Speaker 1: I was gonna play in high school where it was
Speaker 1: like a murder mystery. UM. And the director of the play,
Speaker 1: in quotes, was was a character in the show, so
Speaker 1: like break the fourth wall, like speaks to the audience.
Speaker 1: It would come out, was like he was trying to
Speaker 1: put this show on, this murder mystery classic. It was.
Speaker 1: It was terrible. It was really bad. It was a
Speaker 1: really bad play. Um. But we had someone get very
Speaker 1: very sick the night of the show, of opening night
Speaker 1: of the show, and um, so we had the director
Speaker 1: character step in and like be like and I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to play this part. So he was able
Speaker 1: to just have his script in front of him because
Speaker 1: that already worked for his character, and he like deliberately
Speaker 1: played it terribly, you know, like like a non actor,
Speaker 1: even though he was a very good actor. Actually, I
Speaker 1: liked how much weight was in that pause between it
Speaker 1: was terrible. I was for a word that more accurately
Speaker 1: described what it was, and there's not. There's I couldn't
Speaker 1: think of a stronger word than just plain old terrible.
Speaker 1: And that was the only terrible play I've ever been.
Speaker 1: The only dinner theater type thing I ever did was
Speaker 1: our one manual tavern and forks, knives and other weapons. Right,
Speaker 1: we had the titties cut off and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: and I was the murderer. Once. You can't just say
Speaker 1: we had the titties cut off and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Like you've got to tell people about tell them. Cherry,
Speaker 1: who you heard in the show, played a character we
Speaker 1: got murdered and she came out of the kitchen. We
Speaker 1: were performed this in a restaurant and she came out
Speaker 1: of the kitchen with a platter with two like what
Speaker 1: do we make like cake boobies jello? Yeah, and it's like,
Speaker 1: oh no, and then she had like blood all of
Speaker 1: her chest and then she collapsed onto the table with
Speaker 1: the cities and they were let us around it like presented,
Speaker 1: and it was like this killer cut off her boobs,
Speaker 1: put him on a platter, handed her that platter and
Speaker 1: then she stumbled out into the restaurant and died in
Speaker 1: front of everyone. How killed her? Also, I was like,
Speaker 1: it's being cut off murder. Well, definitely a pretty fucked
Speaker 1: up thing, yeah, but still I worked. The funniest death
Speaker 1: was probably Julian's though, when he had the plunger on
Speaker 1: his mouth and it pulled out all his intestines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just like plunger on the face, classic Looney Tune style.
Speaker 1: And he like pulled pull, pull, pull, and then he
Speaker 1: ripped it off. This like we used any hose stuff
Speaker 1: with cotton that was all packed into the plunger, and
Speaker 1: he put a piece of in his teeth, so when
Speaker 1: he pulled the plunger out, it looked like his intestines
Speaker 1: of his mouth. People are eating by the way, wow,
Speaker 1: Like we made it the most bloody, gross, disgusting come
Speaker 1: up with and it was hilarious. Anyway, I'm in a
Speaker 1: show right now if you're in Atlanta at Village Theater.
Speaker 1: It's called Tipsy Tales robin Hood, and we, uh, we
Speaker 1: do a one hour show robin Hood, but one of
Speaker 1: the actors is drunk and we've got to work around
Speaker 1: that and try to get to the end of the
Speaker 1: play as best we can. I can't wait to do this.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited. It's been very funny. I mean, the
Speaker 1: script itself for the robin Hood show is funny. It's
Speaker 1: like a nice little one hour comedy robin Hood play.
Speaker 1: And then it's going to be chaos because we we
Speaker 1: just have to basically go along with whatever the drunk does.
Speaker 1: They've done this show before and like not robin Hood,
Speaker 1: but like they've done other shows, and you know the character,
Speaker 1: the actor will be drunk and they'll just like murder
Speaker 1: a character in the middle of the show, and now
Speaker 1: you just have to that character is dead now and
Speaker 1: you have to get through the rest of the play
Speaker 1: with that character. So at any point they might decide
Speaker 1: robin Hood is the villain and we have to like
Speaker 1: rework the show. Now robin Hood is pretty capitalist. Well
Speaker 1: it should be chaos. So if you're around, come check
Speaker 1: us out the Village Theater. I can't wait to see it.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited. Speaking of theaters, yeah, we have kind
Speaker 1: of a theater person to talk. Performer, performer and true storyteller.
Speaker 1: So one of our listeners, Rachel it's Rachee Vaughan on Instagram,
Speaker 1: had reached out and said, hey, will you please do
Speaker 1: Collette because she is like a bisexual, like cool author,
Speaker 1: feminist author from France. Um, it's like turn of the
Speaker 1: century France, so it's all crazy love affairs and stuff
Speaker 1: going on during that period, and yeah, that sounds right
Speaker 1: up our street. So we started looking into Collette, and
Speaker 1: we realized there's so much going on with her life.
Speaker 1: There's just so she's like in the middle of this
Speaker 1: really interesting period of history, so many opportunities for historical tangents,
Speaker 1: and so much banter, and she had so many ridiculous
Speaker 1: romances throughout her life that we decided to kind of
Speaker 1: split her up into several parts and do our first series. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we had flirted with like a few series ideas like
Speaker 1: Henry the Eighth or Casanova or Lord Byron um, but
Speaker 1: it kind of feels good to like start with, you know,
Speaker 1: a really complicated woman who had hot encounters with male
Speaker 1: and female alike and was just just can't be shoehorned
Speaker 1: very easily into any label or any box, you know. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's learn all about the early years of Collette. In
Speaker 1: our first part. We're gonna talk about her first books,
Speaker 1: her first marriage, her first lesbian love affair, and so
Speaker 1: much more. Yeah, let's go. Hey their French comlution. Well,
Speaker 1: Eli and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking,
Speaker 1: a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationship. I love.
Speaker 1: It might be any type of version at all, and
Speaker 1: that's stra comes don't concrete, but if there's just the
Speaker 1: second glance. Ridiculous Rolets, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Sidney Gabrielle Collette was born in eighteen seventy three and
Speaker 1: she lived in sin Xeiville on Puis Say in Burgundy, France,
Speaker 1: like rural, you know, rural France. And her father, Captain Collette,
Speaker 1: was a war hero. He lost his leg in the
Speaker 1: Crimean War, so he was given a tax collector position
Speaker 1: in this village, which left the family well off initially.
Speaker 1: And Collette attended public school from six to twelve, and
Speaker 1: all the boys in the public school only called each
Speaker 1: other by their last names. You know, they'd be like, hey, Banks,
Speaker 1: get over here, right. So Collette was like, okay, well
Speaker 1: then call me Collette just like one of the guys.
Speaker 1: You know, you shouldn't call me Sidney gabriel He should
Speaker 1: call me collect just like everybody else. That's kind of
Speaker 1: how she started going by her It's like menonymously monom Okay,
Speaker 1: that's how she's It starts to say, I'm a monomononomon
Speaker 1: that's exactly anyway. That's when she started being known menonymously
Speaker 1: as Collecte collect like Madonna Share or Frank. Frank, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has no Frank. At some point in her childhood,
Speaker 1: her father was seeking election as a deputee in the
Speaker 1: French National Assembly, and Collette accompanied him to his campaigning
Speaker 1: events and she would get tipsy on mold wine with
Speaker 1: the voters, which such an idea of, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: like an eleven year old kid being like, give me
Speaker 1: some of that juice, like good juice. Yeah. Her mom
Speaker 1: put a stop to that. Eventually she stepped in was like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's enough. How many voters have you won over? Okay,
Speaker 1: that'll be enough, thank you. But by the time that
Speaker 1: Collette was twelve years old, everything changed. Her father had
Speaker 1: made some poor investments and this forced him to sell
Speaker 1: off some of his wife's property. And then, in addition
Speaker 1: to that, Collette's half sister married a doctor, but her
Speaker 1: family didn't have the money to pay off the dowry
Speaker 1: that they'd agreed upon, so the house and all the
Speaker 1: furniture had to be sold to cover it, leaving the
Speaker 1: rest of the family basically in poverty, which kind of
Speaker 1: sucks for the sister to be like, sorry, this is
Speaker 1: what I'm worth. I know the family is going to
Speaker 1: go broke. Paying for me to marry this guy. But
Speaker 1: but also have to be like, it's not like you
Speaker 1: could be confused about the terms of the marriage contract,
Speaker 1: Like why would you agree to pay a price you
Speaker 1: can't you don't have I wonder if it was agreed
Speaker 1: when they still had money and then they lost it
Speaker 1: all over the course of the engagement, right, right, how
Speaker 1: are we going to pay this debt? And you can't
Speaker 1: go and like negotiate, like, hey, what if can we
Speaker 1: lower the You got it? That's why you always set
Speaker 1: your dowry. Less for you, everybody, when you're setting your dowries,
Speaker 1: make it a percentage of your net worth, not a
Speaker 1: hard number. That way, if you lose everything, you know,
Speaker 1: well sorry, here you get of my money. That's two
Speaker 1: bucks and turns out my daughter's worth less than USA. Yeah. Sorry,
Speaker 1: don't carry that energy into your marriage. So everything had
Speaker 1: been sold off, the families left with nothing, and Collette
Speaker 1: wrote in her memoirs quote except for my parents ruin,
Speaker 1: the money gone, the furniture sold by public auction. It
Speaker 1: had been roses all the way. But what would I
Speaker 1: have done with everlasting roses? Well that's an optimistic outlook,
Speaker 1: It's true. I think she was pretty depressed throughout her life,
Speaker 1: but she seemed to try at least. Who wants to
Speaker 1: be happy all the time? Sounds miserable? What would I
Speaker 1: write about? Yeah? Her father frequently corresponded with a friend
Speaker 1: that he had served in the Crimean War with, and
Speaker 1: when Collette was nineteen, this friends son came to visit them.
Speaker 1: His name was Henri Guthier Villars, known to most people
Speaker 1: by his pen name Willie just Willie, another anonymous. So
Speaker 1: Willie is in we say Willie is in puiss And
Speaker 1: if I were twelve, I'd have a joke there, But
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna let it go because I'm a mature
Speaker 1: adult now. Willie was thirteen years older than Colette. He
Speaker 1: was a critic and writer in Paris. He was already
Speaker 1: famous with his quips and ways, his way with words,
Speaker 1: and also as being one of the most notorious libertines
Speaker 1: in Paris. And he wasn't handsome. Joel van Valeen writes
Speaker 1: in his article The Endearing Colette that Willie had quote
Speaker 1: a beak of a nose and a paunch of the stomach,
Speaker 1: but he was cultured and urbane, and most importantly he
Speaker 1: made her laugh I'm telling you, it's like Roger Rabbit.
Speaker 1: You can get a hot lady if you've got a
Speaker 1: good sense. It's true. It's plus he was Collette's ticket
Speaker 1: out of the provinces and rural obscurity, which probably really
Speaker 1: added to his attraction. Like she saw him like she
Speaker 1: was like, this is my train out of here now.
Speaker 1: Willie seemed equally taken with this. You know, this striking
Speaker 1: French beauty, this gorgeous woman, and she had this this
Speaker 1: flowing golden hair and these big magnetic eyes. Her hair
Speaker 1: went all the way down to her ankles. Yes, in fact,
Speaker 1: like just a natural dress. She always wear it. There's
Speaker 1: actually some writer said that she would wear him in
Speaker 1: two braids that would sit coiled like a python in
Speaker 1: the chair next to think. That was one of her
Speaker 1: biographers talked about that. I'm like the heaviness of the
Speaker 1: hair and her neck anyway, I had really long hair
Speaker 1: down to my waist and it was I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: she's got a wheelbarrow. She's always pushing around with her
Speaker 1: hair braids in. I would assume if I saw someone
Speaker 1: with hair coiled up around them that they could control it,
Speaker 1: like it could count to life. And stranglement. If it
Speaker 1: got that long, there's some magic to it. If there's
Speaker 1: some magic to it, there's no limit, there's all magic exactly.
Speaker 1: Fire breathing hair, I would smell like actually fired hair.
Speaker 1: Let's not put this. Van Valen, the journalist, says that
Speaker 1: in a French gossip newspaper, there was an item printed
Speaker 1: warning quote an exquisite blonde whose marvelous hair has made
Speaker 1: her famous to follow Mephistophily's advice and not give away
Speaker 1: on the kisses until she has a ring on her finger.
Speaker 1: La And this article made Willie so mad that he
Speaker 1: fought a duel with the editor and wounded him this
Speaker 1: day like the hell you say now, pink you in
Speaker 1: the arms. But not long after that, in eight three,
Speaker 1: Willie and Colette were married. They moved to live in
Speaker 1: Paris full time, but married life was not all it
Speaker 1: was cracked up to be. Collette said the city of
Speaker 1: Paris filled her with dread, which kind of makes sense
Speaker 1: when you grow up in the country Hansria overload, just
Speaker 1: a lot going on. She called marital sex quote an
Speaker 1: ugly dream, which I don't know what that says about
Speaker 1: Willie and bed or just how how traumatic, your first
Speaker 1: sexual experience can be Um. I don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: she's referring to with that. Also, Willie was a neglectful
Speaker 1: husbands the guy. He worked hard fish and he played harder.
Speaker 1: His whole life was about like the social rounds, so
Speaker 1: he would always be out at the theater and running
Speaker 1: around trying to meet journalistic deadlines and stuff. So he
Speaker 1: just left Colette home alone most of the time, and
Speaker 1: usually she was hiding from people that they owed money to.
Speaker 1: We would come around, you know, knocking on the door,
Speaker 1: and she would just have to like hide behind a
Speaker 1: bureau and pretend not to be home, which is so creepy.
Speaker 1: No one's here, and oh we're absent. Nobody homes, just
Speaker 1: those chickens clock clock. What's a French chicken noise? You know,
Speaker 1: different countries are different now they do, It's true. What
Speaker 1: do the French say for chicken clucks? You know, we're
Speaker 1: like gruise montepul got the translations chicken, chicken, very sophisticated.
Speaker 1: Gru that's a French chicken. Well, I can't find chicken,
Speaker 1: but my quick Google search here found me a French rooster,
Speaker 1: which rears us in America and in English, it says
Speaker 1: cockadoodle do. Of course we all know what a rooster says.
Speaker 1: In French, they say cock rico cock rick, which sounds
Speaker 1: more like a salsa dance to It's about to say
Speaker 1: that sounds like a really cool cabana spot. But I
Speaker 1: can go to leave me down of Coca Rico denies
Speaker 1: some dancing. There's a big breast band plan. It's led
Speaker 1: by a chicken. I would pay good money led by
Speaker 1: a chicken called Coca Rico. Somebody get it together for me.
Speaker 1: I am ready to watch for Diana's birthday. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have to find that. I want to cocoa eat piece
Speaker 1: band led by a giant chicken. It's my one wish,
Speaker 1: all right. So Willie's leaving her home alone. He owes
Speaker 1: money everywhere. It's just like a chaotic situation, right, He's
Speaker 1: always going down to the Coca Rico cash like I'll
Speaker 1: go to the Cocoa Rico. He says, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's too dangerous. Sorry, the chickens Rooster's own. Well, it's
Speaker 1: only for cox. But also Willie cheated, like we said,
Speaker 1: he's one of the most notorious libertines in Paris. So'
Speaker 1: not really a surprise to hear this. He had a
Speaker 1: string of mistresses, actresses, waitresses, studio models. He was forever.
Speaker 1: Some of them he had him for years. Some of
Speaker 1: them it would just be a short, little one night
Speaker 1: stand or whatever. And about a year into their marriage,
Speaker 1: Colette received an anonymous letter telling her, hey, you'll be
Speaker 1: very interested. Don't know what is going on in this
Speaker 1: particular Parisian at part a month? How is my how
Speaker 1: is my accent? And Colette took herself to the address
Speaker 1: provided and she found her husband with his mistress, Charlotte Kinsellor,
Speaker 1: who he had actually been with for like several years
Speaker 1: at this point. And again, this is far from his
Speaker 1: only affair, but this is the first one that Colette
Speaker 1: knew about, and somebody wanted her to know, you know that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was meant to be a
Speaker 1: kind thing, like your husband's running around on you, or
Speaker 1: if it was like, hey, you're being you know, like
Speaker 1: kind of a shitty thing. Was it like I feel
Speaker 1: badly cut out magazine letters? Oh, speculation station. It's one
Speaker 1: of his other mistresses who found out about this girl.
Speaker 1: I was like, fine, I'm gonna tell your wife on you.
Speaker 1: I like that you're cheating on me with somebody else,
Speaker 1: that you're cheating on your wife with You're supposed to
Speaker 1: be cheating on your wife with me. Well, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go tell Collette about this. That's definitely what happens anyway.
Speaker 1: One of his other mistresses tipped off the lead about
Speaker 1: his other mistresses. That's definitely what happens there. Anyway, history made. Now,
Speaker 1: don't let your lard imagination get away with you, because
Speaker 1: I didn't. I thought they were like in the middle
Speaker 1: of some crazy sex actors when she when Colette walks in,
Speaker 1: Like so Colette walks in and it's like, mon dieu,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? And we assumed that, um, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't. They actually were just going through Charlotte's household
Speaker 1: accounts and honestly, listen, like this might have been more
Speaker 1: galling and walking in on some sex stuff, because again,
Speaker 1: Collette has spent a year hiding from creditors and then
Speaker 1: she has to walk in and watch this guy financially
Speaker 1: support another woman. Goodness, so she might have been like,
Speaker 1: I'd rather caught you with your dick insider than this
Speaker 1: right now? Check what's this? Wow? Maybe another speculation station? Uh,
Speaker 1: maybe he wasn't helping her with her finances, maybe he
Speaker 1: was trying to scam some money, where he's like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: some you should probably I've got an account that that
Speaker 1: could keep some of this in that does a better
Speaker 1: interest rates, So why don't you just give it to me.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of my when my cousin came to
Speaker 1: look at all my Magic the Gathering cards in middle
Speaker 1: school because I my mom bought me a yard sale
Speaker 1: box like five magic Gathering cards and I never played before.
Speaker 1: My cousin definitely had, so I was like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: are these worth anything? And he comes through. He literally
Speaker 1: sits down my deck and he starts going through it,
Speaker 1: and I was just too naive at the time to
Speaker 1: know what he was doing. As he sets cards aside,
Speaker 1: and it's like, you don't want this, you don't want this,
Speaker 1: This one's no good, this one's no good. Here, you
Speaker 1: should keep these. Maybe you can sell that one, and
Speaker 1: he walks away with a stack of his own, And
Speaker 1: in hindsight, I'm like, he definitely probably took all the valuable.
Speaker 1: You should have been like, well, if I don't want him,
Speaker 1: why do you want him? Yeah? Well, well, I actually play.
Speaker 1: So these are good for my deck, but they're not
Speaker 1: worth anything, you know kind of thing? Sure, sure, well,
Speaker 1: whatever he was doing with Charlotte, whether he's trying to
Speaker 1: scam her money or give her money. According to Victoria Best,
Speaker 1: a former lecturer on French literature at Cambridge University, she
Speaker 1: writes a blog called lit Love, and she goes real
Speaker 1: into Collet. It's really interesting. Definitely check her out. Can
Speaker 1: I pause for Victoria Best? Here? For second? Her blocks
Speaker 1: called love? Why isn't it called best lit our best Love?
Speaker 1: You got the last name like best, you better be
Speaker 1: using its? True? I don't think about not a lot
Speaker 1: of us are gifted with the last name like best.
Speaker 1: Use it, use it for them for those of us
Speaker 1: who can't. That's true. We should write her a letter
Speaker 1: like love. Your blog just cited it in our podcast episode.
Speaker 1: And also want to ask, what then is Robert here? No? Victoria?
Speaker 1: You do you? Okay girl? She does great work? Please
Speaker 1: continue well. She wrote that when Collette walks in on
Speaker 1: Charlotte and Willie, Charlotte was like ready to fire, she
Speaker 1: grabbed a pair of scissors would defend herself, which tells
Speaker 1: me something about maybe Charlotte's life. In the past couple
Speaker 1: of years, people keep sending anonymous letters about Willie being
Speaker 1: in my apartment. I gotta be ready. She's always got
Speaker 1: a pair of scissors with hands reach. She was gonna
Speaker 1: stab Collette. She's like, there's always man, my boyfriend's wives
Speaker 1: are always showing up here China start some ship. But
Speaker 1: Collette played it really cool. And this is like a
Speaker 1: common thing for Collette. She seems to be very like
Speaker 1: interested in maintaining in maintaining her cool in the face
Speaker 1: of public humiliation. So when all her family's stuff went
Speaker 1: up for auction, even as a kid, she was acting like, Oh,
Speaker 1: that ain't no thing. Everything's fine. I don't care well
Speaker 1: what I want with all these roses? Exactly what would
Speaker 1: I do with everlasting roses? Um? So in this situation,
Speaker 1: she also just played it cool. She said, I'm here
Speaker 1: to get you, Willie. Let's go um here to get
Speaker 1: dear Willie out of that and let's go. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: she just played it cool. She got Willie, she left,
Speaker 1: and actually she and Charlotte became friends eventually, like once
Speaker 1: she had kind of I guess decided there's and Willie
Speaker 1: is incorrigible. There's nothing to be done. She sort of
Speaker 1: was like, fine, why am I mad at Charlotte? She's
Speaker 1: making her way in this world. I'm at at Willie
Speaker 1: and so you and I are cool. But the pain
Speaker 1: of discovery didn't slow Willie down, not for a second.
Speaker 1: There's another time. While Colette was sitting down to have
Speaker 1: her portrait painted with the artist Jacques amure Blanche, she
Speaker 1: watched Willie get dropped off at their place by a woman,
Speaker 1: and as he stepped away, they exchanged like a loving goodbye,
Speaker 1: you know, kiss kiss, So glad we could spend some
Speaker 1: time together, little booty grab, I'll see you later, sugar
Speaker 1: sugar cakes, cake, hey, the French sugar cake. But since
Speaker 1: he wasn't inside the room to see Colette see him,
Speaker 1: she actually let her emotions get the best of her.
Speaker 1: As we said, she usually keeps it cool, but this
Speaker 1: time she really broke down. The painter would later write quote,
Speaker 1: she had real convulsions, hysterical crying fits. One had to
Speaker 1: lay her on a sofa and bathe her temples with
Speaker 1: cologne because she believed herself abandoned forever. That's such an
Speaker 1: old school like rub cologne on my temples. I'm having
Speaker 1: a fit, you know, don't work anymore. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: like you're having a panic attack and I just come
Speaker 1: up and spray acts in your eyes Like this is
Speaker 1: the worst, so much worse. Um. But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: this is important to note because Colette's is so well
Speaker 1: known for having like an open marriage and just being
Speaker 1: kind of out and about in the world. But early
Speaker 1: on that was not really her her jam and she
Speaker 1: really took it to heart that she was being she
Speaker 1: used being run around on. And not long after this,
Speaker 1: Colette got pretty sick. She chalked it up to this
Speaker 1: nervous breakdown, but one of her biographers, Judith Thurman, argues
Speaker 1: in her book Secrets of the Flesh, A Life of Colette,
Speaker 1: that Collett's symptoms indicate not only about serious depression, but
Speaker 1: that her husband Willie had likely given her a severe
Speaker 1: k of gonarrhea. Willie, look, if you're going to be
Speaker 1: running around, first of all, have a conversation about it,
Speaker 1: you know, come to an agreement with your partner. You
Speaker 1: can at least talk about it. And secondly, actually probably
Speaker 1: primarily played safe friends. I know, it's nineteenth century France.
Speaker 1: I was about, well, just try It's nine or something.
Speaker 1: And Willie's like a wife, gotta do, gotta take what
Speaker 1: she gets, So that means I get to cheat on
Speaker 1: whoever I want and I get to bring home a
Speaker 1: STD and give it to you. That's the risk you
Speaker 1: run when you marry a guy. You take what you get,
Speaker 1: and what you get is gonarrhea s t DS. So
Speaker 1: Willie sucks like Willie Boo anti Willie podcast, ridiculous romance.
Speaker 1: But in a minute, he is going to do the
Speaker 1: best thing ever for Collette, and that is make her
Speaker 1: a writer. And let's find out how right after this break, Okay,
Speaker 1: welcome back, my petite co co Rico's so collect you know,
Speaker 1: got sick with gnoia. She was sick for a little while.
Speaker 1: Her mother came to live with them to like nurse
Speaker 1: her back to health. And then Willie was feeling bad,
Speaker 1: probably for giving her goneria, so he took her on
Speaker 1: a little trip to Brittany, France, and that seemed to
Speaker 1: kind of repair their relationship, at least for a minute.
Speaker 1: You know, they had better communication skills after that. Now,
Speaker 1: as we said before, Willie well known music critic and
Speaker 1: writer in Paris, but actually he was more of a
Speaker 1: con man than he was a writer what Willie Willie guy,
Speaker 1: And he was real proud of it too. He loved
Speaker 1: telling people how he never did a day's work. He
Speaker 1: just paid other people to do some work. Some sources
Speaker 1: to say he never wrote a word himself. Some sources
Speaker 1: to say he did some writing, but mostly not a
Speaker 1: real um. John Grisham totally right, hate, I don't speculations station.
Speaker 1: John Grisham doesn't write is on stuff? Does he? I don't.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of books. How could he? How could he?
Speaker 1: And like Tom Clancy, like any of those grocery store
Speaker 1: novels where they come out with a new book every month,
Speaker 1: I feel like you've got to have some ghostwriter. They
Speaker 1: probably wrote some at first, and then somebody came and
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, you guys can all copy
Speaker 1: this style. I hear movie composers do this a lot um,
Speaker 1: the big ones, especially uh. In fact, I read recently
Speaker 1: that not Michael Giaquino, who's amazing, but some of the
Speaker 1: bigger ones will farm out there compositions to other composers
Speaker 1: and then not necessarily maybe give them the credit they deserve.
Speaker 1: So yeah, just a thing just popped into my head.
Speaker 1: I read recently well, much like that, Willie had himself
Speaker 1: a stable of ghost writers collect called it his factory.
Speaker 1: So he had composers writing music criticism, and then he
Speaker 1: had authors writing articles and novels, whatever, sonnets, sometimes whatever
Speaker 1: they felt like writing, or whatever he thought they should write,
Speaker 1: whatever you thought would sell. He's like, right this recipes, recipes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think pieces. He's like, get me some discourse right away.
Speaker 1: And sometimes like he would conceive the plot and like
Speaker 1: hand over an outline and they would actually write the book. Um.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, though, it seems like he just
Speaker 1: edited whatever they came up with and then slapped his
Speaker 1: name on it and sold it. And because that, you know,
Speaker 1: Willie was like a marketing genius. He was an incessant
Speaker 1: self promoter. He had a huge network in the literary world,
Speaker 1: so he could really make a book sell. That is
Speaker 1: the truth about him. He could market the ship out
Speaker 1: of something. So a lot of even acclaimed authors would
Speaker 1: take a turn in the factory if they were hard
Speaker 1: up for cash, because they knew they would get paid
Speaker 1: well because the book would sell. Um. So Stephen King
Speaker 1: comes by is like things are tight, mhm, what you
Speaker 1: got for me? I mean basically, and Meanwhile, that meant Willie,
Speaker 1: of course, could publish as many as fifty books a month,
Speaker 1: which is a rate that no single author could keep
Speaker 1: up with on their own. So he's kid raaking royalties
Speaker 1: except Stephen King, except for Seing. So Collette even did
Speaker 1: some work in the factory herself, although she saw herself
Speaker 1: as more of like an actress and a singer than
Speaker 1: a writer. But one day Willie was a little hard
Speaker 1: up for money and he didn't have any ghostwriters around
Speaker 1: that he'd lean on, so he turned to his wife
Speaker 1: for a new book. He suggested that she writes something
Speaker 1: about her school days. But hey, you know what, Colette,
Speaker 1: why don't you throw a little lesbian action in there?
Speaker 1: Might help me sell the book, Oh Willie, it's like
Speaker 1: sex sells. So Collette put pen to paper, and indeed
Speaker 1: she wrote a six hundred page manuscript in the form
Speaker 1: of a diary, and it was called Claudine in School,
Speaker 1: and it was about a fifteen year old protagonist who's
Speaker 1: a bit of a hoyden. Uh. This is a Diana
Speaker 1: word where let's take a literary lesson for today. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry I did not know this word hoyden. Hoyden. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know the actual definition, but I think it
Speaker 1: means like a girl who's a bit of a tomboy.
Speaker 1: You know, she'll she'll run around in the dirt. She's
Speaker 1: very opinionated and kind of bold and brassy, and she'll
Speaker 1: talk back. The definition I'm seeing is a boisterous girl.
Speaker 1: And the example sentence they give just to clarify for
Speaker 1: you is I've warned you before you young Hoyden. That
Speaker 1: is not helpful. Helpful, That is not a helpful sentence.
Speaker 1: Thanks Oxford Languages. Anyway, Claudine is a bit of a Hoyden.
Speaker 1: She's got a quick wit, she's curious, she's bold, she's
Speaker 1: got this independent spirit, and she has a love affair
Speaker 1: with her female teacher. And I'll say she was only fifteen,
Speaker 1: so there's no se x and it's not a graphic.
Speaker 1: It was like kissing and cuddling. Thank you. Was a
Speaker 1: little worried about that either way. Inappropes, but but it sells.
Speaker 1: I guess Willie barely even flipped through this six page
Speaker 1: manuscript before he just threw it into a drawer in disappointment,
Speaker 1: slammed it shut. No way am I have publishing? This
Speaker 1: will not see the light of day piece of mered.
Speaker 1: But a little while later he dug it back up,
Speaker 1: reread it, and according to Collette, he called himself a
Speaker 1: stupid ass. Oh Willie, what was I thinking? This is brilliant?
Speaker 1: So stupid? So he put his hat on. He ran
Speaker 1: out to the publishers with all the notebooks in hand, said, quick,
Speaker 1: have the next. Um, I don't know ulysses and like,
Speaker 1: I hope not. We like something people can read, sait,
Speaker 1: I have the next? I have the next Da Vinci Code.
Speaker 1: Everyone is going to be talking about this one like
Speaker 1: I was the next Tom Clancy. No, will get it
Speaker 1: in here, and he gives the publishers. They put it
Speaker 1: together in the year nineteen hundred, under Willie's name, of course,
Speaker 1: and this became an instant bestseller, selling forty copies in
Speaker 1: just two months. Was the next da Vinci Code? It
Speaker 1: really was? It really was, and soon to be made
Speaker 1: into a movie with Tom Hanks, Yes, Tom Hanks, Claudine.
Speaker 1: He'll play the teacher. He'll play the teacher and do
Speaker 1: a ridiculous French accent, and they'll get obviously probably l
Speaker 1: Fanning to play Claudine and see it. She could play fifteen,
Speaker 1: maybe a little old for it, but she could playft
Speaker 1: like sexy stuff. You'd want someone older. She's she's been
Speaker 1: back five or six years in the Yeah, and I'm
Speaker 1: saying she could play a high schooler just as easily
Speaker 1: as Tom Hanks could play a female high school teacher.
Speaker 1: Very true. This movie is very interesting. Directed by the
Speaker 1: Duffer brothers. What is going to happen to? Cladie can't wait? Well?
Speaker 1: This kicked off like a new era for Collette. She
Speaker 1: had found her voice, she loved writing, and her literary
Speaker 1: career was launched. Because even though it was only Willie's
Speaker 1: name on the manuscript, it didn't really take that long
Speaker 1: for too Pi to figure out who the real author was.
Speaker 1: I spread, surely, I imagine Collette dropped them. She might
Speaker 1: have whisper whisper Actually I wrote that, and then boom,
Speaker 1: gossip spreads in Paris like like revolutions. That just goes
Speaker 1: so fast. But I mean, he's well known for having ghostwriters,
Speaker 1: so they probably were always trying to be like who
Speaker 1: actually yeah, um so yeah. At this point they're frequenting
Speaker 1: like literary salons. Kind of a glamorous couple going around,
Speaker 1: not rich, but you know, people wanted them on their
Speaker 1: guest list and stuff, and she is like hanging out
Speaker 1: with as yet unknown legends like Marcel Proust. What you know,
Speaker 1: Paris was just enchanted with her country manners and her
Speaker 1: childlike spontaneity. During a blizzard, for example, she once made
Speaker 1: sorbet out of jam and the snow that had collected
Speaker 1: on the windows. And so Paris was probably like, oh,
Speaker 1: she took his strawberry jam and snow and she made
Speaker 1: ice cream all so cottage cool shut. It's kind of
Speaker 1: making me think of the snoopy um right where you
Speaker 1: would literally what we did, We put snow in them.
Speaker 1: I guess that's not the thing people did ices, weren't
Speaker 1: they like snow cone That's what I'm gonnes. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: just made them with actual snow. Well, the one time
Speaker 1: we had snow in Georgia enough snow to do that. Yes,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm thinking about snow in Georgia, and I'm
Speaker 1: just like, you can't scoop up snow in Georgia without
Speaker 1: other stuff coming with it, because it's not deep enough.
Speaker 1: You don't get that clean middle layer. No, And well,
Speaker 1: as a kid, I think it was like during the
Speaker 1: ninety three blizzard or something. So snow to actually do
Speaker 1: something like that, but I feel like, yeah, most of
Speaker 1: the time, snow in Georgia is not you don't want to.
Speaker 1: We moved to Georgia and people were still constantly talking
Speaker 1: about the Blizzard of ninety three. It was like it,
Speaker 1: you know, because I had moved from upstate New York
Speaker 1: in a valley where we regularly got like eighteen inches
Speaker 1: of snow, and people were like, oh, well, we had
Speaker 1: the Blizzard of it was six inches deep and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, I lost a scarf that day. However,
Speaker 1: did you say, well, the next year there was no snow,
Speaker 1: so I didn't need it. I had bought it and
Speaker 1: lost it for that blizzard. Collette also around this time,
Speaker 1: cut off her famous floor length golden tresses, and she
Speaker 1: kicked off the fashion for short hairstyles for women that
Speaker 1: would stay trendy into the nineteen twenties. So who amongst
Speaker 1: us has kicked off a fashion trend that lasted almost
Speaker 1: twenty years. It's been it's been a while since I've
Speaker 1: done it. I can't wait for you to do it again. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was actually responsible for the midriff and rings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was me, what about belly chains? Remember those? Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Well I started with it with with just a ring,
Speaker 1: but then I like clipped my wallet chain to it
Speaker 1: because I also started wallet chains, and people just kind
Speaker 1: of cut out the moment chains as like, nobody's going
Speaker 1: to take my wallet if it's chained to my belly button.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a fair point, or they'll rip out
Speaker 1: your Come on, I wasn't going to say it, think
Speaker 1: I was going to leave it there. I blame myself,
Speaker 1: your fault. If you started it, that's your fault. And
Speaker 1: Willie wanted more Claudine because of course it's selling so well,
Speaker 1: and he's like, let's get more of this rambunctious lady,
Speaker 1: and so she got to writing it, and she has
Speaker 1: famously claimed that Willie would lock her in her room
Speaker 1: for hours at a time until she had pushed sufficient
Speaker 1: amount of pages under the door jam each day, and
Speaker 1: then had to let her out rump still skin like
Speaker 1: you got you better spin this straw into go by,
Speaker 1: which I mean, take this blank paper and make it
Speaker 1: porn and then I'll che not too much point because
Speaker 1: that limits the market. Um. But actually her the biographer
Speaker 1: that we cited earlier Judith Therm and she's kind of
Speaker 1: is like, you know, Collette liked a good story, and
Speaker 1: so that means she was not always a hundred percent
Speaker 1: honest about everything that she's talking about. And there is
Speaker 1: some evidence that when they were in the country together,
Speaker 1: Collette just had a lot of trouble concentrating. So she
Speaker 1: would walk their dog and sometimes also her cat in
Speaker 1: the morning and then ask him lock me in my
Speaker 1: room for four hours so I can get to work,
Speaker 1: like as a focus technique, I guess, So we don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know for sure if he actually was like
Speaker 1: this cruel dude who would lock her in a room,
Speaker 1: or if she was like, I just need to concentrate. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm in the country where I like to
Speaker 1: run around, and so I need you to make me
Speaker 1: sit and work for four straight hours. So that's a
Speaker 1: good idea. I might start asking you to lock me
Speaker 1: up so I can finish my work and then and
Speaker 1: then I will definitely tell everyone she locks me in
Speaker 1: my room until I'm finished working. She's problematic. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's a good point that sometimes Mary, because
Speaker 1: you do ask me, they'll be like, do not let
Speaker 1: me have this I don't want one of these cookies.
Speaker 1: Don't let me eat this after this hour or make
Speaker 1: me get up at this time. And you know, that's
Speaker 1: that is a thing that you lean on your partner
Speaker 1: sometimes and you're not great at it. No, I'm bad.
Speaker 1: I'm bad at it. But but I think that Collette
Speaker 1: had maybe like picked up a little bit of marketing
Speaker 1: genius from Willie, and she was sort of like, this
Speaker 1: is this is going to make people want to, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, more about me, and they're going to care
Speaker 1: more about what I'm doing if they think there's this
Speaker 1: crazy brute locking me in my room every day and
Speaker 1: forcing me to write with bread and water or something.
Speaker 1: So I think, you know, it was almost like a
Speaker 1: branding thing, like, oh, it's just a way to get
Speaker 1: interest up about about the book. I don't want people
Speaker 1: to know what a hid and I am. I want
Speaker 1: them to think I'm just an innocent princess locked in
Speaker 1: a tower. She certainly thought it would get people gossiping
Speaker 1: about Claudine, the second installment of Claudine, and it did.
Speaker 1: She ended up writing him a book a year. There
Speaker 1: was Claudine at School, of course, and then Claudine on
Speaker 1: Berry and then Claudine married and Claudine and Annie, and
Speaker 1: then there was also two other books about like a
Speaker 1: spinoff character, and this is all by five. Willie comes in.
Speaker 1: He's like, I got one word for you, merchandizing. We
Speaker 1: want action figures, lunch boxes. It's just like early Disney McDonald's.
Speaker 1: How else can I make money off this property? Yes,
Speaker 1: you'll get the free toy with every happy meal. What
Speaker 1: is it? Whatever French joke insert here, you get it?
Speaker 1: So but but no, really, he started making Claudine postcards,
Speaker 1: Claudine cigarettes, Claudine perfumes, lotions, ice cream. There's like a
Speaker 1: like a Ben and Jerry's flavor Claude Claudine praline or
Speaker 1: Claudine and Annie's pretzels. Would that be a good one?
Speaker 1: I would like a little sweet and salty. That's good.
Speaker 1: I'm to that um. And then he would also make
Speaker 1: Claudine candy and even dulls, so action figures was not
Speaker 1: far off. They have the first novel adapted for the stage,
Speaker 1: with an actress named Polaire cast as the titular role,
Speaker 1: and Willie would go out and about with both women,
Speaker 1: both Colette and Polaire, on his arms and he would
Speaker 1: hint that there was a lesbian relationship behind closed doors
Speaker 1: between the two of them. Our old friend Victoria Best
Speaker 1: writes on Litlove quote, Willie knew that personality mattered, and
Speaker 1: that selling the people behind the stories appealed to a
Speaker 1: voyeuristic desire in the audience to see the real versions
Speaker 1: of the characters they read about. There was, after all,
Speaker 1: plenty of truth in this. Colette was ransacking her life
Speaker 1: with Willie for the plot, transposing their marriage into print
Speaker 1: almost as fast as she lived it. So's it's like,
Speaker 1: how you know, we want to see all the Avengers
Speaker 1: actors hanging out as if they really are going to
Speaker 1: say of the world when we need them to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that quote really made me think, like, what would Willie
Speaker 1: have done with social media? Can you imagine the fake
Speaker 1: ship that he would be having celebrities put on their
Speaker 1: social media accounts. It would just be he would have
Speaker 1: just done well as all in his hand. He would
Speaker 1: probably be a huge piece of ship, just like he
Speaker 1: was then, but like he would have done well, very
Speaker 1: successful and in terms of Collette writing her married life
Speaker 1: into the novels, most notably at least for this podcast,
Speaker 1: Collette wrote about Claudine living in a threesome, and we're
Speaker 1: going to find out more about that right after this
Speaker 1: and welcome back to the show. So yeah, Claudine's fictional
Speaker 1: threesome was actually extremely true to life, and it will
Speaker 1: bring us to this episode side piece, What could happen?
Speaker 1: Collette met the Parisian born American socialite Georgie Raoul Duval,
Speaker 1: the wife of a wealthy French mining engineer, at a
Speaker 1: friend's house in March nineteen o one, and seems like
Speaker 1: it was lust at first sight. Georgie was hot. Georgie
Speaker 1: was lying, hey girl, and she was like, hey girl,
Speaker 1: look a wealthy French mining engineer is you know he's
Speaker 1: going to marry a ten He's going to marry ten right?
Speaker 1: And also he's busy exact feeling lonely. Yeah, Georgie's board,
Speaker 1: Georgie's flying solo. She wants some anonymous and read all
Speaker 1: these Claudine bucks and it's like, true, this girl knows
Speaker 1: what's up. This girl knows how to push buttons specifically,
Speaker 1: but one button we all know what matters. Now. This
Speaker 1: is Collette's first known homosexual affair. Um, but it isn't
Speaker 1: just Collette's side piece, because unbeknownst to Collette, Georgie also
Speaker 1: began having an affair with Willie oh Man, and Willie
Speaker 1: also had no idea that Georgie was sleeping with Collette.
Speaker 1: Playing the field, Georgie was like, I wonder head long,
Speaker 1: I can keep this up for real? Well, it wasn't
Speaker 1: that long before husband and wife figured out that they
Speaker 1: were sleeping with the same person. And I just want
Speaker 1: to know how how like did they meet each other
Speaker 1: coming and going or did one of them let it
Speaker 1: slip in bed one night? Like they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: Georgie and he was like, wait a minute, how do
Speaker 1: you know, Georgie, How do you know I've been sleeping
Speaker 1: with her? How do you know, Georgie, I've been sleeping
Speaker 1: I wonder if Georgie would like play them against each
Speaker 1: other and be like, so, Collette, tell me what does
Speaker 1: your husband like in bed? You know what, what really
Speaker 1: turns him on? I'm just curious, you know, and vice versa.
Speaker 1: And of course Willie is like, I don't know what
Speaker 1: turns Colette on in bed, but why would pay attention
Speaker 1: to that? You have to turn a woman on in bed?
Speaker 1: I mean maybe Willie was like dynamite in the sack
Speaker 1: as it's possible he got he got around enough that
Speaker 1: he should have. If practice makes perfect, you would think,
Speaker 1: I tell you, you hear about some of these guys
Speaker 1: and they're like having hundreds of affairs with actresses and
Speaker 1: singers and models and stuff. And I'm like, I guess
Speaker 1: you just have to. I guess you. Really, it's just
Speaker 1: confidently put yourself out there because it sounds exhausting to me.
Speaker 1: It really does. I don't know Collette. Apparently as a
Speaker 1: journalist later on in her life, she would write articles,
Speaker 1: including about fake orgasms, and I wonder she was like,
Speaker 1: let me talk to some of these women, who are
Speaker 1: you really enjoying yourself? Or maybe because she had lesbian
Speaker 1: love affairs, she would be with women, married women who
Speaker 1: would be like, wow, I didn't know it could be
Speaker 1: like that. What are you doing in bed with your man?
Speaker 1: I thought, I just thought you were supposed to scream.
Speaker 1: I wasn't compelled to. It just seemed like the right
Speaker 1: thing to do. I love that parton Emily where she's
Speaker 1: listening for orgasms in Paris and they're all different. Do
Speaker 1: you remember that moaning? And one one of the ladies
Speaker 1: is just like it's like the most quiet. So however,
Speaker 1: they figured it out. They figured it out one day
Speaker 1: that they were both sleeping with the same woman, and
Speaker 1: in true Parisian fashion, especially for that time, they decided
Speaker 1: to share her. Um. There's a police report from May
Speaker 1: first one that really spells it out. It says, quote,
Speaker 1: we learned that the novelist Gautier Villars has chosen the
Speaker 1: afternoon of twenty nine April a small apartment on the
Speaker 1: fourth floor of a discreet house in Pasquier Street, with
Speaker 1: the aim of meeting to lesbians, his legitimate wife and
Speaker 1: a lady aged about thirty. The meeting of the novelist
Speaker 1: and the two ladies in question took place from three
Speaker 1: to six o'clock in the evening. Arriving first, the two
Speaker 1: ladies were left alone for an hour, but Mr Gautier
Speaker 1: Villars had come to join them, so they continued with
Speaker 1: him the game. First, okay, a couple of questions. First,
Speaker 1: love this afternoon delight? Second? First, what police report? Why
Speaker 1: were you there? We had nothing else to do today,
Speaker 1: so we decided the snoop on a local threesome. My
Speaker 1: question was like it sounds were like a gossip column,
Speaker 1: and the police report, So who were they being really
Speaker 1: loud and the neighbors called the police. Are just like
Speaker 1: they just did a lot of gossip columns back then,
Speaker 1: or maybe because homosexuality was legalized in France after the
Speaker 1: French Revolution, but you know, people would still call the
Speaker 1: cops sometimes. So I wonder if the two ladies showing up,
Speaker 1: people are like, oh, these two bitches are dooming something,
Speaker 1: and then the police showed up and they're like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: there was a man there. He showed up late, but
Speaker 1: he was there. That's all good. Two women together talking,
Speaker 1: having a conversation without a man present, and even discussing
Speaker 1: a man zip. I'll have no Beckadel tests passing in
Speaker 1: my town. I also love they continued with him the game,
Speaker 1: the game of doing it in a game, job playing.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I want to play. It depends
Speaker 1: for me. It depends only well. Of course. Collette frequently
Speaker 1: acknowledged that she suffered from jealousy. She called it quote
Speaker 1: the only suffering we endure without ever becoming used to it.
Speaker 1: I would say that that's true of like hitting your
Speaker 1: funny bone. You know, you never get used to that.
Speaker 1: I could hit my funny bone thirty times a day,
Speaker 1: and I would hate it just as much tomorrow. That's
Speaker 1: so true. It does hurt in a very special way.
Speaker 1: So checkmate, Collette, check poetry. But anyway, she managed to
Speaker 1: put her jealousy aside for a while, at least to
Speaker 1: carry on this Manashati was Georgie and Willie, and this
Speaker 1: went all through the spring. But in the summer of
Speaker 1: nineteen o one, Willie and Collette realized that Georgie made
Speaker 1: something of a habit of summoning each one of them
Speaker 1: an hour apart from each other, and they didn't take
Speaker 1: kindly to that. They're like, wait a second, we had
Speaker 1: something worked out here, and you're all deliberately separating us.
Speaker 1: Plus I would also wonder whose seconds getting sloppy seconds?
Speaker 1: Maybe it's switched sometimes depending on her mood. See that
Speaker 1: would be more fair. Well. Also, it's like, listen, if
Speaker 1: you're in a polyamorous relationship, there's certain rules, and if
Speaker 1: the couple's like, hey, we only meet together, it's not
Speaker 1: cool for you to then meet with one of them
Speaker 1: outside of outside of your threesome, right, although it's also
Speaker 1: not cool of the couple they both met with her individually.
Speaker 1: If that was the rule, so everybody was breaking it.
Speaker 1: So I'm not entirely sure what was bothering them here.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was just the hour apart they're like, we
Speaker 1: could use a little more time than that. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but they got mad at her. I think got real
Speaker 1: mad about it. Whatever bothered. Then they did not take
Speaker 1: kindly to it, and they broke it off with Georgie,
Speaker 1: and then they took revenge in literary form. It's also
Speaker 1: pretty pretty messed up to be like, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: make what do they call it. It's like revenge porn
Speaker 1: or something kind where it's like, oh, this girl broke
Speaker 1: up with me, so now I'm gonna publish all the
Speaker 1: all the sexty stuff we used to do pretty twisted.
Speaker 1: But Collett wrote the book Claudine Married, and in that book,
Speaker 1: the character that Claudine has her lesbian affair with is
Speaker 1: so obviously a caricature of Georgie that Georgie tried to
Speaker 1: keep the book from being published. She feared there was
Speaker 1: going to be this scandal. But Willie, he's savvy, he
Speaker 1: got it published anyway, and Georgie cut all ties with
Speaker 1: both of them, sus it I'm done. I'm done. With
Speaker 1: both of you. How dare you now, I I question,
Speaker 1: I don't uh if took revenge is like a scholarly
Speaker 1: viewpoints rather than their own viewpoint, because she was already
Speaker 1: right writing about her own life. So a lot of
Speaker 1: characters and all the books are very thinly veiled caricatures
Speaker 1: of people in their life, and this was kind of
Speaker 1: a common thing I think in a lot of literature.
Speaker 1: We talked about a little bit during the Oscar Wild
Speaker 1: episode that sometimes they would be writing books about each other,
Speaker 1: and it was, you know, you change the name, but
Speaker 1: everyone knew that Lord is actually that guy in the circle,
Speaker 1: at least well in the circle. Yeah, and now we
Speaker 1: don't know necessarily who they're talking about it, but but
Speaker 1: at the time they certainly knew, and they would often
Speaker 1: be real mad about how they got portrayed by one another,
Speaker 1: because for all I know, Stephen King is out there like, man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make Dean Coots the villain and nobody's gonna know,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna know. Dean's gonna know. Dean's reading it
Speaker 1: like that best. Well, I'll show him in my next one.
Speaker 1: I'm scared of him, though he can summon clowns um, well, yes,
Speaker 1: it might not be that cruel. But but in either case,
Speaker 1: you know, Georgie went to them and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is really obviously me. Can you change that or
Speaker 1: stop this book from going out? And they were like no,
Speaker 1: we're mad at you. So there was some there was
Speaker 1: some animosity to it. I think so if if she
Speaker 1: actually tried before it was done to get it changed
Speaker 1: or something, then yeah, I think that there might have
Speaker 1: been a little bit like, sorry, that's what we do.
Speaker 1: So I should have should have known it before you fucked.
Speaker 1: A famous literary couple definitely talked thought about that. It's
Speaker 1: like dating Taylor Swift and then being like, what she
Speaker 1: wrote a song about me? Come here? How could I
Speaker 1: have known? So? Writing wise, things are going great. Everyone
Speaker 1: loves Claudine, they're in literary salons. Life is good. But
Speaker 1: marriage wise, everything sucked. Victoria Best rights that as Willie
Speaker 1: got older, quote, his libido flagged and he needed ever
Speaker 1: more perverse scenarios to revive it. The steady stream of
Speaker 1: schoolgirl Claudina likes that were drawn to him by his
Speaker 1: celebrity proved useful for this particular task. Very gross, and
Speaker 1: Collette wrote about it saying, quote, hanging on him, cooing
Speaker 1: to him. They write, darling, you'll marry me when she dies. Yes,
Speaker 1: you'd better believe it. He's marrying them already, one after another.
Speaker 1: He could cull, but he prefers to collect. Damn. Collette
Speaker 1: is a cutting ass bitch when she wants to be
Speaker 1: issued like these dumb bitches. But as Best says, she
Speaker 1: did not write about quote how Willie required her to
Speaker 1: warm them up socially and sometimes sexually before he received them. WHOA.
Speaker 1: So this is a really interesting point here because Collette,
Speaker 1: like we said, she starts her married life seeming to
Speaker 1: be pretty monogamous, like she doesn't want him running around
Speaker 1: on her um. But then she kind of gets maybe
Speaker 1: swept up into the Parisian life, or she sort of
Speaker 1: becomes resigned to this is how it is, and gets
Speaker 1: into the open marriage thing. And of course she she
Speaker 1: must have had some same sex desire already or else
Speaker 1: she wouldn't have been interested. Um. But I wonder how
Speaker 1: much Willie was like, go ahead and try it, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of coerced her a little bit into some things
Speaker 1: that she didn't really want to do or yeah, or
Speaker 1: or introduced her I mean, a lot of people are
Speaker 1: very feel very monogamous until they are presented with someone
Speaker 1: says like, well, you know what about this lifestyle and
Speaker 1: they maybe even tepidly check it out, and then they're like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, this is awesome. You know. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's true you have to try it before you know. Um. So, yeah.
Speaker 1: I wonder how willing she was to sexually warm up
Speaker 1: someone for him, or if that was like, Okay, great,
Speaker 1: that sounds great. I love that. Right. However she felt
Speaker 1: about the whole situation, you know, of their marriage. She
Speaker 1: was definitely getting sick to death of Willie himself. She
Speaker 1: loved their bohemian life, we think. I mean, she said
Speaker 1: she had all these illustrious friends, She had scandalous friends.
Speaker 1: One time collect jumped naked out of a cake at
Speaker 1: a party. I gotta wonder if that's the first time
Speaker 1: someone did that. Life goal, life goal, life goal. You
Speaker 1: think she was the first one to do. No, it
Speaker 1: must have happened before. It might have. It's just such
Speaker 1: a trope. Yeah that. I don't know if she was like,
Speaker 1: I'm doing that because that's what like crazy ladies do,
Speaker 1: or she's like, you know what, I'm gonna do something
Speaker 1: real crazy and it became like a thing popularized it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's I'm like, she's such a trends that.
Speaker 1: I just think of Adam's family values. Lurch was that
Speaker 1: was she in the cake when you baked it? That's
Speaker 1: poor girl, poor girl, raw, Julia as come as Adams
Speaker 1: is one of the finest performances of our age, I agree, absolutely,
Speaker 1: he will always be my Gomez. I'm totally fine to
Speaker 1: see new gomezes in the lifetime, but he will always
Speaker 1: be my Gomez. And then it didn't hurt that Angelic
Speaker 1: at Houston, also one of the great performances, will also
Speaker 1: always be my Morticia. So good anyway, cakes just jumping
Speaker 1: out of a cake. Collette also loved writing, but she
Speaker 1: was bored. In an article for The Guardian, Aida at
Speaker 1: Amerium writes, quote, Collette always knew that the shock of
Speaker 1: marriage contained something greater than her own experience of a
Speaker 1: specific man. It ended any sense of independent sovereignty. That's
Speaker 1: apparently was like a theme in some of her books
Speaker 1: was this sense. And it wasn't just women that had it.
Speaker 1: Some of her male characters would get it too, where
Speaker 1: once they're married, they're like happy to be married, but
Speaker 1: then they also realized like, oh, I'm not in charge
Speaker 1: of my own life anymore. I have the other person
Speaker 1: who had to consult with all the time, and how
Speaker 1: constraining that can feel and eating Um, I guess, especially
Speaker 1: depending on who you're married to and how much they
Speaker 1: can strain your life. But um, but I thought that
Speaker 1: was an interesting thing where she's like really realizing that
Speaker 1: marriage as a partnership isn't just like we're together, working
Speaker 1: together and making life together. It's like, you're also kind
Speaker 1: of limiting my personal freedom. And then her nineteen ten
Speaker 1: novel The Vagabond collect wrote that marriage, even to someone
Speaker 1: kind and true, is quote a long drawn out, voluptuous nous, suspended, fanned, renewed,
Speaker 1: the winged fall, the swooning, in which one's strength is
Speaker 1: renewed by its own death. Damn, that's exactly what I
Speaker 1: was going to write in your anniversary card this year.
Speaker 1: But have to find another way to say that you
Speaker 1: can strain my personal freedom. Look, you say it every
Speaker 1: day with your eyes. I'm so glad that to just
Speaker 1: getting well, it's just the magic is still alive. Well,
Speaker 1: so Collet started thinking about other things and other ways
Speaker 1: to be creative, And we mentioned earlier she had always
Speaker 1: thought of herself as an actress, so she decided to
Speaker 1: take lessons in mime from the celebrity pantomime George Wogg.
Speaker 1: And let's remember this is nineteen hundreds, so mime is
Speaker 1: like a really big acting technique. And Willie was super
Speaker 1: supportive of this career path, so supportive in fact, that
Speaker 1: he urged her to go on tour with Wogg's company,
Speaker 1: which is something that would kind of take her out
Speaker 1: of his company a long time. Oh, have all these
Speaker 1: school girls trying to sleep with me? Yes, why don't
Speaker 1: you go out of town for a few months and
Speaker 1: take your long drawn out voluptuousness with you. So yeah,
Speaker 1: she realized that he wanted out to She wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: while I was dreaming of escape, someone side me had
Speaker 1: been dreaming of conveniently showing me the door. It's like
Speaker 1: with just if one of us had just said something
Speaker 1: sooner earlier. It's like my first girlfriend and I went
Speaker 1: to see a movie and I won't say which one
Speaker 1: because it's controversial that I hate it um and we
Speaker 1: both were sitting there, apparently both hating it, but we
Speaker 1: both thought the other person was loving it, and I
Speaker 1: after a certain scene went audibly during the movie and
Speaker 1: after the movie, I was like, you couldn't tell that
Speaker 1: I was miserable, and she was like, no, I thought
Speaker 1: that you saw that scene and went wow. I was like, no,
Speaker 1: it was the opposite. Now is that not a good
Speaker 1: lesson on how you things can be communicated and received
Speaker 1: very differently as But what movie was it? Now? You
Speaker 1: have to tell me which one it is? Okay, fair enough.
Speaker 1: I would like to see it again. Um, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen it since then. I was like sixteen, and I
Speaker 1: was very bored, and I wanted to love it, and
Speaker 1: I love everyone in it, and I love that style
Speaker 1: of movie. I would watch it again. I can't sit
Speaker 1: here and say it was a bad movie because everybody
Speaker 1: loves it so and I canna be like I'm right
Speaker 1: and everyone else is wrong. But it's um me personally,
Speaker 1: I was bothered by it. I would watch it again.
Speaker 1: So anyway, in nineteen o six, Colette and Willie separated officially,
Speaker 1: and Colette left to pursue her life on the stage
Speaker 1: with George Wogg's company, and a lot happens during her
Speaker 1: basically her single life. So we will find out more
Speaker 1: about that, including her affair with Napoleon the Third's gender
Speaker 1: bending knees in part two of our Colette series. This
Speaker 1: will bring us to the end of this part. Wait,
Speaker 1: you dropped Napoleon the Third in there, and I am ready?
Speaker 1: Can we just keep going? I'm so ready? That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Only the third of course, the bastard who sent Max
Speaker 1: and Carlotta to Mexico's. He's a popular character in Ridiculous Romance.
Speaker 1: It's turning out. Yeah, I can't wait, especially when she's single.
Speaker 1: That's when she has a lot of her really ridiculous romances. Um,
Speaker 1: it's so fun. I cannot wait because we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about like gay subculture in Paris and all these codes
Speaker 1: and stuff. Anyway, I'm very excited about this series. Also,
Speaker 1: I think it's wacky that, um, she went from like
Speaker 1: a like a ghostwriting novelist and libertine to a mime,
Speaker 1: like a touring mime. Like what a shift. This is
Speaker 1: awesome that that wouldn't happen today. I mean, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be like Suzanne Collins being like, well, I finished the
Speaker 1: Hunger Games books. Now I'll be a touring mime. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine? And changing it up. I would go see it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what she looks like, but
Speaker 1: she has a really expressive face. She could do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just need some makeup and a striped shirt, reality,
Speaker 1: physicality and knows a lot of minds that don't wear
Speaker 1: striped shirts and berets, but they all George Wog was
Speaker 1: one of them. He was not into that kyle of mining.
Speaker 1: He felt that actually mime gave you more opportunities to
Speaker 1: show emotion and expression words do, which is often true.
Speaker 1: We talked about that in the Oscar Kokoshka episode. He
Speaker 1: wrote that play that was largely wordless and about how
Speaker 1: you know, there was a theme in the in Austria
Speaker 1: at the time that you know, language wasn't enough and
Speaker 1: it was actually limiting. So yeah, I could see that.
Speaker 1: I could see that. That That makes sense to me. I mean,
Speaker 1: especially if you're going around internationally. Great, now you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about not language or they don't do
Speaker 1: your language so they're missing nuance. You're like, there is
Speaker 1: no language, so it's all good. You might say, a
Speaker 1: smile is the same in every language. Wow, thank you
Speaker 1: McDonald's coke or whoever did that. Yeah, that sounds like coked,
Speaker 1: but we will. Yeah, we'll get into mime in all
Speaker 1: that culture. I'm sure in the next part she's going
Speaker 1: to expose her she's gonna have the first nip slip.
Speaker 1: She's gonna have, well not the first nip slip, but
Speaker 1: she's gonna have a big nip first. She's she's just
Speaker 1: gonna have a scandaloust Janet Jackson style nip slip, among
Speaker 1: other things. Yeah, and we're going to be bringing you
Speaker 1: collect episodes from the next couple of Wednesdays. That's how
Speaker 1: we're going to do this. We'll we'll break it up
Speaker 1: in between with other episodes on Friday's, so just make
Speaker 1: sure you can find the next part of this next Wednesday.
Speaker 1: We're very excited about this series, like so into it.
Speaker 1: So thanks again to Rachel for this rabbit hole because
Speaker 1: it was awesome and of course it's turn of the
Speaker 1: century Paris, which is an amazing place to be research purposes. Um,
Speaker 1: so appreciate that. Absolutely probably be shouting you out a
Speaker 1: couple of times during the two So thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: Oh Man, I was going to research a French couple
Speaker 1: for this Friday's episode, so I guess we'll get out
Speaker 1: of France. We'll break it up, get out of France
Speaker 1: for a little while. But yeah, I hope you'll enjoy this.
Speaker 1: I hope you're looking forward to the part too as
Speaker 1: much as I am. Now. Uh, and we'll we'll bring
Speaker 1: that to you next week. Yeah, we'll write in and
Speaker 1: tell us what you think about Collette. So far, you've
Speaker 1: read Claudine, I'd love to know if it's worth checking
Speaker 1: out because I'm kind of interested. I haven't read any
Speaker 1: Collette myself. Yeah, Um, I've heard of her, but this
Speaker 1: is the most I've ever learned about her myself, So
Speaker 1: I'm really into it and I would love to find
Speaker 1: out if there were still worth reading. I guess yeah,
Speaker 1: so many years definitely, Um, but yeah, reach out on email.
Speaker 1: We're ridic Romance at gmail dot com, or find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Oh great, it's Eli,
Speaker 1: I'm at Dianamite Boom, and you can find the show
Speaker 1: at ridic Romance. About those platforms, don't forget to drop
Speaker 1: us a review in Apple Podcasts and Spotify. We love those.
Speaker 1: They really help us out as well. Help keep the
Speaker 1: show going. And we will catch you all with another
Speaker 1: episode later this week. So long, friends, it is time
Speaker 1: to go. Thanks for listening to our show. Tell your
Speaker 1: friends neighbor's uncle Sandance to listen to a show. Ridiculous
Speaker 1: from Dance