I don't know about you, but personally I think there was something infinitely creepy about the 1953 Vincent Prince film "House Of Wax". It was about a burned sculptor who filled up his wax museum with real life corpses. Although lifelike wax replicas of famous figures have been popular tourist attractions since Mary Salmon's The Moving Wax Works Of The Royal Court Of England in 1711, the most well known of these wax museums is without question Madame Tussauds in London. The popularity of the original museum founded by Madame Marie Tussaud in 1835 has spread like wildfire across the world and the seven seas and there are now Madame Tussaud wax museums everywhere from Shanghai to Hollywood as well as numerous other wax museums everywhere from Dublin to New Orleans to Kolkata. Now... in keeping with the ongoing series of spooky articles interspersed with skating history and interviews throughout October on Skate Guard, I wanted to show all of you some of the lifelike and quite eerie tributes to figure skaters found (or once found) in wax museums around the world!
 |
| The Kween herself, Michelle Kwan, once featured in wax at Madame Tussauds in New York City! |
Grévin Wax Museum in Montreal pays host to a wax replica of Joannie Rochette, wearing a pair of Joannie`s own skates!
Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean`s ìconic Bolero immortalized in wax at Madame Tussauds in England
Mao Asada`s wax figure at Madame Tussauds in Tokyo, Japan
Although these wax replicas of some of the sport`s biggest stars are just that - replicas - you have to admit that there is something stunningly creepy about wax figures period. Almost like the Night At The Museum movies, one has to playfully ponder as to whether they come alive at night or something and do a few double axels before returning to their posts. Stranger things have happened. Ottavio Cinquanta`s still around, right?
Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.