Vulgar History - Rachel： The One-Named Jewish Actress And Her Many, Many Lovers (revisited)

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00:01:00.000 hello and welcome to vulgar history of feminist women's history comedy podcast my name is ann

00:01:15.840 foster and this is our hanukkah special tonight i believe when you're listening to this it is the

00:01:21.360 fourth night of hanukkah in 2025 we're talking about a woman a fantastic iconoclastic unconventional

00:01:28.940 Jewish woman who was known only by the name Rochelle, like Zendaya, like Cher. She only

00:01:35.740 needed one name and everybody knew exactly who you're talking about. We aired this two years ago

00:01:40.480 and I'm airing it again this year for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because it fits in so well with

00:01:46.340 the season that we did this past year about the French Revolution. So Rochelle lived in Paris

00:01:53.600 just after the French Revolution, and going through her story, we really see what Paris

00:02:00.400 is like after that, which I think is interesting to revisit. Having gone through the whole French

00:02:04.640 Revolution season, we also did an episode this past year about Empress Eugenie, who was married

00:02:10.280 to Napoleon III, who was one of Rochelle's many lovers. I also think that what we all now know

00:02:16.300 and understand about the French Revolution and the mob mentality, I appreciated listening again

00:02:22.700 to just how people reacted to Rochelle and how she really became so popular among the mob.

00:02:27.820 So this episode also just barely fits into our series we're doing right now, the Regency Era,

00:02:32.560 because Rochelle was born in February 1821. That was part of the Regency Era. So she was,

00:02:39.800 you know, not in England during that exact same time, but I'm gonna all allow it. I think that 0.99

00:02:44.320 this works with that theme as well. So I just really wanted to revisit this episode at this

00:02:49.160 time of year. During Hanukkah, I like to celebrate and elevate some lesser known Jewish women from

00:02:54.760 history. And Rochelle, I think, is worth discussing over and over again. And we have a very special

00:03:00.800 guest on this episode, which is frequent collaborator, Alison Epstein. So when we first

00:03:05.660 recorded this, Alison's book, Fagin the Thief, was just about to come out. Since then, the book has

00:03:11.220 come out. It's been so successful. And so if you haven't yet read Alison's book, Fagin the Thief,

00:03:16.060 If you should, what are you waiting for? Basically. But anyway, please enjoy this

00:03:20.580 revisit episode talking all about the one and the only Rochelle. 1.00

00:03:27.540 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast hosted

00:03:32.440 by me, Anne Foster. And every year, every year, I've been doing the podcast for four years,

00:03:37.980 which is bananas to me to think about. But the years 2020 and 2021 don't count for anyone.

00:03:44.380 so it's really just two years anyway i started a tradition of doing a festive tits out holiday

00:03:50.160 spectacular which when i look back at the people i've discussed in this so far so the first one

00:03:55.420 was latisse knolls and then the second was princess cecilia the pirate princess from sweden

00:03:59.560 then last year was donia gracia nasi and when i was looking at like this year and who am i going

00:04:04.720 to cover and kind of what is the theme you know i do the halloween specials which is always just 0.99

00:04:09.420 like who's a spooky bitch and I am running out of spooky bitches because for Halloween I don't want 1.00

00:04:15.740 to be like and here's a person who's accused of being a witch and then she was murdered at the 1.00

00:04:18.720 end like I want it to be a nice story so I'm running out of things so I was like what am I

00:04:22.580 doing for the holiday spectaculars and I think it's similar where it's just like let's do a story

00:04:27.180 that is tits out but also nice I want this to be like a nice story because it's a stressful time

00:04:32.580 of year for everybody even in a non-chaos year of international events so here's just a nice story

00:04:40.440 you can listen to and just vibe out and just be like this person's going to be okay there's not

00:04:44.780 going to be murders there's not going to be well i was going to say there's not going to be executions

00:04:50.140 and there are executions but not of this person they're just happening around this person anyway

00:04:54.820 it's a nice story and the way the timing worked out as well is that this episode is coming out

00:05:00.280 just before the first night of Hanukkah. So it's kind of like tits out, festive holiday,

00:05:05.080 spectacular Hanukkah edition in that way. And also a request that I get every, I get, 0.87

00:05:11.880 I don't know, I get suggestions from people. I get, when people ask for requests, sometimes I

00:05:16.560 take that more seriously than a suggestion because it's like someone has a need, you know,

00:05:20.080 like this is someone's culture and they want to hear that reflected back in the podcast. I'm like,

00:05:24.400 I want to find someone, you know? And so for Jewish people, I've had like requests like,

00:05:29.860 oh I'd love it if you did more Jewish people on the podcast I'm like I would love to I would love 0.60

00:05:34.220 to do more non-British royal white Christians in general and the challenge in that to me is just 0.57

00:05:43.220 like most of the history I have access to as an English speaking person is white Christian well 0.89

00:05:49.280 I mean just royal people in Western Europe are all Christian I think I feel fairly confident in that

00:05:56.400 anyway but then somebody in the discord who goes by the name momo don't know your real name but

00:06:02.280 momo thank goodness for you because you were like well what about rochelle and i was like well who's

00:06:07.180 rochelle and then i read about rochelle and i'm like this is amazing this is like it's a jewish

00:06:11.660 person but it's also like a nice story so that fits for the festive holiday celebration and then

00:06:17.000 i was just like oh no this is 19th century france this is not everyone's called louis i don't know

00:06:21.920 what's going on. And that's why I've invited, friend of the podcast, Alison Epstein. Welcome,

00:06:26.720 Alison. Hello. I am here as the unofficial 19th century France correspondent. Thank goodness,

00:06:33.940 because I, even just preparing this, I was like, Alison, this revolution, is this the Les Mis thing?

00:06:39.120 And you're like, no. And then you, you've made a spreadsheet with a flowchart. I did. I made

00:06:44.200 Anna a flowchart of the Louises, just for, for reference for the, the sheer number of men in

00:06:50.200 this story named louis and honestly also named napoleon but we'll get to that i truly did not

00:06:56.660 realize like i just have done most of the research i've ever done has been about england related

00:07:02.680 things so i didn't and i've sort of avoided france partially because they're all called louis and

00:07:06.160 that's confusing to me did not realize how chaotic the 19th century was in france fucked up time to

00:07:11.840 be french i'll tell you what there's a lot going on so this is like the backdrop of the saga we're

00:07:17.760 telling. And so, but can't avoid talking about it because it becomes involved like anyone who's

00:07:23.320 living through world events kind of unavoidably. But then also there's the Jewish aspect of this.

00:07:27.900 So Rochelle, the person I'm talking about is a Jewish person. And so you also have done all

00:07:31.340 this research because various reasons, including that your next book is like about, tell people

00:07:36.500 what your next book is about and why you've done this research. Yes. I've been researching the

00:07:40.220 history of Jewish people in Europe and such for the last several years, because I'm working on a

00:07:46.200 book that is a retelling of Oliver Twist from Fagin's perspective. So trying to untangle

00:07:52.240 Dickens' anti-Semitism is what I've been working on. And I'm like, okay, I've been doing this as

00:07:56.120 historical fiction. I need to know a lot about what it was like to be Jewish in Europe at this

00:08:00.520 time. And if you want to know the most depressing kind of research to do, it's being Jewish in 1.00

00:08:05.560 Europe in the 19th century. There's very few good stories in that research. So I am thrilled, 0.99

00:08:10.920 and for a happy jewish 19th century france story this is the thing too and i i mean we're talking

00:08:17.220 specifically about a jewish person on the jewish experience day but in general when i'm trying to

00:08:22.260 find stories for this podcast not just for like you know like a feel-good story for the holidays

00:08:26.400 but also in general and i talked about this when i was talking with alice warkowski about louisa

00:08:32.820 may alcott and she mentioned alice did like it's hard to be scandalous or tits out when your family

00:08:39.520 is relying on you for income when you're a marginalized person when you're a lower class

00:08:43.640 it's just like yeah like that's I like to tell stories on this podcast like there's there's so

00:08:48.060 many great podcasts out there that tell stories of heroines and people doing great things but I

00:08:52.500 tell stories of dirtbags who do stupid things and we love them for it and it's harder to find

00:09:01.840 stories like that from somebody who's not the dominant culture right in a particular way more 1.00

00:09:07.420 leeway if you're the daughter of the king you can do whatever you want for the cecilia of sweden

00:09:11.520 being an excellent example the very same yeah and comma at the same time like i have come across

00:09:16.860 stories the interview i love allison's listened to every episode of vulgar history so i can throw

00:09:21.560 stuff out and you're like yeah i've heard that but the interview i did with um nikki taylor who 0.72

00:09:26.920 wrote her book about like enslaved black women who killed their employers there was the one dirtbag 0.96

00:09:33.540 who was like an enslaved Black woman in America 1.00

00:09:35.940 who would just be like, 0.74

00:09:36.940 yeah, I'm going to Bible study. 0.97

00:09:38.200 And then she'd like steal the money from the house 0.99

00:09:40.480 and go gambling on riverboats.

00:09:42.440 What a legend. 0.91

00:09:43.500 Like you can be a dirtbag in various ways.

00:09:46.480 It's just, and people were.

00:09:48.000 But my challenge as this podcast host

00:09:49.620 is to find those people.

00:09:50.760 And it's just harder to find them.

00:09:53.700 Anyway, Rochelle.

00:09:54.860 So again, Momo from the Discord group.

00:09:56.880 If you want to join the Discord group,

00:09:58.540 sometimes people are like,

00:09:59.200 you should start a Discord.

00:10:00.120 I'm like, I did.

00:10:01.140 Anyone who joins the Patreon,

00:10:02.600 at patreon.com, such an foster writer at the $5 or more level, you get into the discord and we chat,

00:10:09.060 but you can also recommend things to me in all kinds of ways without joining the Patreon.

00:10:11.740 That just happens to be where I learned about Rochelle. What a gift. So Rochelle. And one of

00:10:18.300 the first things I think I told you, Alison, is that her name is just Rochelle. It's no,

00:10:22.920 it's like Cher Zendaya, just Rochelle. Iconic. Which is like right away. I'm like, Oh, I'm

00:10:29.400 interested she's also aka um la grande rochelle even better sometimes just la grande

00:10:36.680 and sometimes mademoiselle rochelle i think la grande rochelle is the greatest thing a person

00:10:44.160 could ever be called i will be waiting for a better detail on this story so she's french

00:10:49.120 so 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

00:10:54.180 rachel which to me is such a everyday name that just so many people have it's just it's like if

00:10:58.880 you were just like oh i'm allison it's like when your name's allison you can't just go by allison

00:11:02.740 like that if your name is zendaya sure but it's it's someone just being like oh i'm john like

00:11:09.380 you're gonna have to go on i know so i love that she's just rochelle which i will also mention and

00:11:15.520 i've told you before when we were doing the american scott season you remember there was

00:11:19.320 this servant called french paris i sure do and i did have more than one instance where i was

00:11:25.040 fact checking some stuff and I just went on the old google.com and I was like French Paris and

00:11:29.820 guess what does not come up information about that person because guess what those words have

00:11:34.780 other meanings that are more common so I did have that incident at least once perhaps no more than

00:11:39.900 once when I was researching I was just like Rochelle it's like date of death and it's just

00:11:44.820 like you can't just type in Rachel like the name Rachel and this is also I was like am I the first

00:11:51.540 podcast that's done an episode about Rochelle. So I was looking up like, because if you go to

00:11:55.300 Apple Podcasts or whatever, you can do like an episode search, but I'm just like, how do I search

00:11:58.780 this? I'm like, has anyone done an episode about Rochelle? Let me just type in Rachel.

00:12:04.380 Oh, there's anyways, I don't know if anyone's done a podcast about her before.

00:12:07.420 I was typing in LeGrand Rochelle.

00:12:10.860 Anyway, so my main reference for this podcast is a biography that's sort of like

00:12:20.060 an interpretive biography of rochelle which is you know what the vibes of course that's how

00:12:26.080 she's written about so anyway it's a book called tragic muse rochelle of the comedy francaise and

00:12:31.460 this is by rachel brownstein and she does it's the sort of biography where like her experience

00:12:36.680 researching it as part of the narrative and so she talks about calling up the french archives

00:12:40.380 because it's she wrote in the 90s there's not email and she told them her name was rachel and

00:12:44.640 they're like oh i see why you're researching this i'm laughing but you did just interview

00:12:49.600 an expert first of all because her last name was foster so sometimes that is what happens

00:12:53.680 sometimes that is true and that is part of why rachel brownstein was interested in this story

00:12:58.060 uh anyway so then i also did there's a couple articles so there's one by irena rabinovich

00:13:03.900 from recently from 2022 unpacking rachel felix's constructed and self-constructed jewishness

00:13:10.600 and then an article about rochelle from the jewish women's archive and also from jewish

00:13:15.520 encyclopedia.com and all those links will be in the show notes as well i will say that

00:13:19.480 um rachel brownstein's book is out of print as a book but you can acquire it as an ebook or

00:13:23.980 used copies so i mean we're gonna get into this and i just wanna i don't know anti-semitism will

00:13:30.700 occur comma but this is still a nice story so i don't know that's fair it's the 19th century i

00:13:39.800 think that went implied okay okay i don't think trigger warnings are required here is what i'm

00:13:45.560 So, Rochelle.

00:13:48.180 I've been so excited to tell Allison this story for so long.

00:13:52.200 I keep almost, like, DMing you the entire story because I just want to tell.

00:13:56.360 I'm like, no, you have to save it.

00:13:58.660 So, I'm just excited to finally be here and able to tell you the story.

00:14:02.100 Rochelle was born February 28th, 1821.

00:14:06.240 A couple things about that date.

00:14:07.740 This was 11 days after the birth of Lola Montez in Ireland.

00:14:14.000 What a year. 0.99

00:14:14.740 to be alive what was happening astrologically they were both born under the sign of messy bitch 0.95

00:14:22.160 and i love that i love it i love it and there's a couple points in this story where i'm gonna like 0.57

00:14:28.080 i don't know that these two ever encountered each other but there's points where their stories

00:14:32.220 really paralleled each other so i feel like what i ended up thinking is this is sort of like in star

00:14:37.840 wars it's like the light and the dark force have to balance so it's like lola montez was born and

00:14:44.140 so Rochelle had to be born to somehow balance the universe. Or the other important detail is that

00:14:50.640 two months and a bit after both of them were born, Napoleon died. So, I think you had first

00:14:58.760 suggested that just the combination of the tits out energy of Lola, Montez, and Rochelle both

00:15:03.840 entering the world. It took a few months to get to St. Helena. It was a ways away. Yeah, he's near

00:15:09.840 grangola you gotta wait for the trade wins but after that yeah the sheer energy he's just like

00:15:14.740 oh no two two tits up women have been born i must depart he can't he can't stand up to that 0.66

00:15:20.380 can't do it okay so rochelle so her name like eventually she just becomes rochelle but i'll 0.99

00:15:25.640 explain how she got to that point so her name was um she was she was born to itinerant jewish

00:15:34.300 peddlers on the roads in switzerland so like there wasn't a birth certificate yeah she was born we do

00:15:40.780 know that we do know that later on the birth certificate was supplied but anyway so her name

00:15:45.860 was maybe elisa slash rochelle or rochelle slash elizabeth or dash so like a hyphenated name which

00:15:53.620 because her siblings had names that were like that where it's kind of like an old testament name and

00:15:57.460 a new testament name or like a jewish name and a christian name like her sister was called sophie

00:16:02.380 Sarah, which I think is probably something where it's just like the parents wanted to give them

00:16:08.240 options. You know, it's like to code switch depending where you're going. Absolutely. I

00:16:12.860 think there's still people who do that now. Yeah. Let me get my non-Jewish name out for the

00:16:17.880 paperwork. Yeah. So her parents, her father was called Jacques and her mother was Therese Esther

00:16:24.700 chaya triple names and their last name was felix so f-e-l-i-x which is a french you're also here

00:16:33.040 as somebody who knows french a bit more than me a bit i did i knew a lot of french five years ago

00:16:38.340 so so felix is a french name slash word that means basically like happiness

00:16:43.680 it's latin for like luck right yeah and so the jewish last name baruch has the same meaning

00:16:51.420 yeah so chances are their last name was baruch and then they changed it to felix to be like i

00:16:57.280 don't know if there's got all this stuff like napoleon or somebody was like jewish people can

00:17:02.540 be citizens but you have to have french names so like maybe at that point they changed it

00:17:06.960 we'll translate our own names into latin languages yeah just to be safe yeah so and this is part of

00:17:14.740 where it's like she became just rochelle it's like yeah like was what did her last you know

00:17:18.320 Like, I don't think she was ever really committed to this as a last name to begin with.

00:17:22.660 Anyway, so her parents, Jacques and Therese Esther Chaya, were Jewish peddlers who sold secondhand clothes from a wagon they used as both home and warehouse.

00:17:31.620 She was born on the road, basically, literally, in Switzerland, in the Swiss town of Mumpf, which is spelled M-U-M-P-F.

00:17:41.000 Spelled like it sounds?

00:17:42.300 Mumpf. 0.99

00:17:42.780 So Switzerland at this point, so 1821, somewhat risky territory for Jewish peddlers because they

00:17:48.540 were legally barred from residing or establishing businesses in the country. But her mother was in

00:17:54.720 labor and so she had to be born. And so there were some like shitty biographies written about 0.91

00:18:00.900 her in the early 20th century. In the Rachel Brownstein book, she's just kind of like, well,

00:18:04.740 here's what might have happened. But like a weird combination of like glorification of her,

00:18:10.420 but also this kind of like look how jewish she was so some of the stories of her birth really

00:18:14.740 sound like the nativity story in the sense of like it's these two this jewish husband or wife

00:18:19.500 and she has to have a baby but there's no room at the inn but instead of like herod is doing a

00:18:24.440 census or whatever it's like jewish people aren't allowed to go into inns so anyway i mean yeah but

00:18:31.680 then there was a whole thing about like she was born and then at some point she might have like

00:18:34.660 fallen out of the wagon and then she was saved by this dog and or maybe she was saved by like

00:18:40.880 a lot of this stuff was like retroactively trying to show like and this is why she became such a

00:18:45.640 legendary person so they really these weird biographies like really mythologized her birth

00:18:50.980 to show like she was destined i think it was something like a french person caught her falling

00:18:56.560 off the wagon and that was like how they knew that she would be the savior of all of france

00:19:01.080 spoiler and seems like the guy who caught the baby should be the savior of all of france like

00:19:06.220 knock over there either a dog or a french person saved her if a dog's catching babies i want to

00:19:12.220 talk to the dog not the baby yeah true okay so there was also four other siblings born so she

00:19:17.760 had older sister sophie sarah and then she had four other siblings rafael one name rebecca one

00:19:22.860 name adelaide leah two names and melanie dinah so i think i feel like all of them like the names

00:19:29.080 are flexible the names are like guidelines okay so her dad jacques this is where it gets like

00:19:35.080 the people in the story are dirtbags and then the way that they're talked about sometimes is

00:19:41.560 anti-semitic and so i'm trying to be like here's what they're like and i don't know so her dad was 0.89

00:19:48.940 kind of a shitty stage dad type energy he was also a grifter because you got it like if he's 0.66

00:19:56.880 a hustler like if he's just like i'm selling secondhand clothes out of a wagon that i also 0.94

00:20:01.560 live in it's like yeah he's gonna be you know what's not gonna make you a lot of money selling

00:20:06.100 a bunch of secondhand clothes on the streets where the only thing that's going on is a dog

00:20:10.100 catches babies sometimes a guy's gotta hustle no exactly so he's like got a lot of um strategies

00:20:16.220 to make money he's like multiple entrepreneurship which can be interpreted as being like oh he's

00:20:22.580 money hungry or whatever it's like no he's just no he would like enough money to feed his five to

00:20:27.080 six children yeah yeah probably yeah exactly so he's like he's hustling and it's like of course

00:20:32.260 he was because otherwise they would all die anyway so he realized so they're just like the family's

00:20:37.820 doing everything they can to make money um and one of the things is that sophie sarah and rochelle

00:20:41.540 would go out on the streets and sophie sarah would play a guitar and then rochelle would sing and

00:20:46.620 they would make money like busking basically but then um he was like wait a minute and this is

00:20:51.800 kind of like i don't i'm gonna guess you haven't read britney spears this memoir the woman in me

00:20:56.600 not yet it is on my tbr though it's really good it's like really interesting and well written

00:21:02.760 but kind of like britney spears's father he was like wait a minute my daughter rochelle

00:21:06.960 is actually talented like this kid i can make money from this yeah so the family went to lyon

00:21:15.040 L-O-Y-O-N-S?

00:21:16.820 Lyon, yeah.

00:21:17.700 Lyon, France.

00:21:19.720 France.

00:21:20.440 France.

00:21:21.180 Where there was a pre-existing Jewish community of people.

00:21:24.620 And so this is, I don't know, 1830 or something by now.

00:21:28.640 But since 1791, I wanted to mention this.

00:21:31.640 So the French Revolution happened.

00:21:34.160 And there was like the Republic and everything.

00:21:36.540 And as part of that in 1791, three kinds of people were allowed to be French citizens

00:21:42.240 that weren't before.

00:21:44.080 and those types of people were jewish people protestants and actors i didn't know that yeah

00:21:51.540 that's really funny yeah this comes up because rochelle is going to be an actor obviously

00:21:56.760 yep and this is where the article i read just recently like i put these notes together then

00:22:02.600 found another article that was helpful the one by irina rabinovich um was talking about so for 1.00

00:22:09.280 rochelle like um just in terms of being like marginalized from society it's like she's a woman

00:22:13.840 and she's jewish and she's an actor it's like three strikes that's a lot that's extra extra 0.70

00:22:20.640 level up in terms of just like the challenges of her daily life but as we'll see she crushes it

00:22:27.320 so anyway one day rochelle and sophie sarah were out playing guitar and singing on the street

00:22:32.140 they were like ages eight and ten or something like that and side note as an adult rochelle

00:22:37.880 would proudly display a guitar in her home and say, this was the guitar that I was playing

00:22:42.160 when I was a young urchin. And she sold it for a lot of money to one of her lovers.

00:22:49.680 Knowing Rochelle and just her family's ability to just like find a way to make money. And I don't

00:22:56.720 mean that in an anti-Semitic way. I mean that, you know. Listen, as someone who has been researching

00:23:01.500 Jewish dirtbags for years, don't worry about it. Okay. I just want everybody to know, like she 1.00

00:23:05.720 and her family are like really good

00:23:07.760 like the Kardashians like

00:23:09.700 they just find an opportunity in everything

00:23:11.900 so I feel like Rochelle where she's like oh yes

00:23:13.800 that's the guitar I played when I was a child 1.00

00:23:15.580 it was not bitch that's just 1.00

00:23:17.720 a guitar you found in a second hand shop 1.00

00:23:19.940 somewhere and you're like

00:23:21.040 and so she sold it she would replace it with another one

00:23:23.780 and then sell that one 100% that's the vibe 0.98

00:23:26.020 anyway so 0.99

00:23:27.460 one day so she and her sister

00:23:29.800 and they were maybe singing close to

00:23:31.880 like brothels or like whatever

00:23:33.640 I don't know like a lot of the

00:23:35.720 so this is part of where like a kind stranger was like oh wow like look at these like talented 1.00

00:23:41.340 young girls i need to rescue them from this life of singing outside of brothels i mean fair that's 0.93

00:23:47.960 not great for an eight-year-old no but it does have a bit of a this guy who like discovered them

00:23:53.080 like the vibe is a bit of like white savior because it's like how much like their life was

00:23:57.900 not amazing but how much was he just like oh i must save these young ethnic children but also 0.51

00:24:02.900 he was just like oh shit this is like a young britney spears like this rochelle like oh my 0.58

00:24:06.640 gosh like this is yeah maybe i can stage manage this precocious eight-year-old and guess what 0.89

00:24:11.740 this yeah so anyway so the guy who discovered them was this parisian musician slash educator

00:24:17.940 named etienne coran um and he was like these two girls should attend my acting school in paris

00:24:24.240 and so the family went to paris in 1831 this is one year after the july revolution had installed

00:24:32.400 a guy called louis philippe as king of the french yes this is why you brought me onto the podcast

00:24:39.360 so there was the french revolution there was this was in 1789 yeah so that was

00:24:48.680 about what is that 40 years ago yes yeah yeah 1831 yeah yeah so 40 years ago there was the 0.99

00:24:56.460 french revolution in which marie entoinette was killed all the shit went down guillotines 0.90

00:25:00.760 And her husband, who was the king, but whatever. 0.99

00:25:04.060 Mostly Marie Antoinette.

00:25:05.300 Her husband, yeah.

00:25:06.480 Yes.

00:25:07.260 And so that was the French Revolution.

00:25:11.040 And there was a period of about, what, 10, 15 years where they were like, okay, let's

00:25:16.120 try to figure out what it would be like to have a republic.

00:25:18.620 Let's try to create some kind of a parliament.

00:25:21.060 Let's do our best to ride this democracy thing out.

00:25:25.320 And then, as we all know, Napoleon said, however, I could be the emperor.

00:25:30.980 That sure would be easier for everybody involved.

00:25:33.640 And Napoleon was emperor for like a cool decade.

00:25:37.260 Yeah.

00:25:37.660 And then this is like then after he died.

00:25:42.640 So Napoleon was exiled for the actual final time in like 1815.

00:25:48.880 So still 15 years before all of this.

00:25:51.340 And so then they're like, OK, we don't have an emperor.

00:25:53.700 we don't have a parliament we got to find somebody else to be in charge of france again

00:25:59.360 and the monarchists who were like things sure were better before we had the french revolution

00:26:04.500 we're like okay we're gonna put another king so they're like they're looking at the family tree

00:26:09.840 on a scroll they're just like this guy's dead this guy's who's like yeah this guy louis philippe so

00:26:15.700 he's not like directly well there is we didn't get to louis philippe quite yet i'm so sorry

00:26:21.180 but first they went to louis the 16th younger brother okay they were like let's just go to

00:26:26.700 directly next guy in line as if this were all just done sorry right i'm i was confused because

00:26:31.780 everyone is called louis you know this is a different louis this is louis the 18th younger

00:26:37.080 brother of louis the 16th not louis philippe can you believe those are three different men

00:26:41.620 how how could i not keep track of that that's so straightforward so like french revolution

00:26:49.060 guillotined king his younger brother is king for a while okay then he dies and his brother

00:26:55.740 charles becomes king charles is king in 1830 charles is extremely unpopular nobody likes charles

00:27:04.600 and he tries to like deal with this lack of popularity by cracking down on like journalists

00:27:12.120 and public assembly and freedom of speech and stuff and the french are like well we just had

00:27:16.900 revolution 40 years ago sir we can do it again so they take to the streets they make barricades 0.89

00:27:24.480 they yell at the king and the king who would prefer not to get guillotined like his older

00:27:30.560 brother louis the 16th runs away with his son and they're like absolutely not we're gonna go live

00:27:37.300 he goes to england for a while he actually lives in uh holy rude palace for a little while which

00:27:43.280 i thought was dope where rizzio was murdered the very same okay okay so he's traveling europe and

00:27:49.880 now they have to find somebody else and so that's where louis philippe comes up he's like this is

00:27:55.460 where you unfurl the scroll and you unfurl the scroll and you go all the way back up the french

00:28:00.960 family tree back to like they're going grandfathers up to the louis cator's who was the sun king

00:28:09.140 Famously known to be extremely fancy and extravagant and had loads of mistresses.

00:28:13.020 He was the one in the affair of the poisons, if you remember.

00:28:16.020 Oh, we're going to talk about him in a bit.

00:28:17.540 Yeah.

00:28:18.400 Wonderful.

00:28:19.140 Because if you go back up the family tree of the French to Louis XIV, he had legitimate

00:28:25.420 sons that got all of those other Louises.

00:28:28.200 And then he had a famous mistress, Madame de Montespan, who, if you remember from the

00:28:35.320 la voisin episode, was the mistress who tried to murder a bunch of babies in a black magic ritual

00:28:41.380 to make the king fall in love with her? Allegedly. Allegedly. 0.51

00:28:45.640 Yeah. Not allegedly.

00:28:48.160 I mean, I think it would have, yes.

00:28:50.100 That's canon on this podcast.

00:28:51.860 That is canon. That is a historical fact.

00:28:54.140 So she and Louis Quatorze had their own line of descendants, and Louis Philippe is descended from her.

00:29:03.140 okay is he the one who's called the citizen king yes because he was not like he's like way off 0.97

00:29:10.520 there on the fucking family tree like you have to you have to throw a dart to catch him on the 0.93

00:29:15.440 family tree so like he's just one of the guys he's just one of the people he's not he's like 0.99

00:29:20.560 a direct descendant of the king but that's how they were trying to market him because the french

00:29:25.440 were very upset with kings at this point but that's the july revolution in terms of what you

00:29:29.880 just said i need to tell everybody because i'm in canada commonwealth country on our currency

00:29:34.440 is the monarch of great britain and it was just released what the charles coins are going to look

00:29:40.160 like barf and it's like charles but he's wearing not a crown it's his like profile his face profile

00:29:46.360 he's wearing not a crown and he's wearing you can tell just from like the bus like a suit

00:29:49.780 so it's like well that just looks like some guy like the queen on the coins she's wearing like

00:29:55.320 pearls and a crown it's just like well that looks like a queen this just looks like you put some guy

00:29:59.620 on my money people are saying they're gonna call him the chuck buck um the citizen king

00:30:05.280 of the present day well and that's that's when the theory i think is that he wants to be like

00:30:09.640 i'm not like the old king i'm a cool king where it's like okay so you're on my coin not wearing

00:30:14.860 a crown but you're still on my coin exactly yes this is exactly what it was like yeah the citizen

00:30:21.080 king is like i'm not like the other kings i'm a cool king it's like but you're still you're still

00:30:25.100 looking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Louis Philippe, like listeners, this is why Alison is here.

00:30:32.140 She's going to explain stuff, but like Rochelle, we love her, but she's living in this time of like

00:30:37.140 rapid turnover of who is in charge of France. And it becomes very pertinent to her life.

00:30:43.620 So at this point, she's a little girl going to acting school, a little child star. So she and

00:30:47.860 her family settled in Paris in the Marais district, which was like the Jewish neighborhood. And I

00:30:53.040 think still is the jewish neighborhood it's real bougie now oh is it like yeah that's very expensive 1.00

00:30:58.400 to live there now it did not used to be because that's how gentrification they lived across the 0.97

00:31:03.080 street from the morgue well michelle and her family i bet you people were just dying to get in there

00:31:08.700 and so anyway she and her sister sophie sarah attended this etienne's school for like child

00:31:16.860 stars or whatever and they were trained in acting and music and so this is like very important and

00:31:21.680 this is, I don't know what your background is on this, but I'm hoping you know something about it,

00:31:25.280 which is the tradition of classical drama in France. Do you know anything about that?

00:31:30.920 Probably not that I am willing to try. Okay. So at this time, one of the most popular sorts of

00:31:38.200 plays to be performed were plays about Napoleon. Okay. That's why I don't know anything about it

00:31:45.260 because I refuse to learn. I love that this episode is coming out around the same time.

00:31:49.520 that movie napoleon is coming out so this is like i'm not anyway france was like napoleon had only

00:31:57.060 just died like 10 years ago and they're all just like let's like they're already like that's retro

00:32:01.380 like napoleon vintage they're just like remember napoleon was the emperor it's like you kicked him

00:32:06.000 out well they've had four kings since then like it's been a busy time so they're like in retrospect

00:32:11.840 was he so bad yes yes he was so so plays about napoleon were really popular at the time did

00:32:19.380 this imprint on rochelle in some ways we'll talk later about her psychology and her choice of

00:32:24.120 lovers anyway plays in general were really popular and this is kind of the first time in france

00:32:30.160 potentially in anywhere where performers became celebrities and stars like when we're talking

00:32:36.900 about like your first book like kit marlowe and like william shakespeare times which is england

00:32:41.580 not france but it's just like oh there are the players they're the actors but they weren't like

00:32:45.340 feted by yeah they were like society no one wanted to associate yeah they were like yeah

00:32:51.500 so this is where a couple things like I mentioned Rochelle woman Jewish actor like she slid in like 0.97

00:32:58.320 she was born in exactly the right time to like make a go of things because actors were starting 1.00

00:33:03.900 to become wealthy celebrities who could hang out with the aristocracy and also Jewish people had 0.96

00:33:10.600 more rights than they ever had before in france question mark so good timing on her part to be 1.00

00:33:16.660 born under the lola montez moon so on the side of the road next to a dog like jesus no room at the

00:33:26.260 inn okay so 18 so at around this time there's something like 9 000 jewish people in paris

00:33:32.200 which is three times as many as there had been a couple decades before like jewish people were

00:33:37.200 coming there because it's like, guess what? Change your last name. You can be a citizen. 0.98

00:33:40.400 Napoleon had in fact appointed some sort of government, like self-government for Jewish

00:33:46.820 people. So this like encouraged Jewish people, like intentionally, he wanted immigration from 0.97

00:33:51.500 Jewish people to come to France and more of them did, and then kind of developed like a neighborhood.

00:33:55.180 And so the general aim of the Jewish community in Paris was to retain religious identity while

00:34:00.020 attaining social assimilation so they were not under pressure officially to like convert and

00:34:08.800 they were allowed to sort of like have your like jewish neighborhood so remember how only recently

00:34:14.860 jewish people and actors were allowed to be citizens so the way that both were treated like

00:34:20.440 their rights were really similar actors and jewish people so both actors and jews were denied christian

00:34:27.260 marriage and burial. Okay. One of those makes sense. I don't know. Somehow a lot of Jewish

00:34:36.180 people started entering the theater community, maybe because it's like, well, none of us can

00:34:41.180 get buried. So we pay as well. I don't know. It's like, well, these are, it's not going to change

00:34:45.640 what we can or can't do. Our rights are the same as actors. So let's all be actors. So Jewish

00:34:49.560 actresses and models became like trendy at this time when Rochelle is coming of age. So it's like,

00:34:55.880 this is setting the stage for her to succeed in this really interesting unanticipated to me way 1.00

00:35:02.760 of just like you know what's really hot right now Jewish actresses like what okay she's like guess 0.66

00:35:06.980 what guess who I am okay so she's in like child star acting school in France so 1834 she's like 0.59

00:35:13.440 13 an American actor named Edwin Forrest went was just like around and there was like a showcase

00:35:19.120 for like emerging young talent and he saw her and he wrote this like not later knowing how famous

00:35:25.360 she would be at the time he wrote. Okay. And I need to just make it clear to everybody that

00:35:29.480 Rochelle was like very thin because of starvation reasons. It's similar to what I've read about 0.88

00:35:37.060 Audrey Hepburn, who like during World War II, she was so undernourished that she just became

00:35:42.800 really thin and then just was really thin the rest of her life. Like it affects you in a lifelong

00:35:46.220 way when you're starvation living. Anyway, so Rochelle was always a very, very, very small,

00:35:51.620 thin person i want to preface this because edwin forest wrote that little bag of bones

00:35:58.060 rude with the marble face and flaming eyes is how he described her and he says in her he could see

00:36:06.240 demonical power if she lives and does not burn out too soon she will become something wonderful

00:36:12.560 and this is not dissimilar to how people talked about her as an actor her acting was so intense

00:36:20.480 and i don't know i was trying to think of someone to compare her to and i can't because it's just

00:36:25.780 like she was so intense with acting that everyone was just like holy shit oh my god like like all i

00:36:33.460 can think of is to compare it to like a singer who's really powerful or something like yeah her 0.54

00:36:38.180 intent like she's this little tiny person but she's so intense that everyone's just like

00:36:42.660 like as we're gonna see it's that's her style it's just tiny but intense so when she was age 15

00:36:50.240 she left acting school to go make a go of it. Her dad was her manager. And so she went to the

00:36:55.940 Théâtre Molière, where she received additional training. And then she was admitted to the

00:37:01.900 prestigious Conservatoire. And then she soon left the Conservatoire for higher paying work at the

00:37:08.160 Théâtre de la Gimnaise, which looks like the theater of gymnastics, but it's not.

00:37:13.460 I was going to say, it looks like the gym theater. That's okay. Which is, by the way,

00:37:17.880 is what we had in my middle school,

00:37:19.440 which is the theater was just a little stage

00:37:21.140 at the very far end of the gym

00:37:22.480 underneath the basketball hoop.

00:37:23.580 So that's what I'm going to think of.

00:37:24.480 Yeah, sort of like the cafetorium.

00:37:26.360 Yeah, exactly.

00:37:27.920 Basically, she's going place to place 0.99

00:37:29.200 learning theater acting training.

00:37:31.040 And I think I write about this later,

00:37:32.420 but I'll describe it to you now.

00:37:33.820 When I say she's getting theater acting training,

00:37:35.320 she's being trained in the classical repertoire,

00:37:38.420 which is like the plays that were popular

00:37:41.240 when Louis the Sun King was around.

00:37:44.160 These are plays that all glorify France.

00:37:46.320 and it's like the national French identity are these plays which are very old-fashioned and not

00:37:51.100 very popular but it's like the official theater of France so this is what and they're trained in

00:37:55.980 it's like here's how you say your lines and here's this you're trained in like you learn the like hand

00:38:00.460 movements so it's like every time you see these plays performed by anyone they're doing the same

00:38:04.800 hand movements as someone a hundred years ago doing the same part that's wild yeah so it's like

00:38:09.960 frozen in amber like acting like it's 16 40 or whatever yeah so like this is the training she's

00:38:16.760 receiving it's like very specific to perform only these plays in this specific way but what she

00:38:25.000 brings to it is intensity anyway so then later she began so this is like she's like 15 by the time

00:38:33.580 she's 16 she's taking private lessons with a guy called joseph isadora samson who i mentioned is

00:38:39.640 43 at the time just because the phantom of the opera i'm assuming based on the way

00:38:44.780 he lives in the sewers the phantom of the cafetorium yes so um there's a lot of like

00:38:54.540 older men father figure type people in her life which some of the other biographies that were

00:39:01.140 written closer to when she was alive were like well surely she was just their pawn she was their

00:39:06.600 puppet like these men with ambitions were like using her where it's just like or was she just 0.66

00:39:11.820 like so weirdly god level talented that they all just wanted to be her manager and make money

00:39:18.100 like it's a britney spears situation anyway so samson so he became it's kind of like there's

00:39:24.920 samson and then there's her dad and they were often compared like by she's gonna become famous

00:39:30.300 very shortly so this is why i'm saying like everyone knew about them but it's like they

00:39:35.620 were portrayed as sort of like rivals to manage her for control over her career. Samson versus

00:39:42.580 her dad, which is going to heat up. Anyway, when she's 17, she signs a contract at the most

00:39:47.880 prestigious institution of the French stage, the Comédie Française. This is the official state

00:39:53.540 theater where Samson himself was an actor. And so she signed on as like a pensionnaire, 0.94

00:39:59.400 which basically means, okay, I'll explain this. So this is France's principal stage company,

00:40:05.080 created in 1680 by louis the 14th is that right that sounds right i don't know i don't was that

00:40:13.220 the sun king 14th yes 14th was the sun king that guy so anyway and he invented it to preserve the

00:40:19.580 great dramatic works written during his reign that's the thing the sun king would do correct

00:40:24.940 yeah it's like the greatest plays of all time are the ones written for me for me about me while i

00:40:30.900 was watching exactly and so that's why it's like do these plays exactly the same for the rest of

00:40:36.140 time only these plays and act them in this way so these tragedies were written in rhyming verse of

00:40:41.660 12 syllables following the rules of art invented by aristotle in ancient greece so the plays were

00:40:47.180 based usually on classical mythical stories so it's like kleidemestra and i don't know all those

00:40:53.940 people that people are writing novels about now those medea like all those yeah so all these

00:40:59.220 of stories and the plays all had a minimum of togas or sorry a minimum of characters a max

00:41:05.260 a max a maximum of togas everyone wore togas this is i sent you a number of pictures of rochelle

00:41:13.300 allison yes i was going to ask you why she was in togas and all of them and now i feel like i know

00:41:17.940 sort of so these plays they're just everyone does these hand gestures they say these lines

00:41:25.440 in exactly the same way and they wear togas all the time which is where so there's i'll post a

00:41:30.600 bunch of pictures on instagram too but like rochelle herself in all her portraits she's

00:41:34.140 wearing a toga in the like political cartoons of her she it's like how will they know it's

00:41:38.360 rochelle will put her in a toga like she did wear regular clothes when she wasn't performing 0.99

00:41:44.680 but when she was performing all togas and you know what comfortable like a muumuu sure honestly

00:41:54.380 if i could wear a toga to work i would exactly okay so each of the actors working for the comedy

00:41:59.300 francaise specialized in a certain type of character because the plays were just like

00:42:03.660 here's the hero and here's the ingenue it's like here's so the same actor would always play the

00:42:08.120 same sort of role which is yeah the same way that it's like and they would do these hand gestures

00:42:13.380 and they would it's all very like here's the rules and this is what we follow very formulaic

00:42:18.700 okay so after the french revolution the first one the main one so before these plays were only

00:42:27.120 allowed to be performed at the comedy francaise but after the french revolution they're like

00:42:30.440 republic anyone can perform these plays for the people but still do the same hand gestures yes

00:42:36.080 but the actors at the comedy francaise were recognized as the best in france and so this

00:42:41.040 is like the ultimate place you wanted to go and also for actors you wanted to go there because

00:42:45.500 at the Comédie Française. You had to share in the decisions and profits of the company. It was

00:42:49.440 kind of a union. They paid into a pension for retired members at the other theaters. Like you

00:42:55.140 were treated not that well. So this is like the ultimate place you want to go. And she got there

00:42:59.280 age 17. Like she was signed on as a pensionnier. Like she was paying into the union, pension fund.

00:43:07.820 Like she's got her equity card. She's ready to go. No, she's good. And this is where they were

00:43:10.840 like what is your name and age and she's like i don't have a birth certificate i was born on the

00:43:16.200 road in month so this is where like she and her father like made up a birth certificate but this

00:43:23.380 is where it's like is that when she was born is that what her name was when she was born

00:43:26.500 but they needed something because there's a whole thing also but like is she underage or not oh

00:43:30.640 that's coming up anyway so napoleon this is another reason i brought you on to this episode

00:43:36.420 also okay he is dead but he looms large okay so there was like during his time as emperor he was

00:43:44.180 a fan of the hand gestures and the tokens well of course because that was ancient france when it was

00:43:49.920 powerful and great yeah like him so it was this genre had like a bit of a revival under him but

00:43:56.520 then he went into exile it went out of fashion because like yeah if someone now was like i

00:44:02.260 performed plays as they were done in 1862, it would be like, no one wants to see that. But

00:44:07.240 suddenly these tragedies became the most popular thing in France because of Rochelle. So she's 17

00:44:14.460 years old. She made her debut at the Comédie Française that June, 1838. And then a couple

00:44:20.020 months later, that September, the influential theater critic Jules Janin saw her perform for

00:44:24.100 the first time and wrote two rave reviews. And then suddenly box office ticket sales increased

00:44:29.100 drastically he was just like this bag of bones he's so intense i can't like her performances

00:44:36.180 you know there's like portraits of her and photographs but like the way that everyone

00:44:39.800 writes about her performance is just like i can't i truly i don't know what to compare it to

00:44:44.560 i don't know like i keep saying britney spears but it's like someone just coming out of nowhere

00:44:49.140 and being so good at something it's like maybe i don't know like within my lifetime like lady gaga

00:44:55.620 just suddenly yeah appeared and it's like where did she and she was also like not a child star

00:45:00.880 before like someone who just arrives and is so freakishly good I don't know Rochelle just like

00:45:09.160 there's no one like Rochelle Marilyn Monroe maybe like she just anyway so as soon as these reviews

00:45:15.380 came out I was just like we all need to go see Rochelle and it was like rich people poor people

00:45:19.160 like the Jewish people wanted to support her like everyone was just going to the theater to see her 0.83

00:45:23.520 do the hand gestures they're all just like rochelle's teenage bag of bones anyway she was so

00:45:29.460 successful that the theater gave her a golden wreath um which is a thing that the theater

00:45:34.840 comedy francaise gave to their most successful stars citizen king louis philippe came to see

00:45:41.200 her perform he personally complimented her for bringing back classical french tragedy

00:45:45.600 as a gift he gave her a library of the classics okay she's like thanks money would have been

00:45:51.900 better. Yeah. She's like, could I have another like beat up guitar that I could sell on eBay?

00:45:56.440 Could she read, do you know? Yes. Yes. And now for a quick advertising break.

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00:46:27.560 made to trade. And TD Easy Trade is made to help. Download it now. The war is over and both sides

00:46:36.400 lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the

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00:46:49.660 But in the Shadow Dark, the darkness always wins.

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00:47:11.340 This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back.

00:47:15.980 Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the Shadow Dark.

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00:48:12.120 Hi, I'm Megan the Magical Millennial.

00:48:13.800 And Biscuits, I'm Jeremy, a.k.a. Jarendell, and we are the hosts of the hit Disney podcast, Disney Countdown.

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00:48:47.600 And we're back.

00:48:48.980 Oh, God.

00:48:49.520 Okay.

00:48:49.760 So there's a thing about the weird, again, I have to emphasize.

00:48:53.580 I didn't read these books, but Rachel Brownstein talks about them.

00:48:55.940 The weird early 1900s biographies that were just like Rochelle was this like child Jesus person.

00:49:03.380 Like apparently as a young toddler, she spontaneously recited the ballad of the wandering Jew.

00:49:09.000 okay um like that sort of yeah i think her parents in their like van slash home had books and i think

00:49:18.560 she read them as a girl but then also for sure like she went to acting school and she learned

00:49:21.740 to read there she was immediately acclaimed as the most amazing actress ever to perform these

00:49:27.100 roles and suddenly suddenly the plays were popular again because of her 17 years old intensity so and

00:49:35.920 she was and that's the thing so it's like she's performing these rhyming scripts of these old

00:49:39.280 fashioned plays using these generational hand movements but her passion suddenly made them

00:49:44.460 interesting and vital and people cared again because there wasn't a lot of room for her to

00:49:49.120 like change things like she had to perform it in this way but her passion she was visibly racked

00:49:56.520 by her performances like she was really performing her little heart out 17 years old i just want to

00:50:03.520 emphasize that because this is wild. So her dad and Samson fought over who would oversee her career

00:50:09.360 because she was making so much money for the theater. So during an argument between them

00:50:14.160 about the dad wanted more money for Rochelle and himself. So at this point, she had made 200,000

00:50:19.720 francs in six months for the company. And so he was like, the dad reasonably was like,

00:50:25.420 your cost sharing, like, I love your union and your pension, but like, shouldn't Rochelle get

00:50:29.460 paid a bit more since she's the only reason anyone is coming that's a lot of money i'm bad

00:50:34.980 at conversion rates but like that's a lot of money 200 000 francs in like the 19th century

00:50:41.000 like yeah so i think it's like what i was thinking is like you know the taylor swift eras tour

00:50:46.140 yes it's like taylor swift is making more money than the backup dancers because if she wasn't

00:50:52.640 there no one would go it's profit sharing but it doesn't have to be equal profit sharing yeah if

00:50:58.180 You are the one who's giving up the work.

00:50:59.840 So Samson was like, oh, but when you sign the contract when she was 15,

00:51:04.240 you said that she would do equal profit sharing.

00:51:07.220 And then Samson threw the dad down a flight of stairs.

00:51:10.180 Oh, okay.

00:51:12.660 So then the dad took Samson to court and he won

00:51:15.600 because the contract Rachel had signed as a minor was invalid

00:51:19.000 because she was invalid because she was a minor.

00:51:21.160 But that's where it's like, well, how old was she?

00:51:22.780 When was she born?

00:51:23.840 Like when you gave the birth certificate, what year did you write on it?

00:51:26.520 And was that intentional?

00:51:28.180 anyway well good for the dad because i would sue anyone who threw me down a flight of stairs

00:51:32.240 yeah well and also it's like and this is all portrayed in the press at the time being like oh

00:51:36.400 rochelle and her dad they're so money hungry because they're jewish it's like no they're

00:51:40.260 just people who want to be paid for their work like so there's a lot of this sort of stuff

00:51:44.860 throughout her life anyway rochelle also wanted to maximize her income basically by performing

00:51:51.000 in like the suburbs of paris like at other theaters samson was like that like degrades 0.71

00:51:55.420 It's the sanctity of the Comedie Francaise. 0.98

00:51:58.280 Oh, shut up, sir. 0.99

00:51:59.320 Yeah. 1.00

00:51:59.600 And she's just like, I am making a lot of money. 1.00

00:52:02.700 So fuck you. 1.00

00:52:04.640 What are you going to do without me? 1.00

00:52:05.780 Like, do you want me to be in your company?

00:52:07.140 Then you also have to let me do this, basically.

00:52:09.640 But being part of the company meant you only got so many days or weeks off per year to tour. 0.53

00:52:14.420 So that sort of got in the way of her doing other performances.

00:52:16.560 She was also encouraged to distance herself from her family and therefore from her Jewish roots.

00:52:23.280 But she never did.

00:52:24.540 and she was always very loyal to her family and she never changed her religion even though people

00:52:28.900 are constantly trying to make her do that good for her yeah she gave generously to her family

00:52:34.000 at one point she bought her sister sophie sarah a fully furnished home i love that that's like

00:52:39.820 what everyone says they're gonna do like you can buy my mom i'm on the house yeah that's so sweet

00:52:44.600 well i love buying her a home that was furnished you know yeah like she could just walk in the door

00:52:48.920 and live there it's not yeah she also always helped support her mother at one point she went

00:52:54.140 a tour around England and a duchess gave her a shawl and then she gave the shawl to her mom like

00:52:59.400 she was always really giving back to her family in a really genuine way which I like to see because

00:53:03.940 like they grew up in this caravan like yeah with nothing and she was always grateful to them and

00:53:10.680 taking care of them she was also next time any of us is asked like if you're throwing a dinner party

00:53:16.540 who do you invite Rochelle so she was hilarious witty clever and fun to be around this is also

00:53:22.060 a specific time and place where because of the like republican ideals or something it was like

00:53:28.140 people were inherently the station that they were by which i mean rochelle carried herself with

00:53:36.340 gravitas and with importance because of she doing acting and i'm sure her posture was like 0.79

00:53:42.560 wild but she she seemed like a rich important person and they're like yes and because of

00:53:48.360 humanism we believe that she is even though she was born poor she's allowed to be elevated into 0.51

00:53:53.560 these aristocratic spaces so a generation ago they would have been like no you can't come in here 0.69

00:53:58.760 you're jewish you're poor but now they're like no people are inherently who they are so right and 0.86

00:54:04.780 it's been such a tumultuous time like the last 40 years in regards to like who's in charge and 0.97

00:54:10.380 who's important and who's not important that i really feel like humanism was just them throwing

00:54:14.380 up their hands being like we don't know let's try it see what happens like it's the perfect time for

00:54:20.200 her to be no exactly exactly and france versus england because in england that was not the vibe

00:54:25.060 but in france it was so she was elevated and she but then also she was so funny and witty and like

00:54:31.040 at dinner parties everybody loved her there's i didn't write any of them down because they did

00:54:34.880 not make sense to me but there's various jokes that people reported that she made and maybe in

00:54:38.620 french they were funny but maybe in french they were funny 200 years ago probably doesn't translate

00:54:43.600 real well these hand gestures yeah exactly like the jokes were the same anyway so she was just

00:54:48.520 like a cool person that everybody enjoyed she was like very pleasant and then when she acted

00:54:53.640 she was so intense so much i don't know katherine hepburn maybe like i'm just trying to think of

00:54:59.820 like someone who like has this kind of like weird energy okay 1840 what i'm not sure it's happening

00:55:06.460 vis-a-vis the world oh louis philippe still citizen still there yeah he's got a couple more years

00:55:11.920 spoiler okay 1840 napoleon's body was returned to paris and there's this big funeral march thing

00:55:17.760 to be like he died in exile but now retro vintage napoleon fans are like we like him again let's

00:55:27.080 celebrate his death let's get him back from that tiny island where the wallpaper killed him and

00:55:32.300 let's bury him ostentatiously somewhere in paris yeah so this is like him now exactly exactly

00:55:38.420 Mary Shelley was in town at this point, I just wanted to mention.

00:55:41.320 But she had to miss the funeral because it was too cold and snowy for her liking.

00:55:44.440 But she wrote, like, I know I missed, like, a thing that would have been cool, but it was cold, so I didn't go.

00:55:49.560 And this is the first of many vulgar history cameos of people in the story.

00:55:54.400 Anyway, so Napoleon's body, I guess, was on St. Helena this whole time?

00:55:59.340 Yeah, they buried him because he died.

00:56:00.820 Okay.

00:56:01.480 And then they were like, oh, no, now we'll bring him back.

00:56:04.020 Okay, so I'm going to just foreshadow something.

00:56:07.120 So his body was returned by Louis-Philippe's, one of his sons, the Prince of Joinville, who was a guy who was like a military captain, but he had a beard.

00:56:16.920 Even the military captains weren't allowed to have beards, but he was Louis-Philippe's son, so he was allowed to have a beard.

00:56:22.000 Anyway, and he was among the procession.

00:56:24.300 I mean, I won't even foreshadow.

00:56:25.980 Spoiler, he is soon to become Rochelle's lover, the Prince of Joinville.

00:56:29.400 This man with a beard.

00:56:30.400 Yes.

00:56:30.720 And this is, do you remember in the Catalina de Arezzo episode, I think you started doing a tally of how many cousins she kept running into?

00:56:38.020 Yeah, I think here we're going to need to keep a tally of how many lovers who are Napoleon adjacent.

00:56:44.180 Okay, I will keep track on a little piece of scratch paper.

00:56:47.500 This is one.

00:56:48.380 The Prince of Joinville is one because he was the one who recovered the body and was in the procession.

00:56:54.220 Anyway, so this same year, oh my God, this is part of where I was just like, Rochelle, I'm obsessed.

00:56:58.460 so there's a list on her wikipedia page of just like every role she ever played

00:57:02.220 around this time so she's i don't know what 18 at this point she played mary queen of scots

00:57:06.600 yes in a play that was like mary queen of scots versus elizabeth she played mary queen of scots

00:57:13.680 because she always later on she played fredegand in a play of fredegand and brunhild incredible

00:57:20.800 yeah i was like she played what i was like wait fredegand does that does that french name

00:57:26.140 Is that my Fredegund?

00:57:28.560 Fredegund?

00:57:29.120 It was.

00:57:29.980 She played Cleopatra. 1.00

00:57:31.860 I was just like, she's doing all the tits out ladies from my podcast. 0.85

00:57:35.540 But I love that she was in this play, Mary Coombscotch and Elizabeth, and she played Mary. 0.93

00:57:38.640 Like she was in Fredegund and Brunhild and she played Fredegund.

00:57:41.860 Like she was the roles I would want.

00:57:44.240 On the side of vulgar history. 1.00

00:57:46.260 Yes, yes.

00:57:47.200 Vulgar history coded.

00:57:48.560 Anyway, so then she was invited to perform in London.

00:57:50.960 So she went there to do like five performances.

00:57:52.820 because remember she only has like a certain amount of time she's allowed to be away from

00:57:55.660 the Comédie Française. She went there to do five performances, all of which sold out.

00:57:59.820 She was basically the same age as Queen Victoria, by the way. Queen Victoria was like two years

00:58:05.060 older than her and she just barely become Queen. Queen Victoria loved her. She invited Rochelle

00:58:10.060 to dine and perform at Windsor Castle and gave her an engraved bracelet that said something like

00:58:17.440 from victoria to rochelle thanks victoria but in french so it's like victoria uh rochelle

00:58:25.020 was in the bracelet so i just pictured like taylor so i have friendship bracelets yes the

00:58:30.020 duke of wellington is that from napoleon the battle of waterloo yes he's the one who beat

00:58:36.920 napoleon he's a very tiresome man but he did beat napoleon so shout out to him for that he had such

00:58:43.320 a crush on rochelle oh and france was like ha ha ha france rules like look the duke of willington

00:58:50.280 defeated napoleon but now rochelle has defeated the duke of willington i love that for her yeah

00:58:56.880 yeah yes great so basically she conquered england even though not everyone there understood french

00:59:03.020 but they still were just like her intensity transcends language she's so intense

00:59:07.880 okay so then she had this other lover whose name is he's not napoleon adjacent he's just some guy

00:59:14.820 he's one of these like old men father figures who i think were maybe all her lovers lovers

00:59:20.140 quote unquote anyway this one guy dr veron for some reason he was just being hilarious at a

00:59:26.500 dinner party like they had written some like sexy letters back and forth and he read some letters

00:59:30.720 from her at a dinner party and so she was like remember a teenager and so immediately her

00:59:35.640 reputation went from like Rochelle this like chaste virgin role model to like who are John

00:59:44.020 Knox's ghost from the wings of the Mary Queen of Scots play it's yelling absolutely so again like

00:59:51.760 it's I don't know like I just kind of like Britney Spears it's like she went from like this like

00:59:56.900 virgin to this who are but Rochelle like Britney Spears was like okay I can vibe with this so she's

01:00:01.700 like okay i'll just be like a femme fatale now which i already was so moving on so this like

01:00:07.180 affair of the letters was like a huge deal in the newspapers like rochelle oh my god she wrote sexy

01:00:11.720 letters like she's like you haven't seen anything yet sexy letters absolutely queen victoria was 1.00

01:00:18.920 like doesn't bother me because queen victoria literally never stopped fucking albert for a 1.00

01:00:23.880 single second her whole life queen victoria was yeah getting it on she's just like get it girl 0.92

01:00:29.460 love that i know queen victoria was just like relatable anyway i mean okay here's some actual

01:00:35.460 foreshadowing 1841 so she's like 20 years old and she retroactively we know that this is when

01:00:41.080 she showed the first signs of vulgar histories traditional malady tuberculosis there it is

01:00:48.640 yeah so the vibes are a bit sateen in moulin rouge a bit a lot yeah yeah okay so her first public

01:00:56.780 other than Dr. Véran, her first publicly known lover was Louis-Philippe's son,

01:01:01.420 François de Bourbon-Orléans, the Prince de Joinville. With the beard, the head of the

01:01:06.960 Napoleon body gets returned party parade. He was about her same age. Nice for a change.

01:01:13.440 Love that.

01:01:14.540 He was also a painter, which I like. There's like a painting of Napoleon,

01:01:18.380 the Napoleon Funeral Parade, and it's like done by him. And it is of him.

01:01:22.440 Yay. He's just like, I was there. This is my selfie.

01:01:25.540 this is what it looked like anyway he seems like an okay person so apparently allegedly they met

01:01:30.420 because he sent a note to her backstage that said basically where and when and she sent a

01:01:36.060 note back being like my place tonight oh my god it's so juicy i love it yeah so but you know in

01:01:42.620 french anyway she literally looked this man in the eyes and went

01:01:53.100 she did moulin rouge here we go hey so she wrote to him like they wrote letters these still exist

01:02:01.520 i think he called her his his old rachel and she called him my old dog anyway they were just like

01:02:09.440 whatever so they were together for a while but like even long after their breakup she kept his

01:02:14.700 affectionate final breakup letter from her and she wrote on it like she he wrote a letter being like

01:02:20.140 it's over i'm sorry you don't want to post it or whatever and she wrote on that letter from him

01:02:25.780 you take with me my first my last love i will live i will love never again oh sweetie don't

01:02:33.580 worry she does liar but sweet yeah so he also remembered her fondly and this is what we're

01:02:39.560 gonna see like she was always on good terms with all of her lovers like she stayed friends with

01:02:44.960 all of them even though like old men like dr verone who like did the affair of the letters

01:02:49.880 they were so cool like she was just like great ongoing relationships with all of the lovers

01:02:54.920 now the amount of lovers does become similar to on our flag means death spanish jackie and her

01:03:00.180 husbands is kind of the vibe because there's so many lovers they call themselves like the

01:03:05.580 circle de rachel like the rachel circle the unionized yay so there's no jealousy they got

01:03:14.160 their own group chat it's like okay i'm seeing her monday you're seeing her tuesday like it was

01:03:20.740 also just like french and civilized and polyamorous and just like everyone was on board it was said

01:03:27.600 rochelle had two bracelets made from all of the rings given to her by her various lovers

01:03:32.120 and the rings were so big that she could only wear one of the bracelets at a time because the

01:03:36.960 bracelet was so heavy and then she played so she's just killing it she's playing all these

01:03:41.720 She played Fredegonde, all these different roles.

01:03:44.440 Her most famous role is Phaedra in the play Phaedra.

01:03:48.020 Like there's statues of her as Phaedra.

01:03:49.760 This became like her like, this is what she's best known for playing Phaedra, which is a mythological person, I assume.

01:03:56.380 In 1843, Rochelle took a new lover who is Count Walewski, Napoleon's illegitimate Polish son.

01:04:06.620 Check.

01:04:07.460 Are you familiar with Napoleon's illegitimate Polish son?

01:04:09.800 i was not at this point no i wasn't sure okay so alexandre florian joseph count colonna

01:04:16.360 walusky was born near warsaw in poland his mother was countess marie maluska and her husband

01:04:24.080 was this guy count walusky but everyone knew napoleon was the father of this baby like never

01:04:30.040 formally acknowledged but everybody knew anyway he was boring and she didn't like him but she has

01:04:36.480 this napoleon fetish we're discovering uh-huh anyway so she's just like napoleon's son yes

01:04:42.260 i'm gonna add him to my circle of lovers so anyway count werlewski he tried to do like a

01:04:48.200 makeover on her where he's just like i'm gonna treat you how to teach you how to be like a 0.98

01:04:52.620 fancy lady and she's like i tried to he tried to my fair lady her and she was like bitch no i'm 0.99

01:04:58.380 already more successful than you i'm rochelle which oh just speaking of her name so when she 0.98

01:05:03.240 was going to acting child star school she went by elisa saint felix was her like christian name

01:05:09.900 that sounds like the kind of name i would have come up with when i was trying to go with the

01:05:13.440 pen name as a child yeah so but then when she signed her contract with the comedy francais

01:05:18.720 she's like just rachel rochelle which was also really notable and interesting because rochelle

01:05:23.380 like rachel is like a jewish name like now it's like maybe not automatically seen as a jewish

01:05:31.740 name but then in france but at the time yeah it was a super jewish name and she could have not

01:05:37.540 had that be her name but she's like no i am rochelle like i am jewish like her jewishness

01:05:41.720 was always an important part of her and it also sort of like in terms of building her celebrity

01:05:45.660 brand made her like exotic or whatever anyway so they lived together her and count velusky

01:05:51.700 um they lived together in his like fancy place the silver and the china of the household had her

01:05:57.760 symbol on it which was the single letter r with a buckled belt

01:06:02.020 r with a belt is her inscription for herself anyway and they started having a salon and so 0.50

01:06:09.920 everybody because she was so fun and cool to be around she told these jokes so like all the cool 0.52

01:06:13.520 people came to hang out at their salon she had a friend who was this lady writer such journalist

01:06:19.000 um delphine de giroden who was moved to write a new play casting her as the biblical heroine judith

01:06:27.180 famously the beheader of holofernes my tattoo i have on my arm anyway so to celebrate this role

01:06:36.000 of a famous stabbing person rachel laid out a display of ceremonial daggers in her home

01:06:41.080 at her salon but i could stab any one of you if you wanted me to yeah so she i mean iconic so she

01:06:49.380 gave birth to a son who was alexandra antoine cologne count felusky is the father's child

01:06:56.020 making this baby napoleon's grandson mission accomplished this time period where she's with 0.95

01:07:02.980 count verluski holding the salons is around the same time lola montez was in paris fucking critics 0.89

01:07:07.660 and dancing at the opera they had to have known about each other yeah she was too yeah like i 0.94

01:07:15.460 hope so like the critics that lola montez was fucking for good reviews like rochelle would 1.00

01:07:20.380 have heard that there's this horrible dancer on stage at the paris opera like they're in the same 0.95

01:07:25.380 town they're running in the same circles it's like george sand is there victor hugo is there

01:07:30.260 like these are the people lola montez hung out with like it's a whole one circle like i hope

01:07:34.580 they got coffee one afternoon and we're just like just you know what they got any tips the dirtbag

01:07:40.040 energy and this is where i thought about like the two of them being born so close together like

01:07:43.220 lola montez she was untrained and terrible at performing and yet that was compelling but then

01:07:50.900 rochelle was so well trained it's like to they're really a yin yang sort of situation yeah and

01:07:56.320 they're both successful in different ways anyway so at one point speaking of this circle of people

01:08:00.920 so alexandre dumas the main one not the dad the one who wrote what was his famous book three

01:08:07.060 musketeers three musketeers one yeah so he's there being this notable wit like he's part of this

01:08:12.520 these like gatherings and he wrote to her being like can i join your circle of lovers here's my

01:08:17.940 official application i have 20 years of experience here are three references here's my union card

01:08:26.020 yeah but so the same thing that she did with the breakup letter like so he wrote a letter being

01:08:31.160 like please can i be your lover and she wrote back on that same letter and returned it to him

01:08:35.380 saying like i am returning this letter that you clearly wrote by mistake yes girl 0.74

01:08:41.960 and then he then became a hater you know as you know shitty people it's just like no just be cool

01:08:50.320 and you can join the circle of lovers anyway so he criticized her for like how dare she go 0.76

01:08:54.200 perform plays in other places she's disloyal to france blah blah blah she just didn't want to 1.00

01:08:58.460 fuck you man yeah yeah she toured around the uk including in glasgow which was notable because 0.99

01:09:05.040 a notice about her coming to perform there like listen i know nobody here speaks french 0.99

01:09:10.560 but you don't need to however she's so intense it's fine you'll understand it regardless it's

01:09:18.320 like watching an action movie so but the this like thing in the newspaper in glasgow said you

01:09:22.980 will learn more french from seeing her perform for one hour than you would from a year of french

01:09:27.000 lessons okay bold claim yeah but i love that she's performing everywhere but only ever in french

01:09:32.520 and people are just like still going even if they don't know french like yeah i'm in let's do it

01:09:37.900 Anyway, so then she and Count Feluski were like basically monogamous when they were together,

01:09:42.040 but then she got bored and then she seduced this guy called Emile de Girardin,

01:09:46.200 the husband of her friend who wrote the Artemisia, the Judith play.

01:09:51.040 Ouch.

01:09:51.980 But I think everyone's just like, cool. 1.00

01:09:53.400 They're always fucking each other. 0.99

01:09:54.420 They're fine. 1.00

01:09:55.060 I'm like, you can have this husband for a while.

01:09:56.700 I don't need him.

01:09:57.480 Okay.

01:09:57.840 But Alison Fiertelli, this guy is known as the Napoleon of the press.

01:10:01.860 He's a newspaper guy who dressed like Napoleon 24-7.

01:10:05.240 What?

01:10:06.380 Oh, okay.

01:10:07.900 I thought you were going to be like, he was a, he was a no holds barred journalist who would go in and get the truth, even if they didn't want you to.

01:10:16.720 You meant, he was like the guy in my college dorm who dressed up like Jesus sometimes.

01:10:21.700 And we called him, he's quite Jesus.

01:10:23.380 Yeah.

01:10:23.680 He would wear Napoleon cosplay and like brush his hair like Napoleon, you know, put his hand in his French shirt.

01:10:30.520 In the, in the, yeah.

01:10:32.540 So, I mean.

01:10:33.540 We both just tried to put our hands through the bus.

01:10:35.520 But if we know something about Rochelle, she's just like, oh, my God, that guy looks kind of like Napoleon. 1.00

01:10:40.240 I have to fuck that guy. 1.00

01:10:41.280 My favorite kind of man. 1.00

01:10:43.200 Vaguely Napoleonic. 0.59

01:10:44.520 Yeah.

01:10:45.260 So he, this guy, the Napoleon of the press, he had famously killed a man in a duel.

01:10:49.840 Wait, no, I just, I'm so sorry.

01:10:51.700 I just realized what the Napoleon of the press reminds me of.

01:10:54.400 And it's the Napoleon of crime, a cavity from the musical Cats. 0.99

01:10:59.060 Rochelle would have fucked him, too. 0.99

01:11:00.980 I know. 0.99

01:11:02.240 It's Idris Elba.

01:11:03.160 We all would.

01:11:04.020 but this guy also napoleon the press just another standout detail about him

01:11:07.740 yes he kept alphabetized dossiers on everyone important he knew in case he had to blackmail

01:11:12.380 them one day yeah i love this man i feel like this is i i started making dossiers myself of

01:11:19.960 all of the lovers but i'm just like there's not enough hours in the day to explain to you

01:11:23.720 how interesting all four lovers were anyway and then rochelle was also maybe lovers with his wife 0.90

01:11:29.160 who wrote the play for her so just everyone's just fucking everyone love it that's what's

01:11:32.760 happening anyway but not great at this point because count velusky heard about her having 0.95

01:11:38.780 lovers again so he took their 15 month old son um but then eventually returned the baby

01:11:44.020 and then married someone else and i'm sure he's like actually i do not want to take care of yeah

01:11:48.880 anyway so rachelle just went on to she never had another monogamous relationship i don't think

01:11:54.660 she wrote i am free and intend to remain free i will have renters but not owners

01:12:00.240 oh yes so which i love she also one of her mottos is apparently i love to be loved as i love when i

01:12:09.560 love i think that's a quote from moulin rouge probably sounds like it actually i will have

01:12:15.280 renters but not owners it's very like sateen coded from moulin rouge except she never met 0.67

01:12:20.260 ewan mcgregor and she's just like i'm gonna fuck anyone and everyone's like that's great 0.74

01:12:24.000 guess who loves you france okay 1847 the russian writer alexander herzan wrote 0.98

01:12:29.480 quote her acting is fascinating while she is on stage no matter what happens you cannot take your

01:12:34.180 eyes off her this weak and fragile being dominates you i cannot imagine that anyone would not abandon

01:12:40.620 himself to her power during the performance i imagine i can still see that proud pout that 0.70

01:12:45.780 sharp whip-like gaze like whatever she's doing these performances it's like she is killing it

01:12:52.420 like intense the intensity anyways then she took as another lover this guy called arthur bertrand

01:13:00.240 who had been in the napoleon funeral procession check because his dad had been napoleon steward

01:13:06.460 arthur had been born in saint helena i feel like i should check twice yeah yeah he oh this is what

01:13:12.840 we just recorded another thing a bit ago and i was like there's someone with darnly energy and

01:13:17.160 who was it this guy so he asked her for money all the time and when she didn't give him money

01:13:21.880 he would steal it from her yep that's a thing darnley would do that is the darnley vibe but

01:13:28.380 anyway but she she loved him because his main hobby was napoleon yes she just like obsessing

01:13:35.000 about napoleon so did she and that's what happened anyway so then she got pregnant again by this guy

01:13:41.140 but she toured england and scotland while pregnant doing her hand gestures and while pregnant touring

01:13:48.000 England and Scotland she embarked on two parallel affairs with two men who were cousins of each

01:13:54.360 other one of whom is the man who would later become Emperor Louis Napoleon no yes and his

01:14:04.980 cousin Prince Napoleon known as Plon Plon sorry I didn't know that but it's funny to hear it

01:14:15.720 are you familiar with these people i know i knew that name because it's really hard not yeah plon

01:14:21.340 plon also called nap but i'm calling him plon plon obviously okay so this is two more for your

01:14:27.960 tally sheet but oh yes i've got them so for um i'm really hung up on plon plon i'm sorry well

01:14:34.240 i'm not stopped talking about plon plon i'm gonna explain who everybody is so these two guys who

01:14:39.420 she met while pregnant touring her plays in england they met like on a train

01:14:46.220 was gambling driving the train driven by the napoleon of crime andres elba okay so the first

01:14:55.460 guy charles louis napoleon bonaparte his father was louis bonaparte the younger brother of

01:15:00.820 napoleon so this guy is napoleon's nephew but also his mother was the daughter of napoleon's

01:15:08.620 wife josephine from her first marriage right so this guy's basically i don't know this is like 0.66

01:15:15.880 could you she has fucked so many napoleon adjacent people it's like when you put it all together 0.95

01:15:20.560 who have also fucked napoleon adjacent people yeah because i think he was also just like you 0.98

01:15:25.400 know who i should definitely sleep with is my i think it must have been my sister i don't oh my 0.78

01:15:31.920 god it's just like i don't know everyone's name is lewis so it's really hard to track so we're

01:15:37.200 calling this guy cl charles louis napoleon bonaparte okay cl the other guy we're calling

01:15:42.660 by his own nickname plan plan because what else could we possibly call him so um cl was born in

01:15:48.200 1808 so he's like 15 years older than rachel plan plan was born one year after rachel so close they're

01:15:53.860 all like adults whatever so his name was prince napoleon joseph charles paul bonaparte usually

01:16:01.600 called napoleon jérôme bonaparte or jérôme bonaparte he was the second son of napoleon's

01:16:06.500 youngest brother so these guys are both the sons of napoleon's brothers his popular nickname plon

01:16:11.760 plon stemmed from his difficulty in pronouncing his own name while still a child which i'm going

01:16:17.200 to say his name is napoleon joseph charles jérôme it's like yeah that is it was a lot

01:16:23.160 plon plon for a child um other so that's allegedly why he's called plon plon but some other historians

01:16:29.060 and contemporary letters suggest it was because he ran in cowardice during battle when the bombs fell

01:16:34.120 but why does that have to do with plon plon i don't know of these two guys plon plon was cooler

01:16:40.060 despite everything you just said despite being called plon plon well what does that say about cl

01:16:45.520 how yeah not not a lot anyway so plon plon was really into classical art and he commissioned

01:16:54.100 a replica of a greek temple for rachel which is still a place i think which has a big mural of

01:16:59.720 Rochelle in it they were also like wildly rich so anyway then she had her son because remember

01:17:05.340 she's been pregnant this whole time so her second son the father was Arthur the Darnley guy

01:17:09.120 and the son was called Gabriel Victor Felix so she gave him her own surname I guess because of

01:17:16.100 illegitimacy reasons but it was interesting because so she had two sons they're both baptized

01:17:20.620 Christian interestingly but one was like the son of a count Napoleon's grandson and the other one

01:17:26.820 is like the son of the big guy who was born on saint helena so like one of her sons was like

01:17:31.080 really wealthy and one of her based on the dad and the other son was like a normal citizen son

01:17:36.840 right anyway so now it's 1848 revolution is occurring yep this is revolution number three

01:17:44.420 i think yeah four it's hard to say we've done a lot at this point but this is the uh what what

01:17:51.540 do they call this one the les miserables one no no we've already passed that oh did we oh okay

01:17:57.280 nothing happened this is so what happened here and this might have been copy pasted from your

01:18:02.780 notes you gave me so the king louis philippe the citizen king abdicated he abdicated because the

01:18:10.160 alternative was they were going to murder him and he would prefer not to do that he kind of like

01:18:15.560 it's february revolution i forgot the month this is the february revolution february 1848

01:18:20.500 Paris is like I really hate Louis Philippe we've actually hated him for 18 years but now we're 0.95

01:18:26.040 gonna finally do something about it and he says okay fuck I will get out of town bye but this is 0.99

01:18:32.020 like the second one you've talked about who like having seen their own family be guillotined pretty 0.98

01:18:36.620 recently was like I'm just gonna leave like I'm you know what and more power to them for that

01:18:41.900 they're like nah y'all have it bye the energy we've talked about this maybe it was in the Napoleon

01:18:47.980 an episode or something but just the energy of france as a country to just riot at the drop of

01:18:55.260 a hat it's still going on remember like last year or something when there's those pictures of people

01:19:00.960 drinking champagne in a restaurant and outside it's like mayhem and things are on fire it's just

01:19:06.520 like that's just the french way they just like oh wasn't they were rioting because they're like

01:19:10.160 how dare you decrease the mandatory retirement age like yeah like this is still the vibe of

01:19:16.080 France, I think. Increase,

01:19:18.280 I'm sure, the retirement age. 0.98

01:19:19.860 If you wanted to decrease my retirement age, that would be great.

01:19:21.880 I think they were rioting because they didn't want to decrease

01:19:24.160 it. Really?

01:19:26.400 I forget.

01:19:28.860 Anyway, so they

01:19:29.960 rioted. It's 1848.

01:19:31.900 CL, so her lover,

01:19:33.820 she met on the train, the cousin of Plon Plon,

01:19:36.220 came back to Paris, elections

01:19:37.960 happened, and he became the first ever president

01:19:39.960 of France, but he was like, I prefer Prince

01:19:42.000 Dash president. I'll be the prince

01:19:44.100 president. And they're like,

01:19:46.080 No, but OK. Yeah. Sure. So after the Citizen King, now it's the Prince President. And when his term ended, he was like, what if I stay being Prince President? And then he did. And he's like, let's just make this official and change my title to Emperor Napoleon.

01:20:01.840 And then I'm over here like, God damn it, we already did this once with an Emperor Napoleon. Why is there another one? But there is Napoleon the third.

01:20:10.260 so the comedy francaise which you'll recall was the official french theater invented by the sun

01:20:15.940 king was briefly renamed theater of the republic because they're like we're a republic now and

01:20:21.900 they're like rochelle we need you to act um because we need ticket sales are down rochelle

01:20:26.960 because there's like a revolution yeah people are building barricades they're not coming to

01:20:31.760 the theaters and she's like i just gave birth please i'm so tired i just gave birth i'm having

01:20:38.080 so many lovers. I just got two more. One of them's the emperor now, I guess. She's like,

01:20:42.960 I need six weeks maternity leave is what she specified. Anyway, so what happened? And this

01:20:48.200 is a picture I sent you. So she's like, okay, fine. I'll return. So I was like, you're doing

01:20:53.080 a play. And in the middle of the play, she came out in her toga and she recited the lyrics of

01:20:58.600 La Marseillaise, the French national anthem. Classic Casablanca move. She didn't sing it.

01:21:04.820 she recited it with hand gestures intensely ending with her dropping to one knee while

01:21:10.080 holding a flag which is one of the pictures i sent you everyone lost their mind

01:21:15.940 they rioted they were just like rochelle

01:21:20.860 we haven't rioted in six weeks then you held up a flag it's time to go but it's rochelle and so

01:21:28.940 she became like the symbol of the revolution and of france itself i think this is where the story

01:21:34.420 started being built of her like jesus like birth and being saved by the dog because they're all

01:21:38.640 just like she is france look at her she has a flag so then the theater was like this is great

01:21:45.400 ticket sales are up rochelle can you just recite la marseilla's 37 more times and she's like sure

01:21:51.180 so she just started just reciting everybody lost their mind she went around and did fundraisers

01:21:58.000 for the republic organized by george sand and all she would do is she would do this go down

01:22:02.880 on one knee and everybody would lose their mind it's kind of like i don't know like when lilna's

01:22:08.420 ex was doing old town road you just show up in like a gymnasium of children or like yes

01:22:15.100 while she herself is being like i'm really tired of doing this yeah the republic paid they sponsored

01:22:23.800 her tour to tour around other parts of france to do the marseillaise because this was like

01:22:29.300 getting people like to support them as the government um at one point her carriage fell

01:22:34.140 off the road soldiers helped her out and they're like can you say the marseillaise to us

01:22:39.640 and she did can you do the thing anyway but while touring she donated money to the unemployed she

01:22:48.680 paid a visit to condemned murderess marie lafarge in jail who is dying of tuberculosis

01:22:55.120 coincidentally and apparently this is because Rochelle was preparing to play Medea I think and

01:22:59.880 she's like I want to talk to an actual person who actually killed people so like I'll go talk to her

01:23:03.400 anyway this all just made people be like yes look at her Princess Diana visiting the poor etc

01:23:07.380 and she later clarified she didn't actually care if there is a king or a republic but she knew that

01:23:15.480 reciting La Marseilla has kept the theater and her making money during a chaotic time so she was like

01:23:20.600 happy to do it although she did also say she yearned for a king to take over from the republic

01:23:25.480 to save her from having to keep doing the marseilles for the rest of her life

01:23:28.820 i'm sorry that's so funny no it's great she's she's funny but she's also pragmatic like this

01:23:36.840 is like she's good i'll keep doing it but god damn i'm tired yeah yeah anyway so cl her lover

01:23:43.060 is emperor napoleon the third there was a gala she's like oh my god yes i'm gonna retire the

01:23:48.040 Marseillaise great so she came out during the gala with a flag and everyone's like oh she gonna do

01:23:52.800 the thing but then she recited not the Marseillaise she recited something else and that kind of helped 0.97

01:23:57.960 to rebrand her and the new empire I love that she did a soft launch of a new bit so Plon Plon stayed

01:24:04.800 on as one of the closest advisors to Napoleon III Plon Plon also note had a long-standing relationship

01:24:11.040 with a courtesan Cora Pearl who is on my list of people to talk about another day but I just want

01:24:15.400 to say like lola montez rochelle and cora pearl were all in the same circle and that's the tits

01:24:21.260 out energy of that is unsurpassed anyway so napoleon the third cl brought the french state

01:24:28.100 theater under much stricter control and rochelle benefited greatly because just before this

01:24:33.340 revolution had happened she had been in these kind of like contract negotiations where she

01:24:37.200 wanted more money and they're like no we like we're a union we share it all and she's like

01:24:41.460 i'm taylor swift and i need more money and they're like but do you but anyway then there

01:24:48.240 was a revolution and then the theaters were taken over by her lover and and he was like guess what

01:24:53.180 guess what i'm the emperor now she gets more money yeah so she had a voice in selecting the

01:24:58.100 new theater director and she negotiated a new contract in which she was required to perform

01:25:02.640 only 48 times a year that still seems like a lot yeah imagine how much it was before so basically

01:25:08.860 she went from being a like contract member to being sort of like a casual employee okay so i

01:25:15.920 think she lost out on the pension but this meant that she had she's able to go on longer more

01:25:20.560 profitable tours abroad at one of these shows one of her tours she wrote in a letter to one of her

01:25:26.640 lovers was it i who aroused the public or the public who aroused me i don't know all i know 0.98

01:25:32.880 is we were both hot what a weird fucking thing to say yeah she's amazing okay so in her new post 0.99

01:25:43.140 the marseillaise era she pivoted she did she soft launched and then she pivoted to a new era of 0.98

01:25:48.620 performing contemporary dramas not toga plays with hand gestures but like saying lines that

01:25:56.040 don't rhyme her first such role was as thisby in angelo by her rejected lover victor hugo

01:26:02.220 so did you reject victor hugo too oh no sorry it was the other one it was it was alexander dumas

01:26:07.500 you're right sorry i confused the two i was gonna say i feel like victor hugo would have taken

01:26:11.320 rejection really badly though he was yeah i think oh and i think there was rumors that they were

01:26:15.740 lovers and they probably were at this time they probably were yeah he would have loved that what's

01:26:19.940 one more at this point lover for her i mean what's one more victor hugo really so she wrote so her

01:26:25.840 character in this was a venetian courtesan and she wrote that this character could only be played by

01:26:29.800 a woman such as herself who had risen from miserable poverty to sleep on satin sheets

01:26:34.140 oh her friend delphine slash lover slash she was also the lover of her husband the napoleon of the

01:26:40.400 press when that person died so she had it was delphine who wrote her the play where rochelle

01:26:45.800 played cleopatra and so rochelle sent her a wreath with a card that said to delphine from cleopatra 1.00

01:26:52.520 there were also other rumored female lovers like george sand famous pants wearing person

01:26:58.340 so the lovers were of all genders apparently lovers circle everyone welcome very inclusive 0.99

01:27:05.860 union yes yeah yeah so anyway so her style of just like having a circle of lovers led to people 0.54

01:27:14.480 spreading wild stories about her sexual veracity like there's a rumor that she traveled with a bed 1.00

01:27:19.360 in her carriage so she could fuck people while going place to place which she did she grew up 1.00

01:27:24.600 in a caravan that was also a house so like that's not that weird really anyway she's also known for 1.00

01:27:31.120 getting her lovers to give her expensive gifts and then she gave them away or sold them so this 0.94

01:27:35.780 is another thing where people were like she loved expensive things she had a real eye for like

01:27:40.420 aesthetics and like like i think in a way psychologically maybe from being really really 0.66

01:27:45.400 really poor she loved expensive stuff like she couldn't get enough of it and that's where people

01:27:50.600 like because she's jewish but it's like no because she likes the finer things in life and she grew 1.00

01:27:57.020 up poor so like whatever she's a dirtbag it's a separate issue yeah yeah there was one of her 0.98

01:28:02.340 things she had was a crown and there is yes queen there is six jewels across the front and it was 0.99

01:28:09.460 like a ruby then an amethyst then a something there was like r-a-c-h-e-l like each of the jewels 1.00

01:28:15.900 started with like a sanos infinity gauntlet of a crown with her name on it yeah bitch yes yeah 0.86

01:28:24.840 like this story just keeps getting better like she's great right when you were like okay a 0.92

01:28:33.520 jewish person in 19th century france could you have imagined this legend just having the best

01:28:39.700 time not letting anyone get to her getting a crown monogrammed with her initials yeah

01:28:44.540 you're for it oh my gosh so she also um she had upended the way people viewed these classical

01:28:51.120 tragedies that she often performed because it used to be like oh this is a play by moliere or

01:28:55.560 whatever but now it's like it's a rachel like it became about her like it was female centered

01:29:00.580 instead of without changing the script she made it be about her and about the female characters

01:29:05.640 instead of about the like famous man who wrote it anyway so she had been performing abroad for years

01:29:12.440 by the 1850s she's like 30 like because her career began age 15 if you'll recall and she

01:29:19.600 was instantaneously the most famous best actress ever anyway so the distances she was able to go

01:29:25.160 further and for longer because she didn't have to perform as much so in 1851 during one of her

01:29:30.120 tours in london she went to london every year i think charlotte bronte saw her perform are you

01:29:35.760 familiar with the novel villette by charlotte bronte i have not read it to my shame but is it

01:29:41.680 about her kind of there's a character in villette who is an actress whose name is vashti which is a

01:29:48.080 jewish name from the bible and it and she describes it's like in this actress she was so intense

01:29:53.380 it was so intense it blew my mind i didn't speak french so anyway so this is part of like

01:29:59.080 richelle like shows up in this novel okay in 1853 she performed in moscow and in 1855 she embarked

01:30:06.560 on a tour of america classic lola montez move yeah yeah exactly lola montez dead by now oh no

01:30:13.340 wait i think no i think lola montez might have been in america simultaneously anyway here's

01:30:18.160 another example rochelle wrote when she wrote letters about herself she used the royal we

01:30:22.240 when talking about herself when she wrote from america she wrote what can i tell you about our

01:30:28.220 triumphs they continue to be as great as our gifts are no i wrote a humble queen

01:30:35.000 humble queen yes and she is she's the best actress ever and she knows it and i think that made some

01:30:41.400 people uncomfortable that she wasn't humble or whatever anyway so her lover member of lover

01:30:48.480 circle napoleon the third cl was the emperor and she would still come hang out with him sometimes 0.99

01:30:52.880 and the guards would be like hey girl that's okay go on in like she would still just go by to fuck 0.97

01:30:56.320 him every now and then um she taught his wife eugenie how to curtsy properly and then the 1.00

01:31:03.200 empress eugenie requested rochelle perform the mary queen of scots play and rochelle was like

01:31:07.460 mary annoys me i am gonna do a different play damn and eugenie was like okay that's fair go

01:31:15.520 ahead yeah okay sorry i mentioned she went to moscow and doubling back because this is interesting

01:31:20.240 and i feel like this is something you know about so 1853 she accepted an invitation by the czar

01:31:24.720 to visit russia just as the crimean war was about to start paris paris a city that is sentient and

01:31:31.220 of character in this story it's the fifth girl in sex in the city it's paris yes paris was bad

01:31:37.160 at her for her disloyalty to like how dare you how dare you who are france perform in not france 0.92

01:31:42.700 right but she was greeted enthusiastically in russia they gave her jewels furs portraits and

01:31:47.960 busts of herself which is what this girl wanted and she would have loved and she would have sold

01:31:54.000 them i thought she would have kept one bust of herself just oh that's true yeah yeah so the shop

01:31:59.360 started selling powders and pomades called rochelle her own fragrance yeah rochelle oh de

01:32:07.400 rochelle anyway as a example of her famous wit um some russian soldiers were like because there's

01:32:13.400 like a war going on between france and russia they're like we look forward to drinking champagne

01:32:17.700 in france soon and she was like oh well we don't treat our prisoners that well actually

01:32:22.380 and france heard she said that and france was like hell yeah she's on our side again we're good 0.94

01:32:30.960 anyway she later exploit her fame from that trip in a new play where she played

01:32:34.620 catherine the great let's see so oh a person consistently described as her favorite sister

01:32:42.140 rebecca also an actress died of tuberculosis and then one of rochelle's lovers i haven't mentioned

01:32:48.920 It's a guy called Michel Levy.

01:32:50.520 No Napoleon connection that I know about, but Michel Levy will come up in a minute.

01:32:54.500 Anyway, so Michel Levy, because Rebecca had also been an actress.

01:32:57.580 So they asked Samson, remember her old mentor, the like head of the theater, Francaise.

01:33:02.240 So they asked Samson to speak at Rebecca's funeral and he refused due to his grief.

01:33:07.120 Rochelle never forgave Samson for refusing, even though Samson did actually wind up improvising a speech at the funeral.

01:33:14.320 Oh, I couldn't.

01:33:15.020 I couldn't possibly.

01:33:16.320 Well, just this little something.

01:33:17.620 Anyway, so Rochelle's tuberculosis progressed. Newspapers around the world breathlessly reported

01:33:23.820 on her illness. How is Rochelle? Rochelle coughed today. In 1855, she caught a cold. So she was in

01:33:32.300 America, your country, your area, the East Coast. Not my area. Okay. I don't know where Chicago is. 0.98

01:33:40.700 Not on the East Coast. Isn't it? No. But like you go to New York sometimes.

01:33:44.440 I fly on a plane oh you fly okay yeah I thought you just like drove okay no anyway so she caught

01:33:52.240 a cold on an unheated train between Boston and New York oh that's a terrible place to be

01:33:57.180 so upon and then she had a cough and she wrote she was okay I'm saying like she had tuberculosis

01:34:02.440 blah blah but she was like like sateen in Moulin Rouge she was just like I don't have tuberculosis

01:34:07.400 don't don't say I have tuberculosis I just have a cough just cough that's all just cough so she's

01:34:12.080 like in the US, the tour not going well. She like caught a chill on this train. And then she wrote

01:34:17.840 a letter. She's like, when you hear me cough, you'd almost think, oh, she has tuberculosis.

01:34:20.700 But don't worry. I don't. Just a cough. Because the train was cold. Not tuberculosis at all.

01:34:25.320 Don't worry about it. Anyway, so upon doctor's advice, like what's his name from Tombstone,

01:34:30.380 Val Kilmer? Doc Holliday. Doc Holliday. So in the movie Tombstone, which we've discussed in

01:34:35.380 Vulgar Peace Theater, Doc Holliday goes to Arizona because the air is more dry and hot.

01:34:40.860 Anyway, the doctors told her the same thing.

01:34:42.340 So she went to Cuba and then to Egypt to try and...

01:34:45.760 Because that's good for people's tuberculosis, I guess.

01:34:48.120 And if you want to cosplay Cleopatra a bit more. 0.60

01:34:50.380 She did.

01:34:50.840 She wrote a letter to one of her sons where she's like,

01:34:52.640 I'm writing to you, like once I played Cleopatra

01:34:54.380 and now I'm like on the same river where she once was.

01:34:57.040 Maybe there's grains of sand in this letter

01:34:58.800 that she once touched, you know.

01:35:01.620 Anyway, she returned to France and she is actively dying.

01:35:04.460 She stayed in a villa in Southern France

01:35:06.340 where she wrote farewell letters to her sons.

01:35:09.460 her family members, her lovers. That must have taken forever. There's a lot of lovers.

01:35:16.960 Colleagues, other actors. She wrote a will circumventing French law to leave more money

01:35:22.280 to her sons than she was allowed to do legally. And then, I'm so sorry to say, Rochelle died.

01:35:28.040 January 4th, 1858, of tuberculosis, age 36. Three years later, Lola Montes died, also of tuberculosis.

01:35:35.960 god damn tuberculosis what a time yeah what a time but the world couldn't live with just one 0.99

01:35:42.720 of them you know lola and brachelle okay so her funeral was a huge deal she got i bet it fucking 0.99

01:35:50.400 oh she got a state funeral so she died in the like south of france and then her body was processed 0.85

01:35:56.320 to paris stopped in marseilles for the grand rabbi to oversee a funeral in the train station

01:36:00.980 where the actors of the grand theater of lyon remember she started off there attended to pay

01:36:05.540 homage then the remains were taken to her old flat in paris where a huge crowd stood waiting

01:36:10.120 some and climbed the trees to be able to see the coffin the coffin proceeded behind 11 guardsmen

01:36:16.260 on horseback followed by 30 on foot behind the hearse walked grand rabbi isador of paris

01:36:22.400 some members of rachel's family and representing all of the lovers one of her most faithfully

01:36:28.660 devoted lover is michelle levy oh so this is where it just says the union rep to the funeral that's

01:36:35.440 the thing it's like he's like the main lover he's like the the shop steward of the lovers

01:36:40.160 so sweet i just love that he was walking behind on behalf of all the lovers

01:36:44.780 which is where i think of like spanish jackie from her flag vista yes behind them walked members

01:36:50.500 of the comedy francaise then the personnel of the theater then representatives of the government

01:36:56.000 This is all, they're all walking.

01:36:57.740 Then 600 carriages and 30 to 40,000 people on foot.

01:37:01.940 Jesus Christ.

01:37:03.580 By the time they reach the cemetery,

01:37:05.200 there are over a hundred thousand mourners present.

01:37:07.580 This is what I want for all of the people

01:37:09.880 I talk about in this podcast.

01:37:11.280 This, you know, when people it's like,

01:37:13.540 and she was, we don't know where her bones are.

01:37:15.200 We don't know where she was buried.

01:37:16.140 No, I want this.

01:37:18.200 One of her pallbearers was Alexandre Dumas.

01:37:20.800 The guy who she said, I will not sleep with you.

01:37:22.940 Yeah.

01:37:23.180 he said he said even i was like why did you ask me and then i was like because i'm me

01:37:30.120 or something like that but each pallbearer represented a different artistic muse

01:37:34.860 and he was there to represent he was there to represent literature she had died without making

01:37:41.600 amends with her teacher her mentor samson remember because he said he wouldn't speak at her sister's

01:37:46.560 funeral so he was the head of the comedy francis and because they died she died angry so there was

01:37:52.080 no eulogy given at her funeral on behalf of the Comedie Francaise because he was not allowed to

01:37:57.760 because she was mad at him. There were three eulogies. One was given by the Grand Rabbi Isidore

01:38:03.820 who praised her commitment to Judaism, which reminds me that when she was in Egypt, I guess

01:38:07.860 some people came up to her on the train and they're like, want to convert to be Christian?

01:38:11.660 And she's like, get me off this train. Anyway, so Rochelle is buried in a beautiful tomb that says

01:38:18.400 just rochelle and i'll put a picture on instagram but i sent it to you allison i just love it's just

01:38:23.380 two minutes it's like literally r-a-c-h-e-l it's amazing rochelle that's it so she's buried in the

01:38:28.460 jewish section of pere lachaise cemetery in paris um which is near where there is a street named

01:38:34.660 after her avenue rochelle her portrait hangs in a very prominent place at the theater francaise

01:38:40.680 which is still a place i guess her parents outlived her living the rest of their lives on the estate

01:38:45.900 Rochelle had bought them in the village of Montmorency. So her son, by Count Vales Velusky,

01:38:52.560 the one, her son, Napoleon's grandson, went on to have a career as a diplomat. Her other son,

01:38:58.320 by the Darnley guy, served in the Navy. So they both did fine, did fine for themselves.

01:39:04.060 And I mean, honestly, when someone dies of tuberculosis, it's like the end.

01:39:09.100 Yep. Okay.

01:39:10.280 sorry but quite a funeral so it's time to score this icon rochelle i mean she gets bonus points 0.75

01:39:18.540 for having no surname because yes 100 oh actually first was there anyone supporting performance

01:39:26.040 jewel tortoise award i think the lovers can be communally i yeah i mean they they knew their

01:39:35.220 place and they stayed in it and i respect that for them but i really feel like rochelle would

01:39:39.400 be offended by giving anyone a supporting performance actually you're right you're right

01:39:43.440 people came to see her no no there was one performance and it was moi it was me you are

01:39:48.980 absolutely correct okay so rochelle scandalousness i think this is her highest score yeah right i

01:39:56.980 think so many it's hard because i don't like the culture around her seemed cool with her having

01:40:04.400 all these lovers would they've been that cool about anyone or was it just because she was

01:40:08.520 rochelle and she represented france and drama that they were cool with i think she was just

01:40:13.980 so dramatic that they were like this is fine yeah because i i do i feel like i feel like i want to

01:40:20.900 give her a really high score for scandal justice because like the circle of lovers like getting

01:40:25.320 two new lovers who were both cousins while you while you're pregnant while you're pregnant in

01:40:30.600 another country and then one of them becomes the emperor and then and then you kneel down with a

01:40:35.140 flag and the entire country of france goes into a riot yeah yeah by the way final final tally of

01:40:41.780 napoleon adjacent lovers was six six six that to me feels scandalous as well like two sons out of

01:40:50.520 wedlock which is not for the morals of the day like to queen i don't know queen victoria was

01:40:58.000 like that's cool girl like she was cool and so people weren't like herman my pills because

01:41:03.960 she was anyway i'm giving her 10 for scandalousness because i love her and i support it

01:41:10.400 that is what she gets scheminess asterix not in an anti-semitic way um i think medium to high for

01:41:19.500 her here too right because she was like i am gonna position myself to be in the right place at the 0.98

01:41:25.600 right time so that my unique weird ass self can become the most famous woman in this city i went 0.98

01:41:33.220 from used clothes peddler getting caught by a dog to state funeral with 100,000 mourners. 0.99

01:41:41.420 Yeah.

01:41:42.080 Well, and also the way that she was like, I'm going to sell this guitar.

01:41:47.000 Like, I'm going to, like, she's always finding, she's like, I can't tour enough with this

01:41:51.660 contract.

01:41:52.020 So I'm going to make a new contract.

01:41:53.820 Like she was, she always had an angle in an admirable way.

01:41:56.800 I can't get enough money out of this contract.

01:41:58.680 Let me make the emperor my lover.

01:42:00.740 Maybe that will help.

01:42:01.740 i feel like she was always coming up with some sort of scheme in the most admirable

01:42:07.260 dogged way like if i compare her to kim kardashian in a positive manner it's that same thing where

01:42:15.780 she's just like building the empire yeah where you're just like okay i can monetize this i can

01:42:20.160 monetize this like rochelle face powder rochelle perfume like she's she's always and she and it 0.99

01:42:25.420 all paid off and then she schemed to like leave her sons more of an estate than she's legally 0.93

01:42:28.900 allowed to like she was always scheming like in an impressive way i don't know if it's just because

01:42:34.000 it's the festive holidays but i'm just like 10 do it 10 do it i think those are her two categories

01:42:39.860 yeah i feel comfy giving her yeah significance now her significant here it's always tricky but

01:42:46.600 like her significance at the time was major like that funeral shows how significant she was she

01:42:51.640 like saved classical french repertoire or whatever i don't know i i don't know i don't know like she

01:43:00.440 has a street named after her she was so famous in her time comma and this is whenever we gave

01:43:06.660 lola montez for significance i feel like rachel has the same kind of significance which is what

01:43:12.200 a legend at the time yeah and then i don't know i feel it's always it's a funny category i have

01:43:18.460 sorry i'm just trying to find i have a list of like what scores people have so i can see what

01:43:21.780 we gave her oh probably not breakouts though right yeah i don't significance is kind of there

01:43:27.620 to give points to people who don't have points anywhere else you know like how significant can

01:43:33.300 a person be who is like an actress in france lola montez we gave a four for significance okay that 0.98

01:43:41.780 must have been a real conversation lola montez now almost i almost said lola montez never fucked 0.88

01:43:46.940 an emperor but jk yes she did she did i think i think the look i will give her also a four because 0.98

01:43:54.860 i think just the similarities between the two of them are so extreme the sexism bonus actually 0.98

01:44:00.220 that's interesting let me see because i she had a lot stacked against her woman jewish actress 1.00

01:44:05.280 poor skinny that was another thing i didn't even talk about but like the beauty 1.00

01:44:09.800 the beauty standard at the time was not bag of bones and that's what she was bringing to the

01:44:15.400 party and she said guess what else i'm bringing to the party intensity have you watched there's

01:44:21.900 this show on um netflix called bodies that is a murder i have not okay it's a murder mystery show

01:44:28.080 so of course i watched it one of the actresses in it i was watching it while i was researching

01:44:33.100 this and she's an actress called shira haas she was also in another thing anyway she's a jewish

01:44:38.040 actress and i was watching her and i was like jewish actress and she's so small shira haas like

01:44:42.920 they they exacerbate it for dramatic purposes but i'm just i was googling i'm just like what

01:44:47.040 is this person's height it's five foot two which is not that short but i'm just like wait bag of

01:44:51.860 bones jewish actress rochelle and she is really good and intense in it anyway but yeah so i don't 0.99

01:45:01.240 know that sexism got in rochelle's way whatsoever frankly frankly looked at sexism and said how can 0.78

01:45:08.560 I monetize this yeah and then did monetize it basically we gave Lola Montez a three for sexism 0.78

01:45:14.380 and Rochelle that's the thing like there were these things that would have been challenges 1.00

01:45:18.840 that did get in her way but they didn't because yeah she had this she was just so determined to

01:45:26.200 do it yeah so I don't think sexism got in her way which is good you know bad bad for a score but good

01:45:32.100 for her good good for a person I don't know I feel like two or a three or something like

01:45:36.740 I would say, too, I feel like sexism got in her way less than it did for Lola Montez.

01:45:41.660 It did.

01:45:42.660 Like, Rochelle.

01:45:43.760 Everyone loves me.

01:45:44.920 I'm beloved national icon Rochelle.

01:45:48.440 Yeah.

01:45:49.480 Yeah.

01:45:49.660 Like, it truly, there was never, like, she was pregnant, but that didn't get in her way. 1.00

01:45:55.140 She kept...

01:45:55.720 She had lovers, and everyone was like, that's great.

01:45:58.120 Love that for you.

01:45:59.380 Like, it truly, I don't, like, being a woman was not really an obstacle to her.

01:46:04.780 frankly she succeeded so well i don't want to say that nothing was an obstacle to her but there was

01:46:10.060 no obstacle she did not overcome except tuberculosis yes so that gives her higher than

01:46:16.140 usual for an episode you're on 26 and that's that's amazing just a sec rachel i'm just writing

01:46:24.360 in her name easy to type one word 26 is like one of the most common scores on vulgar history

01:46:29.920 like the allison neighborhood yeah is like 23 for newcomers to the podcast every episode i'm on

01:46:38.000 the person we talk about scores the same score yeah so um empress elizabeth of russia 23

01:46:44.100 lola montez 23 catalina de eroso 23.5 like that's that's the allison neighborhood i hit i hit a 23

01:46:51.480 pretty regularly so 20 26 rochelle like she pulled it out 26 so many people have a 26 i'm just

01:46:57.760 thinking of other people marie de guise as a 26 for instance let me see like it's it's just where 0.98

01:47:04.840 she belongs i think like she's around some really strong tits out contenders and a bit higher than 0.97

01:47:11.040 the others anyway allison thank you so much i was a ridiculous person forever imagining this would 0.95

01:47:16.380 take less than this amount of time that it took we always talk a big game about how long these

01:47:22.180 episodes will take and every time we are incorrect i cut out so much information about the lovers

01:47:26.720 I had separate Google Docs per lover.

01:47:29.520 And I'm just like, no, we have to focus on Rochelle.

01:47:31.660 We don't have time.

01:47:32.600 That's the after show type content, Anne.

01:47:34.980 Anyway, Alison, so quickly, this episode is coming out the first week of December.

01:47:38.800 I think as a great gift, anyone could give anyone would be a copy of your book,

01:47:42.420 Let the Dead Bury the Dead.

01:47:44.100 Yes, it's great for gift giving.

01:47:46.220 It's rectangular and very easy to wrap.

01:47:48.620 Absolutely.

01:47:49.460 And where can people keep up with you in this diaspora of social media?

01:47:54.960 You know what?

01:47:55.660 You have a website.

01:47:56.360 and there's links in your website to where you are right go to my website which is alisonepstein.com

01:48:02.220 there are helpful tabs and links to all of the things that i'm doing and all of the places that

01:48:06.340 i am well and i feel like especially when i record episodes like a couple weeks in advance i'm just

01:48:10.520 like two weeks from now what social where will we be i don't know what's even happening on my website

01:48:16.340 and you can find me and you will be hibernating after your book tour and yes i i am not going

01:48:23.520 anywhere as much as I can. I am not doing anything. It'll be great.

01:48:28.520 Fabulous. Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me. I truly could not have done this

01:48:31.780 without you. There's too many Louie's. It's a lot. But Rochelle, I mean, overall,

01:48:37.240 what are your thoughts on Rochelle? What a legend. I wish I could have met her. She would

01:48:41.680 have had no interest in meeting me because I'm not cool enough, but I feel like I would have

01:48:44.940 liked to watch her walk down the street. With intensity. With intensity.

01:48:49.600 day on a rendezvous with her lovers i love the lovers like there's so many great details but

01:48:57.460 the lovers union is a great detail yes that's amazing anyway thank you so much thanks bye

01:49:04.220 so i wanted to let you know for the next little bit what you're going to be hearing

01:49:13.940 in Vulgar History podcast, which is going to be some episodes, brackets, and version.

01:49:20.100 What this means is that I'm going to be taking a few weeks off just to kind of like rest up and

01:49:26.240 recuperate and whatever. And while I'm doing that, I want to be able to give you new episodes

01:49:30.560 or just something to listen to. And what it's going to be is revisiting some of the older

01:49:35.160 episodes. So our faithful editor, Christina, has been editing to improve the sound quality,

01:49:40.500 e.g. remove my mouth noises, try and make the audio better for the these earlier episodes.

01:49:47.240 And so we're going to be releasing those one week with bonus new intros and extras with some

01:49:51.880 information just catching you up with facts and information I learned after the episode first

01:49:56.700 aired in 2019. And then also for some of these, we're going to be rescoring the people because

01:50:02.420 scoring in the first season, I'm the first to admit is like really chaotic because I didn't

01:50:06.240 know what to compare people against and now that we have so many people some of these I just some

01:50:11.760 of these are scores I like to revisit so anyway so those are little treats for you so there's

01:50:16.700 always going to be something new for you in the feed and then in the new year in 2024 I'm going

01:50:23.380 to be back with new episodes that are going to be a combination of some of like a few more reruns

01:50:29.000 brackets and version some guests coming on authors talking about their books and some episodes that

01:50:34.920 are just me telling you a story. And this is because I'm working on the coming up next year's

01:50:42.820 new season that I'm really excited about. It's going to be a big project. It's going to be on

01:50:47.440 the scale of the international season in terms of just like countries and places. And I need to do

01:50:52.300 a lot of reading about stuff I didn't know about, but I also really know it's important to have

01:50:56.160 episodes every week. So anyway, that's how I figured out a way to do that. So that's what's

01:51:00.540 coming up and anyway so just know you'll always get something in this feed every week and i'll

01:51:08.680 tell you some other things that i like to tell you which are you can find me on instagram at

01:51:14.800 vulgar history pod there's merch available you know holiday festive gift giving season is here

01:51:21.220 hanukkah starts tomorrow so you can get merch at vulgar history.com slash store or if you're

01:51:26.920 outside the u.s for shipping you can go to vulgarhistory.redbubble.com has better shipping

01:51:31.720 you can also gift you can give somebody a gift of a patreon subscription why not you can support

01:51:37.640 the podcast on patreon at patreon.com slash ann foster writer or for one dollar a month you get

01:51:42.440 early ad free access to all episodes and for five dollars or more a month you get early ad free

01:51:46.580 access to the episodes as well as bonus episodes vulgar peace theater um as well as sew this

01:51:51.400 asshole uh you also get the after show lots of things and i have promised when i get to 500 0.95

01:51:56.780 followers on patreon i will do so this asshole episode on my personal nemesis john knox uh 0.97

01:52:03.040 transcripts of recent episodes are available at vulgarhistory.com thank you to eveleen malik from

01:52:07.360 the wordery for providing these transcripts and i also have my gift guide is on the website so if

01:52:13.800 you're looking for vulgar history coded things to give people if you go to vulgar history pod on

01:52:18.560 Instagram. In my highlights, I have the gift guide, which has got links to all these great

01:52:22.280 small businesses where you can get stuff like Lola Montez dolls, make your own cat embroidery,

01:52:28.360 like Mary Queen of Scots famously had. If you want to get the like B hanging the letter B or a

01:52:34.500 different letter, like Anne Boleyn's necklace. Anyway, I'm just curating stuff that from small

01:52:38.880 businesses because I always like to support small independent businesses at this time of year.

01:52:44.500 And also including the gift guide, there's a list of recommended books that I've put together that

01:52:49.540 are books, not ones I've talked about on this podcast. Although those ones, I also have a list

01:52:53.460 of those. If you want a gift, because I recommend all those books, but other books I have listed in

01:52:58.960 the gift guide, as well as if you want to get a cameo from me, if you need a last minute Hanukkah

01:53:04.320 gift or whatever, and you want a gift of a video of me, I'm on cameo now. So you can do that as

01:53:10.820 and then also always a good gift is jewelry from common era jewelry which is 100% woman-owned 0.96

01:53:17.120 business using 100% recycled gold they make their gold pieces made to order which means there is no

01:53:22.560 waste when you place an order they make the items so they're not always there's not a lot sitting

01:53:26.980 around unused their designs are all inspired by classical mythology so you know Rochelle would be

01:53:33.300 on board actually you can get several pieces from common era that are of characters portrayed by

01:53:39.820 Rochelle. Cleopatra is there. I feel like Rochelle probably might have played Agrippina at some

01:53:46.240 point, but also people from mythology like Clytemnestra, Phaedra, Medusa, just very Rochelle

01:53:52.800 coded actually. And so their pieces are available in solid gold as well and more as in more affordable

01:53:59.280 gold vermeil. And including more recently, they have the Anne Boleyn pendant available in gold

01:54:06.340 for May and Vulgar History listeners can always get 15% off all items from Common Era by going

01:54:11.800 to commonera.com slash vulgar or using code vulgar at checkout. And yeah, you know, there's

01:54:19.680 going to be episodes. So like, I'm not going anywhere. I'm just going to be like hibernating

01:54:23.480 basically. But until next time, everybody, you know, happy festive holiday season and keep your

01:54:30.020 pants on. Oh, and also there's new merch. There's new merch designed by Karen Moynihan from Double

01:54:36.040 love podcast that says tits out or no, it says tits the season. So if you want to get festive 0.89

01:54:41.700 holiday merch, literally, um, you can get that at vulgarhistory.com slash shop or in the Red

01:54:46.240 Bubble shop. Anyway, pants on, tits out for the holidays, and I'll be back again next week. Au revoir. 0.86

01:54:55.980 So again, this episode was recorded a bit ago. Alison's book, Faking the Thief is now available.

01:55:01.300 You can get it from wherever you get your books, your eBooks, your audio books. Everyone keeps

01:55:05.080 mentioning the audiobook of this it's the narrator is so good he's got this fantastic voice and i

01:55:10.000 feel like during this hanukkah season it would be interesting to revisit or to look at uh at charles

01:55:15.960 dickens character you know so many people talk about a christmas carol at this time of year but

01:55:20.080 like think about oliver twist think about fagin i think this could be a holiday ritual to listen

01:55:25.420 to this audiobook or to read allison's fantastic book uh visiting rochelle's tomb in paris is

01:55:31.680 absolutely on my bucket list. There's so many people in this podcast who I'm always sad at the

01:55:38.440 just sort of the way that their stories end. There's not 10,000 people screaming in grief

01:55:45.740 about them, but Rochelle had that. She was that girl and I love that for her. We talked about

01:55:51.040 some other actresses in the French Revolution season and none of them had anywhere near Rochelle's

01:55:56.320 success and it's it's just such an iconic vulgar history episode and story and i'm happy to share

01:56:03.980 this with you again this time of year is our hanukkah special um so stay tuned there's going

01:56:09.400 to be another next week we're going to be having it'll be our christmas special because it's going

01:56:12.940 to be christmas next week and we're going to be revisiting one new episode but talking about

01:56:17.620 another iconic all-time vulgar history heroine um and talking about some new books about an old

01:56:24.220 fave but until then i hope you're all doing well and keep just you know thinkable rochelle 0.95

01:56:28.800 your pants on keep your tits out do some hand gestures and just like live life to the fullest 0.95

01:56:35.480 vulgar history is researched scripted and hosted by ann foster editor is christina lumagi theme 0.99

01:56:42.960 music is by the severin duo regency era artwork by karen moynihan social media videos by magdalena

01:56:49.320 Denson. Transcripts of this podcast are available at vulgarhistory.com by Aveline Malik. You can

01:56:55.020 get early ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon at 0.52

01:56:59.460 patreon.com slash Anne Foster Writer. Vulgar History merchandise is available at vulgarhistory.com

01:57:05.400 slash store for Americans and at vulgarhistory.redbubble.com for everyone else. Follow

01:57:11.000 us on social media at vulgarhistorypod. Get in touch with me at vulgarhistorypod at gmail.com.

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Vulgar History - December 17, 2025

Rachel： The One-Named Jewish Actress And Her Many, Many Lovers (revisited)

Episode Stats

Transcript