# In re the Grand Guignol **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [September 5, 2007, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-re-the-grand-guignol/418169 "2007-09-05T21:37:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Sal\_Ammoniac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8dc957/32.png) [@Sal\_Ammoniac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sal_Ammoniac)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2007, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-re-the-grand-guignol/418169/1 "2007-09-05T21:37:14Z")
I just finished reading Cecil’s [column](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_072.html) on the Grand Guignol, and learned to my chagrin that it was not a puppet theater, as I had always thought (the puppet theater is the plain ol’ Guignol, apparently). However that may be, I was moved to read the French Wikipedia article on the subject, and most amusing it was, too. But I’m saddened to report that it gives the lie to Cecil on two points: 1) the Grand Guignol closed in 1963, not 1962 per Cecil; and 2) the theatre contained 347 seats, not “about 285.” So I ask: who are we to believe, Cecil or the French Wikipedia? ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2007, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-re-the-grand-guignol/418169/2 "2007-09-05T21:42:48Z")
[QUOTE=Sal Ammoniac] So I ask: who are we to believe, Cecil or the French Wikipedia? [/QUOTE] Um…duh. _Anybody in the world_ can edit (and mess up) Wikipedia; there are only eleven people who write under the name Cecil Adams. Who you gonna believe? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2007, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-re-the-grand-guignol/418169/3 "2007-09-05T23:36:35Z")
Egad! So that was Grand Guignol. I finally understand why the phrase was linked so securely to Alice Cooper. Alice, for you youngsters, always filled his concerts with madness and graphic mayhem. He may have been hanged onstage more times than any other performer. :eek: What? You thought Marilyn Manson was a brash original? 😃 I’m sure Marilyn brought lots of his own goodies to the party, but he works in the Alice Cooper mold. Alice himself didn’t start from scratch, either. ---
**Author:** ![Chez\_Guevara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/aeb1de/32.png) [@Chez\_Guevara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chez_Guevara)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2007, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-re-the-grand-guignol/418169/4 "2007-09-06T00:30:02Z")
From the history of [Grand Guignol](http://www.grandguignol.com/history.htm) comes an appreciation of the actress Paula Maxa who, it would appear, not only died on stage by methods too wonderful to keep quiet about: > [@](#): > > During her career at the Grand-Guignol, Maxa, “the most assassinated woman in the world,” was subjected to a range of tortures unique in theatrical history: she was shot with a rifle and with a revolver, scalped, strangled, disemboweled, raped, guillotined, hanged, quartered, burned, cut apart with surgical tools and lancets, cut into eighty-three pieces by an invisible Spanish dagger, stung by a scorpion, poisoned with arsenic, devoured by a puma, strangled by a pearl necklace, and whipped; she was also put to sleep by a bouquet of roses, kissed by a leper… but also decomposed on it 200 times on the spin: > [@](#): > > …and subjected to a very unusual metamorphosis, which was described by one theater critic: “Two hundred nights in a row, she simply decomposed on stage in front of an audience which wouldn’t have exchanged its seats for all the gold in the Americas. The operation lasted a good two minutes during which the young woman transformed little by little into an abominable corpse.” Incidentally, the above website is the [source of the mugs](http://www.cafepress.com/cp/moredetails.aspx?productNo=7658272&pr=B&showbleed=false&colorNo=0&tab=1&Zoom=1) given to moderators on accession to the job. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2007, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-re-the-grand-guignol/418169/5 "2007-09-06T02:30:12Z")
Two brothers and two prostitutes is not an orgy. Not by French standards. Probably not even by Swiss standards. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![lawoot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/35a633/32.png) [@lawoot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lawoot)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2007, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-re-the-grand-guignol/418169/6 "2007-09-06T02:39:10Z")
Yeah, but the prostitutes were just there to _watch_… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2007, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-re-the-grand-guignol/418169/7 "2007-09-06T14:47:14Z")
Has the Academie Francaise ever set the minimum number of participants before it’s officially designated an orgy? ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2007, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-re-the-grand-guignol/418169/8 "2007-09-06T15:19:29Z")
[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir] Has the Academie Francaise ever set the minimum number of participants before it’s officially designated an orgy? [/QUOTE] If they did, they surely ruled that all the speaking, moaning, and screaming shall be in French, and no other language. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2007, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-re-the-grand-guignol/418169/9 "2007-09-06T15:36:25Z")
On the English [wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Guignol) page it says: > [@](#): > > The Grand Guignol theatre closed its doors in 1962. “We could never equal Buchenwald,” said its final director, Charles Nonon, on the theatre’s decline and fall. “Before the war, everyone felt that what was happening onstage was impossible. Now we know that these things, and worse, are possible in reality.”[4] The things onstage were impossible? In their play section, it mentions things like a nanny strangling the kids, two insane asylum inmates blinding a fellow inmate and a doctor taking revenge on his wife’s lover. These things don’t happen often, but there are sick people out there. Maybe it didn’t seem as accessible to them until WWII, since they didn’t have the Internets to tell them everytime some sicko volunteered to have himself eaten or everytime someone tries to destroy her husband’s penis? ---
**Author:** ![SiXSwordS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/49beb7/32.png) [@SiXSwordS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SiXSwordS)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2007, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-re-the-grand-guignol/418169/10 "2007-09-06T17:19:26Z")
[QUOTE=OneCentStamp] _Anybody in the world_ can edit (and mess up) Wikipedia; [/QUOTE] And how clever of them to vandalize the oft-visited Grand Guignol page by changing the year of closure _and_ the seating capacity. (Did you notice that the seating was off by _exactly_ 62? The _real_ year the doors closed? Doo-dee-do-do Doo-dee-do-do…) ---
**Author:** ![Papy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b3f665/32.png) [@Papy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Papy)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2007, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-re-the-grand-guignol/418169/11 "2007-09-09T05:52:58Z")
When Cecil wrote that “Grand Guignole” should be pronounced “Gron Geen-yole”, I have to disagree with the first part of it (Gron). I’m a French speaker (first language) and “grand” (mute “d”) seems much closer to genuine French pronunciation than “Gron” …well, maybe with a thick parisian accent “Gron” would be closer, but as for international French I guess it would be somewhere between the two. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2007, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-re-the-grand-guignol/418169/12 "2007-09-09T09:41:35Z")
[QUOTE=Papy] I’m a French speaker (first language) and “grand” (mute “d”) seems much closer to genuine French pronunciation than “Gron” …well, maybe with a thick parisian accent “Gron” would be closer, but as for international French I guess it would be somewhere between the two. [/QUOTE] How would the average non-french speaking person of an English speaking persuasion pronounce “grand” (mute “d”), if told that was how to pronounce a word? I’m neither English speaking, nor fluent in French, but I think that advice would produce a vowel further from the intended than “gron”. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2007, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-re-the-grand-guignol/418169/13 "2007-09-09T10:25:15Z")
[QUOTE=Chez Guevara] From the history of [Grand Guignol](http://www.grandguignol.com/history.htm) comes an appreciation of the actress Paula Maxa who, it would appear, not only died on stage by methods too wonderful to keep quiet about: but also decomposed on it 200 times on the spin: Incidentally, the above website is the [source of the mugs](http://www.cafepress.com/cp/moredetails.aspx?productNo=7658272&pr=B&showbleed=false&colorNo=0&tab=1&Zoom=1) given to moderators on accession to the job. [/QUOTE] From the hosts of that site, Thrillpeddlers- [http://www.thrillpeddlers.com/](http://www.thrillpeddlers.com/) Jack Chick is everywhere! ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2007, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-re-the-grand-guignol/418169/14 "2007-09-09T14:06:38Z")
[QUOTE=Papy] When Cecil wrote that “Grand Guignole” should be pronounced “Gron Geen-yole”, I have to disagree with the first part of it (Gron). I’m a French speaker (first language) and “grand” (mute “d”) seems much closer to genuine French pronunciation than “Gron” …well, maybe with a thick parisian accent “Gron” would be closer, but as for international French I guess it would be somewhere between the two. [/QUOTE] For people in America, “Gron” would be pronounced with a very open, flat sound, much like a European long-“a”. If he had tried to use any version of an American “a”, it’s a guarantee that the sound would be wrong, and that’s without even worrying about places like Boston. 😛 Of course, given that an American would be pronouncing it, it’s a given it would sound quite grating regardless. :o ---
**Author:** ![Papy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b3f665/32.png) [@Papy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Papy)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2007, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-re-the-grand-guignol/418169/15 "2007-09-12T03:22:05Z")
If you say so!