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Clémentine Delait and the Cafe of the Bearded Woman

Today we throw a few crumbs to Clémentine Delait (1865-1939), the Most Celebrated Bearded Lady in France!

Delait was born and raised in Lorraine, France, near the German and Swiss borders. She was hirsute since adolesence, though she made the traditional female effort to disguise this propensity. At age 20 (1885) she married the local baker and they opened a cafe. It wasn’t until a carnival came to town in 1900 that Delait was inspired to cultivate the hair on her chinny-chinny-chin, noticing that the whiskers on the show’s bearded lady were no great shakes. She and her husband bet the town that her follicles could do better, and they won. Madame Delait now became a sort of mascot and tourist attraction that helped their business, which they renamed Le Café de La Femme à Barbe: “The café of the Bearded Woman”.

The couple now added the sale of photographs of postcards depecting the bewhiskered barista to their revenue stream. In time Madame Delait went on tour to meet the demand for those who wanted to see her in person, appearing in circuses, cabarets, and museums around Europe (although she turned down an offer to tour the U.S.). Her memoirs were published in 1934.

For more on the history of show business, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.