.800 yeah so the vibes are a bit sateen in moulin rouge a bit a lot yeah yeah okay so her first public

00:59:59.940 Other than Dr. Véran, her first publicly known lover was Louis-Philippe's son,

01:00:04.580 François de Bourbon-Orléans, the Prince de Joinville.

01:00:08.680 With the beard, the head of the Napoleon body gets returned party parade.

01:00:13.160 He was about her same age.

01:00:15.460 Nice for a change.

01:00:16.600 Love that.

01:00:17.700 He was also a painter, which I like.

01:00:19.620 There's like a painting of Napoleon, the Napoleon funeral parade,

01:00:22.920 and it's like done by him.

01:00:24.120 And it is of him.

01:00:25.600 Yay.

01:00:26.500 He's just like, I was there.

01:00:27.880 This is my selfie.

01:00:28.700 this is what it looked like anyway he seems like an okay person so apparently allegedly they met

01:00:33.580 because he sent a note to her backstage that said basically where and when and she sent a

01:00:39.220 note back being like my place tonight oh my god it's so juicy i love it yeah so but you know in

01:00:45.780 french anyway she literally looked this man in the eyes and went

01:00:56.260 she did moulin rouge here we go hey so she wrote to him like they wrote letters these still exist

01:01:04.680 i think he called her his his old rachel and she called him my old dog anyway they were just like

01:01:12.600 whatever so they were together for a while but like even long after their breakup she kept his

01:01:17.860 affectionate final breakup letter from her and she wrote on it like she he wrote a letter being like

01:01:23.300 it's over i'm sorry you don't want to post it or whatever and she wrote on that letter from him

01:01:28.920 you take with me my first my last love i will live i will love never again oh sweetie don't

01:01:36.740 worry she does liar but sweet yeah so he also remembered her fondly and this is what we're

01:01:42.720 gonna see like she was always on good terms with all of her lovers like she stayed friends with

01:01:48.120 all of them even though like old men like dr verone who like did the affair of the letters

01:01:53.040 they were so cool like she was just like great ongoing relationships with all of the lovers

01:01:58.060 now the amount of lovers does become similar to on our flag means death spanish jackie and her

01:02:03.320 husbands is kind of the vibe because there's so many lovers they call themselves like the

01:02:08.740 circle de rachel like the rachel circle the unionized yay so there's no jealousy they got

01:02:17.320 their own group chat it's like okay i'm seeing her monday you're seeing her tuesday like it was

01:02:23.900 also just like french and civilized and polyamorous and just like everyone was on board it was said

01:02:30.760 rochelle had two bracelets made from all of the rings given to her by her various lovers and the

01:02:36.180 rings were so big that she could only wear one of the bracelets at a time because the bracelet

01:02:40.340 was so heavy and then she played so she's just killing it she's playing all these she played

01:02:45.260 fredegonde all these different roles her most famous role is phaedra in the play phaedra like

01:02:51.260 there's statues of her as phaedra this became like her like this is what she's best known for

01:02:55.240 playing phaedra which is a mythological person i assume in 1843 rochelle took a new lover who is

01:03:03.200 uh count valewski napoleon's illegitimate polish son check are you familiar with

01:03:11.540 napoleon's illegitimate polish son i was not at this point no i wasn't sure okay so alexandre

01:03:17.360 florian joseph count colonna waluski was born near warsaw in poland his mother was countess

01:03:24.220 marie maluska and her husband was this guy count waluski but everyone knew napoleon was the father

01:03:31.580 of this baby like never formally acknowledged but everybody knew anyway he was boring and she

01:03:37.940 didn't like him but she has this napoleon fetish we're discovering uh-huh anyway so she's just

01:03:43.740 like napoleon's son yes i'm gonna add him to my circle of lovers so anyway count woluski he tried

01:03:50.360 to do like a makeover on her where he's just like i'm gonna treat you how to teach you how to be 0.99

01:03:55.440 like a fancy lady and she's like i tried to he tried to my fair lady her and she was like bitch 0.97

01:04:00.680 no i'm already more successful than you i'm rochelle which oh just speaking of her name so 0.97

01:04:06.140 when she was going to acting child star school she went by elisa saint felix was her like christian

01:04:12.760 name that sounds like the kind of name i would have come up with when i was trying to go with

01:04:16.500 the pen name as a child yeah so but then when she signed her contract with the comedy francais she's

01:04:22.100 like just rachel rochelle which was also really notable and interesting because rochelle like

01:04:27.040 rachel is like a jewish name like now it's like maybe not automatically seen as a jewish name but

01:04:35.220 then in france but at the time yeah it was a super jewish name and she could have not had that be her

01:04:41.720 name but she's like no i am rochelle like i am jewish like her jewishness was always an important

01:04:45.620 part of her and it also sort of like in terms of building her celebrity brand made her like exotic

01:04:50.640 or whatever anyway so they lived together her and count velusky um they lived together in his like

01:04:56.760 fancy place the silver and the china of the household had her symbol on it which was the

01:05:02.900 single letter r with a buckled belt r with a belt is her inscription for herself anyway and they

01:05:11.500 started having a salon and so everybody because she was so fun and cool to be around she told

01:05:15.480 these jokes so like all the cool people came to hang out at their salon she had a friend who was 0.62

01:05:20.080 this lady writer such journalist um delphine de giroden who was moved to write a new play

01:05:26.700 casting her as the biblical heroine judith famously the beheader of holofernes my tattoo

01:05:36.000 i have on my arm anyway so to celebrate this role of a famous stabbing person

01:05:40.760 rachel laid out a display of ceremonial daggers in her home at her salon but i could stab any one

01:05:47.820 of you if you wanted me to yeah so she i mean iconic so she gave birth to a son who was alexandra

01:05:55.660 antoine cologne count feluski is the father's child making this baby napoleon's grandson

01:06:01.680 this time period where she's with count feluski holding the salons is around the same time lola 0.90

01:06:08.700 montez was in paris fucking critics and dancing at the opera they had to have known about each 0.96

01:06:14.540 other yeah she was too yeah like i hope so like the critics that lola montez was fucking for good 1.00

01:06:21.540 reviews like rochelle would have heard that there's this horrible dancer on stage at the 1.00

01:06:26.140 paris opera like they're in the same town they're running in the same circles it's like george sand

01:06:31.400 is there victor hugo is there like these are the people lola montez hung out with like it's

01:06:36.320 a whole one circle like i hope they got coffee one afternoon and we're just like just you know

01:06:40.960 what you got any tips the dirtbag energy and this is where i thought about like the two of them

01:06:45.200 being born so close together like lula montez she was untrained and terrible at performing and yet

01:06:52.480 that was compelling but then rochelle was so well trained it's like to they're really a yin yang

01:06:58.200 sort of situation yeah and they're both successful in different ways anyway so at one point speaking

01:07:02.680 of this circle of people so alexandre dumas the main one not the dad the one who wrote what was

01:07:09.400 his famous book three musketeers three musketeers one yeah so he's there being this notable wit

01:07:14.900 like he's part of this these like gatherings and he wrote to her being like can i join your circle

01:07:19.980 of lovers here's my official application i have 20 years of experience here are three references

01:07:26.640 here's my union card yeah but so the same thing that she did with the breakup letter like so he

01:07:33.740 wrote a letter being like please can i be your lover and she wrote back on that same letter and

01:07:37.800 returned it to him saying like i am returning this letter that you clearly wrote by mistake

01:07:41.840 yes girl 0.83

01:07:45.100 and then he then became a hater you know as you know shitty people it's just like no just be cool 0.73

01:07:53.480 and you can join the circle of lovers anyway so he criticized her for like how dare she go 0.76

01:07:57.360 perform plays in other places she's disloyal to france blah blah blah she just didn't want to 1.00

01:08:01.620 fuck you man yeah yeah she toured around the uk including in glasgow which was notable because 0.99

01:08:08.200 a notice about her coming to perform they're like listen i know nobody here speaks french 0.99

01:08:13.720 but you don't need to however she's so intense it's fine you'll understand it regardless it's

01:08:21.480 like watching an action movie so but the this like thing in the newspaper in glasgow said you

01:08:26.140 will learn more french from seeing her perform for one hour than you would from a year of french

01:08:30.140 lessons okay bold claim yeah but i love that she's performing everywhere but only ever in french

01:08:35.680 and people are just like still going even if they don't know french like yeah i'm in let's do it

01:08:41.060 anyway so then she and kent feluski were like basically monogamous when they're together but

01:08:45.280 then she got bored and then she seduced this guy called emile de girardin the husband of her friend

01:08:50.920 who wrote the art of amicia the judith play ouch but i think everyone's just like cool they're 0.97

01:08:56.640 always fucking each other they're fine i'm like you can have this husband for a while i don't need 0.77

01:09:00.280 him okay but allison for your tally this guy is known as the napoleon of the press he's a newspaper 0.99

01:09:05.660 guy who dressed like napoleon 24 7 what oh okay that's i thought you were gonna be like he was a

01:09:13.960 he was a no holds barred journalist who would go in and get the truth even if they didn't want you

01:09:19.640 to no you meant he was like the guy in my college dorm who dressed up like jesus sometimes and we

01:09:25.060 called and he's quad jesus yeah okay he would wear napoleon cosplay and like brush his hair

01:09:30.400 like napoleon you know put his hand in his front shirt in the in the yeah so i mean we both just

01:09:37.340 tried to put our hands through the bus but if we know something about rochelle she's just like oh 0.99

01:09:41.920 my god that guy looks kind of like napoleon i have to fuck that guy my favorite kind of man 0.97

01:09:45.800 vaguely napoleonic yeah so he this guy at the napoleon of the press he had famously killed a 0.99

01:09:51.760 man in a duel wait no i just i'm so sorry i just realized what the napoleon of the press reminds 0.93

01:09:57.200 me of and it's the napoleon of crime macavity from the musical cats rochelle would have fucked 0.93

01:10:03.020 him too i know it's interest elba we all would but this guy also napoleon of the press just 0.93

01:10:09.300 another standout detail about him yes he kept alphabetized dossiers on everyone important he

01:10:14.420 knew in case he had to blackmail them one day yeah i love this man i feel like this is i i

01:10:21.280 started making dossiers myself of all of the lovers but i'm just like there's not enough

01:10:25.120 hours in the day to explain to you how interesting all four lovers were anyway and then rochelle was 0.92

01:10:30.760 also maybe lovers with his wife who wrote the play for her so just everyone's just fucking everyone

01:10:34.840 love it that's what's happening anyway but not great at this point because count velusky 0.82

01:10:39.940 heard about her having lovers again so he took their 15 month old son um but then eventually

01:10:46.280 returned the baby and then married someone else and i'm sure he's like actually i do not want to

01:10:51.260 take care of it yeah anyway so rachelle just went on to she never had another monogamous relationship

01:10:57.320 i don't think she wrote i am free and intend to remain free i will have renters but not owners

01:11:03.400 oh yes so which i love she also one of her mottos is apparently i love to be loved as i love when i

01:11:12.720 love i think that's a quote from moulin rouge probably sounds like it actually i will have

01:11:18.440 renters but not owners is very like sateen coded from moulin rouge except she never met ewan

01:11:23.720 mcgregor and she's just like i'm gonna fuck anyone and everyone's like that's great guess 0.95

01:11:27.720 who loves you france okay 1847 the russian writer alexander herzan wrote quote her acting is 0.99

01:11:33.940 fascinating while she is on stage no matter what happens you cannot take your eyes off her

01:11:38.100 this weak and fragile being dominates you i cannot imagine that anyone would not abandon

01:11:43.780 himself to her power during the performance i imagine i can still see that proud pout that

01:11:48.940 sharp whip-like gaze like whatever she's doing these performances it's like she's killing it

01:11:55.580 like intense the intensity anyway so then she took as another lover this guy called arthur

01:12:02.740 bertrand who had been in the napoleon funeral procession check because his dad had been

01:12:08.640 napoleon steward arthur had been born in saint helena i feel like i should check twice yeah

01:12:13.460 yeah he oh this is what we just recorded another thing a bit ago and i was like there's someone

01:12:19.280 with darnley energy and who was it this guy so he asked her for money all the time and when she

01:12:24.400 didn't give him money he would steal it from her yep that's a thing darnley would do that is the

01:12:30.700 darnley vibe but anyway but she she loved him because his main hobby was napoleon yes he just

01:12:37.580 like obsessing about napoleon so did she and that's what happened anyway so then she got

01:12:43.020 pregnant again by this guy but she toured england and scotland while pregnant doing her hand gestures

01:12:48.260 and while pregnant touring england and scotland she embarked on two parallel affairs with two men

01:12:56.540 who were cousins of each other one of whom is the man who would later become emperor louis napoleon

01:13:02.560 no yes and his cousin prince napoleon known as plon plon

01:13:12.240 sorry i did know that but it's funny to hear it are you familiar with these people i know i knew

01:13:22.140 that name because it's really hard not yeah plon plon also called nap but i'm calling him plon

01:13:28.080 obviously okay so this is two more for your tally sheet but oh yes i've got them so for um i'm really

01:13:35.080 hung up on plon plon i'm sorry well i'm not stopped talking about plon plon i'm gonna explain

01:13:40.480 who everybody is so these two guys who she met while pregnant touring her plays in england they

01:13:48.360 met like on a train was gambling driving the train driven by the napoleon of crime andris elba

01:13:57.100 okay so the first guy charles louis napoleon bonaparte his father was louis bonaparte the

01:14:03.260 younger brother of napoleon so this guy is napoleon's nephew but also his mother was the

01:14:08.880 daughter so messy of napoleon's wife josephine from her first marriage right so this guy's 0.95

01:14:16.560 basically i don't know this is like could you she has fucked so many napoleon adjacent people 0.98

01:14:22.420 it's like when you put it all together who have also fucked napoleon adjacent people yeah because 0.83

01:14:26.980 i think he was also just like you know who i should definitely sleep with is my i think it 0.56

01:14:32.540 must have been my sister i don't oh my god it's just like i don't know everyone's name is lewis

01:14:38.480 so it's really hard to track so we're calling this guy cl charles louis napoleon bonaparte

01:14:43.780 okay cl the other guy we're calling by his own nickname plan plan because what else could we

01:14:48.880 possibly call him? So CL was born in 1808. So he's like 15 years older than Rochelle. Plonplon

01:14:55.000 was born one year after Rochelle. So close. They're all like adults, whatever. So his name

01:15:01.080 was Prince Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte, usually called Napoleon Jérôme Bonaparte or Jérôme

01:15:07.100 Bonaparte. He was the second son of Napoleon's youngest brother. So these guys are both the

01:15:11.400 sons of Napoleon's brothers. His popular nickname Plonplon stemmed from his difficulty in pronouncing

01:15:17.580 his own name while still a child which i'm gonna say his name is napoleon joseph charles jérôme

01:15:23.840 it's like yeah that is it was a lot plan plan for a child um other so that's allegedly why he's

01:15:30.440 called plan plan but some other historians and contemporary letters suggest it was because he

01:15:34.820 ran in cowardice during battle when the bombs fell but why does that have to do with plan plan

01:15:39.640 i don't know of these two guys plan plan was cooler despite everything you just said despite

01:15:46.100 be called plonplon well what does that say about cl how yeah not not a lot anyway so plonplon was

01:15:54.420 really into classical art and he commissioned a replica of a greek temple for rachel which is

01:16:00.500 still a place i think which has a big mural of rachel in it they're also like wildly rich

01:16:05.220 so anyway then she had her son because remember she's been pregnant this whole time so her second

01:16:10.280 son the father was arthur the darnley guy and the son was called gabriel victor felix so she gave him

01:16:16.680 her own surname i guess because of illegitimacy reasons but it was interesting because so she

01:16:22.040 had two sons they're both baptized christian interestingly but one was like the son of a

01:16:28.120 count napoleon's grandson and the other one is like the son of the big guy who was born on saint

01:16:32.560 helena so like one of her sons was like really wealthy and one of her based on the dad and the

01:16:37.300 other son was like a normal citizen son right anyway so now it's 1848 revolution is occurring

01:16:45.380 yep this is revolution number three i think yeah four it's hard to say we've done a lot

01:16:51.260 at this point but this is the uh what what do they call this one the les miserables one

01:16:57.380 no no we've already passed that oh did we oh okay nothing happened this is so what happened here

01:17:03.800 and this might have been copy pasted from your notes you gave me so the king louis philippe

01:17:09.960 the citizen king abdicated he abdicated because the alternative was they were going to murder him

01:17:15.460 and he would prefer not to do that he kind of like it's february revolution i forgot the month

01:17:21.020 this is the february revolution february 1848 paris is like i really hate louis philippe we've

01:17:26.720 actually hated him for 18 years but now we're gonna finally do something about it and he says 0.75

01:17:31.500 okay fuck i will get out of town bye but this is like the second one you've talked about who 0.98

01:17:37.160 like having seen their own family be guillotined pretty recently was like i'm just gonna leave 0.98

01:17:41.600 like i'm you know what and more power to them for that they're like nah y'all have it bye

01:17:48.180 the energy we've talked about this maybe it was in the napoleon episode or something but just the

01:17:52.380 energy of france as a country to just riot at the drop of a hat it's still going on

01:18:01.360 remember like last year or something when there's those pictures of people drinking champagne in a 1.00

01:18:05.960 restaurant and outside it's like mayhem and things are on fire it's just like that's just the french

01:18:10.480 way they just like oh wasn't they were rioting because they're like how dare you decrease the

01:18:14.660 mandatory retirement age like yeah like this is still the vibe of france i think increase i'm

01:18:21.560 sure the retirement age increase you want to decrease my retirement age i think they were

01:18:25.680 rioting because i didn't want to decrease it really i forget why not anyway so they rioted

01:18:33.680 it's 1848 cl so her lover for she met on the train the cousin of plan plan came back to paris

01:18:40.620 elections happened and he became the first ever president of france but he was like i prefer

01:18:44.620 prince dash president i'll be the prince president and they're like no but okay yeah sure so after

01:18:52.600 the citizen king. Now it's the prince president. And when his term ended, he was like, what if I

01:18:56.840 stay being prince president? And then he did. And he's like, let's just make this official and

01:19:02.060 change my title to Emperor Napoleon. And then I'm over here like, God damn it. We already did this 0.99

01:19:08.280 once with an Emperor Napoleon. Why is there another one? But there is Napoleon the third.

01:19:14.520 So the Comédie Française, which you'll recall was the official French theater invented by the

01:19:18.940 sun king was briefly renamed theater of the republic because they're like we're a republic

01:19:24.200 now and they're like rochelle we need you to act um because we need ticket sales are down rochelle

01:19:30.120 because there's like a revolution yeah people are building barricades they're not coming to the

01:19:35.060 theaters and she's like i just gave birth please i'm so tired i just gave birth i'm having so many

01:19:41.660 lovers i just got two more one of them's the emperor now i guess she's like i need six weeks

01:19:47.160 maternity leave is what she specified anyway so what happened and this is a picture i sent you

01:19:52.400 so she's like okay fine i'll return so they're doing a play and in the middle of the play

01:19:57.640 she came out in her toga and she recited the lyrics of la marseillaise the french national

01:20:03.940 anthem classic casablanca move she didn't sing it she recited it with hand gestures

01:20:09.760 intensely ending with her dropping to one knee while holding a flag

01:20:13.840 which is one of the pictures I sent you everyone lost their mind

01:20:19.100 they rioted they were just like Rochelle

01:20:24.000 we haven't rioted in six weeks then you held up a flag time to go but it's Rochelle and so she

01:20:32.300 became like the symbol of the revolution and of France itself I think this is where the story

01:20:37.580 started being built of her like Jesus like birth and being saved by the dog because they're all

01:20:41.780 just like she is france look at her she has a flag so then the theater was like this is great

01:20:48.560 ticket sales are up rochelle can you just recite la marseillaise 37 more times and she's like

01:20:53.860 sure so she just started just reciting everybody lost their mind she went around and did fundraisers

01:21:01.160 for the republic organized by george sand and all she would do is she would do this go down

01:21:06.040 on one knee and everybody would lose their mind it's kind of like i don't know like when lil 0.93

01:21:11.300 as ex was doing old town road you just show up in like a gymnasium of children or like yes

01:21:18.260 while she herself is being like i'm really tired of doing this yeah the republic paid they sponsored

01:21:26.960 her tour to tour around other parts of france to do the marseillaise because this was like

01:21:32.480 getting people like to support them as the government um at one point her carriage fell

01:21:37.300 off the road soldiers helped her out and they're like can you say the marseillaise to us

01:21:42.800 and she did can you do the thing anyway but while touring she donated money to the unemployed she

01:21:51.840 paid a visit to condemn murderess marie lafarge in jail who is dying of tuberculosis coincidentally

01:21:59.260 and apparently this is because rochelle was preparing to play medea i think and she's like

01:22:03.300 i want to talk to an actual person who actually killed people so like i'll go talk to her anyway 0.85

01:22:06.860 But this all just made people be like, yes, look at her, Princess Diana, visiting the poor, et cetera.

01:22:12.040 And she later clarified she didn't actually care if there is a king or a republic, but she knew that reciting La Marseilla's kept the theater and her making money during a chaotic time.

01:22:22.900 So she was, like, happy to do it.

01:22:24.960 Although she did also say she yearned for a king to take over from the republic to save her from having to keep doing La Marseilla's for the rest of her life.

01:22:34.780 I'm sorry, that's so funny.

01:22:36.540 No, it's great. She's funny, but she's also pragmatic. Like, this is like, she's good.

01:22:41.020 I'll keep doing it, but goddamn, I'm tired. 0.99

01:22:43.720 Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so C.L., her lover, is Emperor Napoleon III. There was a gala. She's like, 0.98

01:22:49.340 oh my god, yes, I'm going to retire the Marseillaise. Great. So she came out during the

01:22:53.340 gala with a flag, and everyone's like, oh, is she going to do the thing?

01:22:56.280 Is she going to do the flag?

01:22:57.080 But then she recited not the Marseillaise. She recited something else,

01:23:00.420 and that kind of helped to rebrand her and the new empire. 0.70

01:23:03.220 I love that she did a soft launch of a new bit.

01:23:06.540 So Plon Plon stayed on as one of the closest advisors to Napoleon III.

01:23:11.160 Plon Plon also, note, had a longstanding relationship with a courtesan, Cora Pearl,

01:23:16.060 who is on my list of people to talk about another day.

01:23:18.220 But I just want to say like Lola Montez, Rochelle and Cora Pearl were all in the same circle.

01:23:23.000 And that's the tits out energy of that is unsurpassed.

01:23:27.500 Anyway, so Napoleon III, CL, brought the French state theater under much stricter control

01:23:32.840 and rochelle benefited greatly because just before this revolution had happened she had been in these

01:23:38.040 kind of like contract negotiations where she wanted more money and they're like no we like

01:23:42.600 we're a union we share it all and she's like i'm taylor swift and i need more money and they're

01:23:49.380 like but do you but anyway then there was a revolution and then the theaters were taken over

01:23:53.300 by her lover and and he was like guess what guess what i'm the emperor now she gets more money yeah

01:23:59.720 So she had a voice in selecting the new theater director and she negotiated a new contract

01:24:03.900 in which she was required to perform only 48 times a year.

01:24:07.960 That still seems like a lot.

01:24:09.620 Yeah.

01:24:09.920 Imagine how much it was before.

01:24:11.200 So basically she went from being a like contract member to being sort of like a casual employee.

01:24:18.080 Okay.

01:24:18.720 So I think she lost out on the pension, but this meant that she had,

01:24:22.220 she was able to go on longer, more profitable tours abroad.

01:24:25.040 at one of these shows one of her tours she wrote in a letter to one of her lovers

01:24:30.080 was it i who aroused the public or the public who aroused me i don't know all i know is we were both 0.96

01:24:36.800 hot what a weird fucking thing yeah she's amazing okay so in her new post the marseillaise era 0.99

01:24:47.660 she pivoted she did she soft launch and then she pivoted to a new era of performing 1.00

01:24:52.300 contemporary dramas.

01:24:54.840 Not toga plays with hand gestures,

01:24:57.720 but like saying lines that don't rhyme.

01:25:00.300 Her first such role was as Thisbe in Angelo

01:25:02.840 by her rejected lover, Victor Hugo.

01:25:05.640 So did you reject Victor Hugo too?

01:25:07.900 Oh no, sorry.

01:25:08.480 It was the other one.

01:25:09.060 It was, it was Alexander Dumas.

01:25:10.780 You're right.

01:25:11.020 Sorry, I confused the two.

01:25:12.120 I was going to say,

01:25:12.840 I feel like Victor Hugo

01:25:13.960 would have taken rejection really badly though.

01:25:15.920 Yeah, I think.

01:25:17.260 Oh, and I think there was rumors

01:25:18.540 that they were lovers

01:25:19.200 and they probably were at this time.

01:25:20.600 They probably were.

01:25:21.400 Yeah, he would have loved that.

01:25:22.300 what's one more at this point lover for her i mean what's one more victor hugo really so she

01:25:28.440 wrote so her character in this was a venetian courtesan and she wrote that this character

01:25:31.980 could only be played by a woman such as herself who had risen from miserable poverty to sleep on

01:25:36.560 satin sheets oh her friend delphine slash lover slash she was also the lover of her husband

01:25:42.500 the napoleon of the press when that person died so she had it was delphine who wrote her the play

01:25:48.480 where rochelle played cleopatra and so rochelle sent her a wreath with a card that said to delphine

01:25:54.780 from cleopatra there were also other rumored female lovers like george sand famous pants

01:26:00.760 wearing person so the lovers were of all genders apparently lover circle everyone welcome very

01:26:08.600 inclusive union yes yeah yeah so anyway so her style of just like having a circle of lovers 1.00

01:26:16.560 led to people spreading wild stories about her sexual veracity like there's a rumor that she 1.00

01:26:21.540 traveled with a bed in her carriage so she could fuck people while going place to place 1.00

01:26:25.480 which she grew up in a caravan that was also a house so like that's not that weird really anyway 1.00

01:26:33.520 she's also known for getting her lovers to give her expensive gifts and then she gave them away 0.93

01:26:37.540 or sold them so this is another thing where people were like she loved expensive things she had a 0.99

01:26:42.560 real eye for like aesthetics and like like i think in a way psychologically maybe from being 0.90

01:26:48.040 really really really poor she loved expensive stuff like she couldn't get enough of it and

01:26:53.340 that's where people like because she's jewish but it's like no because she likes the finer things in 1.00

01:26:58.780 life and she grew up poor so like whatever she's a dirtbag it's a separate issue yeah yeah there 1.00

01:27:04.960 was one of her things she had was a crown and there's yes queen there is six jewels across the 1.00

01:27:11.220 front and it was like a ruby then an amethyst then a something that was like r-a-c-h-e-l like

01:27:18.360 each of the jewels started with the letter like a sanos infinity gauntlet of a crown with her name 0.90

01:27:25.180 on it yeah bitch yes yeah yeah like this story just keeps getting better like she's great right 0.94

01:27:35.160 when you were like okay a jewish person in 19th century france could you have imagined 0.97

01:27:39.100 this legend just having the best time not letting anyone get to her getting a crown

01:27:45.840 monogrammed with her initials yeah you're for it oh my gosh so she also um she had upended the way

01:27:53.000 people viewed these classical tragedies that she often performed because it used to be like oh this

01:27:57.280 is a play by moliere or whatever but now it's like it's a rachel like it became about her like

01:28:02.620 it was female centered instead of without changing the script she made it be about her

01:28:07.040 and about the female characters

01:28:08.780 instead of about the, like, famous man who wrote it.

01:28:12.240 Anyway, so she had been performing abroad for years

01:28:15.600 by the 1850s.

01:28:17.140 She's, like, 30, like,

01:28:20.020 because her career began age 15, if you'll recall.

01:28:22.460 And she was instantaneously the most famous,

01:28:24.540 best actress ever.

01:28:26.380 Anyway, so the distances,

01:28:27.640 she was able to go further and for longer

01:28:29.420 because she didn't have to perform as much.

01:28:31.580 So in 1851, during one of her tours in London,

01:28:34.020 she went to London every year, I think,

01:28:35.280 charlotte bronte saw her perform are you familiar with the novel villette by charlotte bronte i have

01:28:42.020 not read it to my shame but is it about her kind of there's a character in villette who is an

01:28:48.620 actress whose name is vashti which is a jewish name from the bible and it and she describes it's

01:28:54.300 like in this actress she was so intense it was so intense i didn't speak french so anyway so this

01:29:01.340 is part of like Rochelle like shows up in this novel okay in 1853 she performed in Moscow

01:29:07.180 and in 1855 she embarked on a tour of America classic Lola Montez move yeah yeah exactly

01:29:14.260 Lola Montez dead by now oh no wait I think no I think Lola Montez might have been in America

01:29:19.700 simultaneously anyway here's another example Rochelle wrote when she wrote letters about

01:29:23.920 herself she used the royal we when talking about herself when she wrote from America she wrote

01:29:29.720 What can I tell you about our triumphs?

01:29:32.220 They continue to be as great as our gifts are.

01:29:35.400 No.

01:29:36.600 I wrote A Humble Queen.

01:29:38.980 Humble Queen, yes. 0.98

01:29:40.340 And she is.

01:29:41.060 She's the best actress ever.

01:29:42.240 And she knows it.

01:29:43.220 And I think that made some people uncomfortable that she wasn't humble or whatever.

01:29:48.540 Anyway, so her lover, member of Lover Circle, Napoleon III, CL, was the emperor.

01:29:54.100 And she would still come hang out with him sometimes.

01:29:56.140 And the guards would be like, hey, girl, that's okay.

01:29:57.560 Go on in. 1.00

01:29:58.060 like she would still just go by to fuck him every now and then um she taught his wife eugenie how 1.00

01:30:03.180 to curtsy properly and then the empress eugenie requested rochelle perform the mary queen of 0.99

01:30:09.040 scots play and rochelle was like mary annoys me i am gonna do a different play damn and eugenie was

01:30:16.600 like okay that's fair go ahead yeah okay sorry i mentioned she went to moscow and doubling back

01:30:22.320 because this is interesting and i feel like this is something you know about so 1853 she accepted

01:30:26.760 an invitation by the Tsar to visit Russia, just as the Crimean War was about to start.

01:30:31.800 Paris, Paris, a city that is sentient and a character in this story, the fifth girl in Sex

01:30:37.020 in the City, Paris. Yes. Paris was bad at her for her disloyalty to like, how dare you, how dare you

01:30:43.620 who are France perform in not France? Right. But she was greeted enthusiastically in Russia. They 0.59

01:30:48.920 gave her jewels, furs, portraits, and busts of herself. Which is what this girl wanted.

01:30:55.000 she would have loved and then she would have sold them i feel like she would have kept one

01:30:58.760 bust of herself just oh that's true yeah yeah so the shop started selling powders and pomades

01:31:04.140 called rochelle her own fragrance yeah rochelle oh de rochelle anyway as a example of her famous

01:31:13.620 wit um some russian soldiers were like because there's like a war going on between france and

01:31:18.180 russia they're like we look forward to drinking champagne in france soon and she was like oh

01:31:22.880 well we don't treat our prisoners that well actually and france heard she said that and 1.00

01:31:29.820 france was like hell yeah she's on our side again we're good anyway she later exploit her fame from

01:31:36.020 that trip in a new play where she played catherine the great let's see so oh a person consistently

01:31:43.820 described as her favorite sister rebecca also an actress died of tuberculosis and then one of

01:31:50.860 Rochelle's lovers I haven't mentioned. It's a guy called Michel Levy. No Napoleon connection that I

01:31:54.900 know about, but Michel Levy will come up in a minute. Anyway, so Michel Levy, because Rebecca

01:31:59.700 had also been an actress. So they asked Samson, remember her old mentor, the like head of the

01:32:03.920 theater Francaise. So they asked Samson to speak at Rebecca's funeral and he refused due to his

01:32:09.200 grief. Rochelle never forgave Samson for refusing, even though Samson did actually wind up improv-ing

01:32:15.500 a speech at the funeral oh i couldn't i couldn't possibly oh well just this little something anyway

01:32:21.360 so rochelle's tuberculosis progressed newspapers around the world breathlessly reported on her

01:32:27.380 on her illness how is rochelle rochelle coughed today in 1855 she caught a cold so she was in

01:32:35.460 america your country your area the east coast not my area okay i don't know where chicago is

01:32:43.580 not on the east coast isn't it no but like you go to new york sometimes i fly on a plane oh you fly

01:32:50.200 okay yeah i thought you just like drove okay no anyway so she caught a cold on an unheated train

01:32:56.940 between boston and new york oh that's a terrible place to be so upon and then she had a cough and

01:33:03.400 she wrote she was okay i'm saying like she had tuberculosis blah blah but she was like

01:33:07.120 like sateen and moulin rouge she was just like i don't have tuberculosis don't don't say i have

01:33:11.640 tuberculosis i just have a cough just cough that's all just cough so she's like in the u.s

01:33:16.200 the tour not going well she's like caught a chill on this train and then she wrote a letter she's

01:33:21.460 like when you hear me cough you'd almost think oh she has tuberculosis but don't worry i don't

01:33:24.840 just a cough because the train was cold not tuberculosis at all don't worry about it

01:33:29.120 anyway so upon doctor's advice like what's his name from tombstone val kilmer doc holiday doc

01:33:35.620 holiday so in the movie tombstone which we've discussed in vulgar peace theater doc holiday

01:33:39.860 goes to Arizona

01:33:41.600 because the air is more dry and hot.

01:33:43.980 Anyway, the doctors told her the same thing.

01:33:45.500 So she went to Cuba and then to Egypt

01:33:47.460 to try and...

01:33:48.920 Because that's good for people's tuberculosis, I guess. 0.99

01:33:51.300 And if you want to cosplay Cleopatra a bit more. 0.60

01:33:53.540 She did.

01:33:54.000 She wrote a letter to one of her sons

01:33:55.360 where she's like,

01:33:55.800 I'm writing to you,

01:33:56.440 like once I played Cleopatra

01:33:57.560 and now I'm like on the same river

01:33:58.960 where she once was.

01:34:00.200 Maybe there's grains of sand in this letter

01:34:01.960 that she once touched, you know.

01:34:04.780 Anyway, she returned to France

01:34:05.860 and she is actively dying.

01:34:07.620 She stayed in a villa in Southern France.

01:34:09.860 where she wrote farewell letters to her sons, her family members, her lovers.

01:34:16.360 That must have taken forever.

01:34:18.680 There's a lot of lovers.

01:34:20.140 Colleagues, other actors.

01:34:22.420 She wrote a will circumventing French law to leave more money to her sons than she was allowed to do legally.

01:34:28.280 And then, I'm so sorry to say, Rochelle died.

01:34:30.820 January 4th, 1858, of tuberculosis, age 36.

01:34:35.780 Three years later, Lola Montes died, also of tuberculosis. 0.99

01:34:39.820 Goddamn. 1.00

01:34:40.820 Tuberculosis. 1.00

01:34:41.760 What a time.

01:34:42.720 Yeah.

01:34:43.460 What a time.

01:34:44.300 But the world couldn't live with just one of them, you know?

01:34:47.580 Lola and Rochelle.

01:34:49.020 Okay, so her funeral was a huge deal.

01:34:52.040 She got... 0.99

01:34:52.580 I bet it fucking was. 1.00

01:34:53.780 Oh, she got a state funeral. 1.00

01:34:56.320 So she died in the, like, south of France.

01:34:58.100 And then her body was processed to Paris,

01:35:00.140 stopped in Marseille for the Grand Rabbi to oversee a funeral in the train station,

01:35:04.560 where the actors of the Grand Theater of Lyon,

01:35:06.700 remember she started off there, attended to pay homage.

01:35:09.700 Then the remains were taken to her old flat in Paris,

01:35:11.800 where a huge crowd stood waiting.

01:35:13.440 Some climbed the trees to be able to see the coffin.

01:35:17.080 The coffin proceeded behind 11 guardsmen on horseback,

01:35:20.240 followed by 30 on foot.

01:35:22.240 Behind the hearse walked Grand Rabbi Isidore of Paris,

01:35:26.140 some members of Rachel's family,

01:35:27.980 and representing all of the lovers,

01:35:30.380 one of her most faithfully devoted lovers, Michelle Levy.

01:35:33.900 Aww.

01:35:34.600 So this is where it just really...

01:35:36.480 She says the union rep to the funeral.

01:35:38.280 That's the thing.

01:35:38.880 it's like he's like the main lover he's like the the shop steward of the lovers so sweet i just

01:35:45.260 love that he was walking behind on behalf of all the lovers which is where i think of like spanish

01:35:49.960 jackie from her flight we step yes behind them walked members of the comedy francaise then the

01:35:55.960 personnel of the theater then representatives of the government this is all they're all walking

01:36:00.500 then 600 carriages and 30 to 40 000 people on foot just a surprise by the time they reach the

01:36:07.860 cemetery, there are over a hundred thousand mourners present. This is what I want for all

01:36:12.300 of the people I talked about in this podcast. This, you know, when people it's like, and she

01:36:17.020 was, we don't know where her bones are. We don't know where she's buried. No, I want this. One of

01:36:21.680 her pallbearers was Alexandra Dumas. The guy who she said, I will not sleep with you. Yeah. He said,

01:36:27.400 he said, even I was like, why did you ask me? And then I was like, because I'm me or something like

01:36:34.060 that but each pallbearer represented a different artistic muse and he was there to represent he

01:36:41.580 was there to represent literature she had died without making amends with her teacher her mentor

01:36:46.800 samson remember because he said he wouldn't speak at her sister's funeral so he was the head of the

01:36:52.180 comedy francaise and because they died she died angry so there was no eulogy given at her funeral

01:36:56.880 on behalf of the comedy francaise because he was not allowed to because she was mad at him

01:37:02.220 there were three eulogies um one was given by the grand rabbi isador who praised her commitment to

01:37:08.260 judaism which reminds me that when she was in egypt i guess some people came up to her on the

01:37:11.980 train and they're like want to convert to be christian and she's like get me off this train

01:37:16.820 anyway so rochelle is buried in a beautiful tomb that says just rochelle and i'll put a picture on

01:37:24.200 instagram but i sent it to you allison i just love it's just too much it says like literally

01:37:27.460 r-a-c-h-e-l. It's amazing. Rochelle. That's it. So she's buried in the Jewish section of

01:37:32.860 Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, which is near where there is a street named after her,

01:37:38.560 Avenue Rochelle. Her portrait hangs in a very prominent place at the Théâtre Française,

01:37:43.920 which is still a place, I guess. Her parents outlived her, living the rest of their lives

01:37:48.460 on the estate Rochelle had bought them in the village of Montmorency. So her son,

01:37:53.360 by Count Veles Veluski,

01:37:55.720 the one, her son, Napoleon's grandson,

01:37:58.620 went on to have a career as a diplomat.

01:38:00.620 Her other son by the Darnley guy

01:38:02.340 served in the Navy.

01:38:04.200 So they both did fine,

01:38:05.420 did fine for themselves.

01:38:07.220 And I mean, honestly,

01:38:09.020 when someone dies of tuberculosis,

01:38:10.280 it's like the end.

01:38:12.260 Yep.

01:38:12.920 Okay.

01:38:13.580 Sorry, but quite a funeral.

01:38:14.660 So it's time to score this icon.

01:38:19.900 Rochelle.

01:38:20.700 I mean, she gets bonus points 0.98

01:38:21.700 for having no surname.

01:38:23.360 because yes 100 oh actually first was there anyone supporting performance jewel tortoise award

01:38:30.780 i think the lovers can be communally i yeah i mean they they knew their place and they stayed

01:38:39.300 in it and i respect that for that but i really feel like rochelle would be offended by giving

01:38:43.580 anyone a supporting performance actually you're right you're right people came to see her no no

01:38:47.860 there was one performance and it was moi it was me you are absolutely correct okay so rochelle

01:38:54.420 scandalousness i think this is her highest score yeah right i think so many it's hard because

01:39:03.300 i don't like the culture around her seemed cool with her having all these lovers would they've

01:39:09.320 been that cool about anyone or was it just because she was rochelle and she represented france and

01:39:13.840 drama that they were cool with it i think she was just so dramatic that they were like this is fine

01:39:20.160 yeah because i i do i feel like i feel like i want to give her a really high score of

01:39:25.080 scandalousness because like the circle of lovers like getting two new lovers who were both cousins

01:39:30.760 while you while you're pregnant while you're pregnant in another country and then one of

01:39:35.140 them becomes the emperor and then and then you kneel down with a flag and the entire country

01:39:39.280 of france goes into a riot yeah yeah by the way final final tally of napoleon adjacent lovers was

01:39:46.220 six six that to me feels scandalous as well like two sons out of wedlock which is not

01:39:54.720 for the morals of the day like to queen i don't know queen victoria was like that's cool girl

01:40:01.940 like she was cool and so people weren't like harming my pills because she was anyway i'm 1.00

01:40:09.860 giving her 10 for skin deliciousness because i love her and i support it that is what she gets

01:40:14.360 scheminess asterix not in an anti-semitic way um i think medium to high for her here too right

01:40:23.720 she was like i am gonna position myself to be in the right place at the right time so that my 1.00

01:40:30.300 unique weird ass self can become the most famous woman in this city i went from used clothes

01:40:38.500 peddler getting caught by a dog to state funeral with 100 000 mourners yeah well and also the way 0.51

01:40:46.440 that she was like the like i'm gonna sell this guitar like i'm gonna like she's always finding

01:40:52.500 she's like i can't tour enough with this contract so i'm gonna make a new contract like she was she

01:40:57.520 always had an angle in an admirable way i can't get enough money out of this contract let me make

01:41:02.460 the emperor my lover maybe that will help i feel like she was always coming up with some sort of

01:41:08.760 scheme in the most admirable dogged way like if i compare her to kim kardashian in a positive

01:41:17.180 manner it's that same thing where she's just like building the empire yeah where you're just like 0.93

01:41:21.640 okay i can monetize this i can monetize this like rachelle face powder rachelle perfume like she's 0.94

01:41:26.660 she's always and she and it all paid off and then she schemed to like leave her sons more of an 1.00

01:41:31.240 estate than she's legally allowed to like she was always scheming like in a impressive way

01:41:35.580 i don't know if it's just because it's the festive holidays but i'm just like 10

01:41:38.860 do it 10 do it i think those are her two categories so i feel comfy giving her yeah

01:41:44.440 significance now her significant here it's always tricky but like her significance at the time

01:41:51.200 was major like that funeral shows how significant she was she like saved classical french repertoire

01:41:58.240 or whatever i don't know i i don't know i don't know like she has a street named after her

01:42:04.860 she was so famous in her time comma and this is whatever we gave lola montez for significance i

01:42:11.460 feel like rachel has the same kind of significance which is what a legend at the time yeah and then

01:42:18.500 i don't know i feel it's always it's a funny category i have sorry i'm just trying to find

01:42:22.460 i have a list of like what scores people have so i can see what we gave her oh probably not

01:42:26.860 breakouts though right yeah i don't significance is kind of there to give points to people who

01:42:31.880 don't have points anywhere else you know like how significant can a person be who is like an

01:42:37.840 actress in france lola montez we gave a four for significance okay that must have been a real 0.95

01:42:45.380 conversation lola montez now almost i almost said lola montez never fucked an emperor but jk yes she 0.95

01:42:51.860 did she did i think i think the look i will give her also a four because i think just the similarities 0.91

01:42:59.040 between the two of them are so extreme the sexism bonus actually that's interesting let me see 1.00

01:43:04.320 because she had a lot stacked against her woman jewish actress poor skinny that was another thing 1.00

01:43:11.240 I didn't even talk about, but like the beauty standard at the time was not bag of bones. 1.00

01:43:17.400 And that's what she was bringing to the party.

01:43:19.260 And she said, guess what else I'm bringing to the party?

01:43:21.960 Intensité.

01:43:24.080 Have you watched, there's this show on Netflix called Bodies that is a murder.

01:43:29.260 I have not.

01:43:29.640 Okay.

01:43:30.040 It's a murder mystery show.

01:43:31.820 So of course I watched it.

01:43:33.340 One of the actresses in it, I was watching it while I was researching this and she's

01:43:36.880 an actress called Shira Haas.

01:43:38.440 She was also in another thing.

01:43:39.680 anyway she's a jewish actress and i was watching her and i was like jewish actress and she's so

01:43:44.400 small shira haas like they they exacerbate it for dramatic purposes but i'm just i was googling i'm

01:43:49.720 just like what is this person's height it's five foot two which is not that short but i'm just

01:43:54.060 like wait bag of bones jewish actress rochelle and she is really good and intense in it anyway 1.00

01:44:01.780 but yeah so i don't know that sexism got in rochelle's way whatsoever frankly frankly 0.93

01:44:08.580 And Rochelle looked at sexism and said, how can I monetize this? 0.99

01:44:12.920 Yeah. 1.00

01:44:13.180 And then did monetize it. 1.00

01:44:14.780 Basically, we gave Lola Montez a three for sexism. 1.00

01:44:18.200 And Rochelle, that's the thing. 1.00

01:44:20.240 Like, there were these things that would have been challenges that did get in her way, but they didn't because she had this.

01:44:26.780 She was just so determined to do it.

01:44:30.280 Yeah.

01:44:30.860 So I don't think sexism got in her way, which is good.

01:44:33.300 You know, bad for a score, but good for a person.

01:44:37.820 I don't know.

01:44:38.040 I feel like two or a three or something.

01:44:40.020 I would say two. 0.97

01:44:40.920 I feel like sexism got in her way less than it did for Lola Montez. 0.93

01:44:44.800 It did. 0.95

01:44:45.820 Like, Rochelle.

01:44:46.920 Everyone loves me.

01:44:48.080 I'm beloved national icon Rochelle.

01:44:51.600 Yeah.

01:44:52.640 Yeah.

01:44:52.960 Like, it truly, there was never, like, she was pregnant, but that didn't get in her way. 1.00

01:44:58.280 She kept...

01:44:58.880 She had lovers and everyone was like, that's great.

01:45:01.260 Love that for you.

01:45:02.320 Like, it truly, I don't, like, being a woman was not really an obstacle to her.

01:45:08.040 frankly she succeeded so well i don't want to say that nothing was an obstacle to her but there was

01:45:13.220 no obstacle she did not overcome except tuberculosis yes so that gives her higher than

01:45:19.300 usual for an episode you're on 26 and that's that's amazing just a sec rachel i'm just writing

01:45:27.500 in her name easy to type one word 26 is like one of the most common scores on vulgar history

01:45:33.060 like the alison neighborhood yeah is like 23 for newcomers to the podcast every episode i'm on

01:45:41.160 the person we talk about scores the same score yeah so um empress elizabeth of russia 23

01:45:47.240 lola montez 23 catalina de araso 23.5 like that's that's the alison neighborhood i hit i hit a 23

01:45:54.640 pretty regularly so 26 26 rochelle like she pulled it out 26 so many people have a 26 i'm just

01:46:00.920 thinking of other people marie de guise as a 26 for instance let me see like it's it's just where 0.98

01:46:08.000 she belongs i think like she's around some really strong tits out contenders and a bit higher than 0.97

01:46:14.200 the others anyway allison thank you so much i was a ridiculous person forever imagining this would 0.95

01:46:19.540 take less than this amount of time that it took we always talk a big game about how long these

01:46:25.340 episodes will take and every time we are incorrect i cut out so much information about the lovers

01:46:29.880 I had separate Google Docs per lover and I'm just like, no, we have to focus on Rochelle.

01:46:34.820 We don't have time.

01:46:35.740 That's the after show type content, Anne.

01:46:38.140 Anyway, Alison, so quickly, this episode is coming out the first week of December.

01:46:41.960 I think as a great gift, anyone could give anyone would be a copy of your book,

01:46:45.580 Let the Dead Bury the Dead.

01:46:47.260 Yes, it's great for gift giving.

01:46:49.380 It's rectangular and very easy to wrap.

01:46:51.780 Absolutely.

01:46:52.620 And where can people keep up with you in this diaspora of social media?

01:46:58.100 You know what?

01:46:58.820 You have a website.

01:46:59.520 and there's links in your website to where you are right go to my website which is alisonepstein.com

01:47:05.380 there are helpful tabs and links to all of the things that i'm doing and all of the places that

01:47:09.500 i am well and i feel like especially when i record episodes like a couple weeks in advance i'm just

01:47:13.680 like two weeks from now what social where will we be i don't know what's even happening on my website

01:47:19.500 and you can find me and you will be hibernating after your book tour and yes i i am not going

01:47:26.680 anywhere. As much as I can, I am not doing anything. It'll be great.

01:47:31.680 Fabulous. Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me. I truly could not have done this

01:47:34.940 without you. There's too many Louie's. It's a lot. But Rochelle, I mean, overall,

01:47:40.400 what are your thoughts on Rochelle? What a legend. I wish I could have met her. She would

01:47:44.840 have had no interest in meeting me because I'm not cool enough, but I feel like I would have

01:47:48.100 liked to watch her walk down the street. With intensity. With intensity.

01:47:52.760 day on a rendezvous with her lovers i love the lovers like there's so many great details but

01:48:00.620 the lovers union is a great detail yes that's amazing anyway thank you so much thanks bye

01:48:07.380 so i wanted to let you know for the next little bit what you're going to be hearing

01:48:17.100 in Vulgar History podcast, which is going to be some episodes, brackets, Anne's version.

01:48:23.260 What this means is that I'm going to be taking a few weeks off just to kind of like rest up and

01:48:29.400 recuperate and whatever. And while I'm doing that, I want to be able to give you new episodes

01:48:33.740 or just something to listen to. And what it's going to be is revisiting some of the older

01:48:38.320 episodes. So our faithful editor, Christina, has been editing to improve the sound quality,

01:48:43.640 e.g. remove my mouth noises, try and make the audio better for these earlier episodes.

01:48:50.400 And so we're going to be releasing those one week with bonus new intros and extras with some

01:48:55.040 information, just catching you up with facts and information I learned after the episode first

01:48:59.860 aired in 2019. And then also for some of these, we're going to be rescoring the people because

01:49:05.580 scoring in the first season, I'm the first to admit, is like really chaotic because I didn't

01:49:09.400 know what to compare people against. And now that we have so many people, some of these are scores

01:49:15.380 I like to revisit. So anyway, so those are little treats for you. So there's always going to be

01:49:20.320 something new for you in the feed. And then in the new year, in 2024, I'm going to be back with

01:49:27.080 new episodes that are going to be a combination of some of like a few more reruns, Brackets Anne's

01:49:33.320 version, some guests coming on, authors talking about their books, and some episodes that are

01:49:38.160 just me telling you a story. And this is because I'm working on the coming up next year's new

01:49:46.460 season that I'm really excited about. It's going to be a big project. It's going to be on the scale

01:49:51.120 of the international season in terms of just like countries and places. And I need to do a lot of

01:49:55.740 reading about stuff I didn't know about, but I also really know it's important to have episodes

01:49:59.700 every week. So anyway, that's how I figured out a way to do that. So that's what's coming up.

01:50:04.360 and anyway so just know you'll always get something in this feed every week

01:50:08.960 and i'll tell you some other things that i like to tell you which are you can find me on instagram

01:50:17.220 at vulgar history pod there's merch available you know holiday festive gift giving season is here

01:50:24.380 hanukkah starts tomorrow so you can get merch at vulgar history.com store or if you're outside

01:50:30.300 the us for shipping you can go to vulgarhistory.redbubble.com has better shipping you can

01:50:35.520 also gift you can give somebody a gift of a patreon subscription why not you can support the podcast

01:50:41.560 on patreon at patreon.com slash ann foster writer or for one dollar a month you get early ad free

01:50:46.200 access to all episodes and for five dollars or more a month you get early ad free access to the 0.96

01:50:50.220 episodes as well as bonus episodes vulgar peace theater um as well as so this asshole uh you also

01:50:56.200 get the after show lots of things and i have promised when i get to 500 followers on patreon 0.90

01:51:01.100 i will do so this asshole episode on my personal nemesis john knox uh transcripts of recent episodes

01:51:07.480 are available at vulgarhistory.com thank you to eveline malik from the wordery for providing

01:51:11.820 these transcripts and i also have my gift guide is on the website so if you're looking for vulgar

01:51:17.760 history coded things to give people if you go to vulgar history pod on instagram in my highlights

01:51:22.860 I have the gift guide, which has got links to all these great small businesses where you can

01:51:26.460 get stuff like Lola Montez dolls, make your own cat embroidery, like Mary Queen of Scots famously

01:51:33.040 had. If you want to get the B hanging, the letter B or a different letter, like Anne Boleyn's

01:51:39.040 necklace. Anyway, I'm just curating stuff from small businesses because I always like to support

01:51:44.280 small independent businesses at this time of year. And also including the gift guide,

01:51:49.260 there's a list of recommended books that I've put together that are books, not ones I've talked

01:51:53.960 about on this podcast. Although those ones, I also have a list of those. If you want a gift,

01:51:58.480 because I recommend all those books, but other books I have listed in the gift guide, as well

01:52:03.520 as if you want to get a cameo from me, if you need a last minute Hanukkah gift or whatever,

01:52:08.860 and you want a gift of a video of me, I'm on cameo now. So you can do that as well.

01:52:14.140 And then also always a good gift is jewelry from Common Era Jewelry, which is 100% woman-owned 0.79

01:52:20.280 business using 100% recycled gold. They make their gold pieces made to order, which means there is

01:52:25.540 no waste when you place an order. They make the items, so they're not always, there's not a lot

01:52:29.900 sitting around unused. Their designs are all inspired by classical mythology. So you know,

01:52:35.600 Rochelle would be on board. Actually, you can get several pieces from Common Era that are of

01:52:41.460 characters portrayed by Rochelle. Cleopatra is there. I feel like Rochelle probably might have

01:52:47.920 played Agrippina at some point, but also people from mythology like Clytemnestra, Phaedra,

01:52:53.800 Medusa, just very Rochelle-coded actually. And so their pieces are available in solid gold as well

01:53:00.660 and more as in more affordable gold vermeil. And including more recently, they have the Anne Boleyn

01:53:07.720 pendant available in gold for may and vulgar history listeners can always get 15 off all

01:53:13.440 items from common era by going to commonera.com slash vulgar or using code vulgar at checkout

01:53:19.160 and yeah you know there's going to be episodes so like i'm not going anywhere i'm just going to be

01:53:25.700 like hibernating basically but until next time everybody you know happy festive holiday season

01:53:32.100 and keep your pants on. Oh, and also there's new merch. There's new merch designed by Karen

01:53:38.240 Moynihan from Double Love Podcast that says tits out, or no, it says tits the season. So if you 0.97

01:53:44.120 want to get festive holiday merch, literally, you can get that at vulgarhistory.com slash shop

01:53:48.880 or in the Redbubble shop. Anyway, pants on, tits out for the holidays, and I'll be back again next 0.85

01:53:54.800 week. Au revoir. Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Anne Foster and 0.98

01:54:01.840 Edited by Christina Lumaghi.

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Vulgar History - December 06, 2023

Rachel： The One-Named Jewish Actress and her Many, Many Lovers

Episode Stats

Transcript