Sinister Cinema: A Faustian and Toulouse-Lautrec-ian Yvette

For Autograph Hound Super-Sunday, another Halloween Edition, I see that Brian Leno has been digging around in the corner of the crypt where he secrets his silent German movie stuff.

Tell us about it, Herr Leno:

Yvette Guilbert may be a name very unfamiliar to most fans of horror, but you’ve seen her — not just in scary movies, but perhaps on the walls of major museums.

Yvette was a favorite model of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, when she was singing in the historic Moulin Rouge. Her songs were considered a bit racy at the time, but what else would you expect to hear in the Moulin Rouge?

For film buffs she appears in the German silent classic Faust (1926). Obviously director F. W. Murnau thought as highly of her as Lautrec did. She plays Marthe Schwerdtlein, the aunt of the woman amorously pursued by Faust.

Now if I could just find the autograph of the lady who posed for the Mona Lisa. . . . 

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