HarlemLIVE

Where can you go to see movies and TV stars, pose with singers and sports players? No not at a live concert or a celebrity's party, yet this place is as star-studded as the red carpet for the Grammy Awards. Stop guessingÅ  it is no other than Madame Tussauds Wax Museums on 42nd street in Manhattan
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Here the celebrities have to pose with you for your camera and you get to spend as much time as you'd like with them (because they're wax), that's probably why so many tourists flock to this museum. I've personally gone to the museum 3 times and each time they've had different people greeting you at the door such as Whoopi Goldberg and President Bush.


There's so much to see at this museum it's unbelievable. As you enter the museum you walk up the steps you see wax people on the steps. You proceed to an elevator, which takes you high above the city streets to a dinning hall that's chock ­full of stars such as Bradd Pitt, Oprah Winfrey, Christopher Reeves, and Governor Pataki. Next you exist to the left, which leads you to a reenactment of the French Revolution during the late 1700's. Here you see dead bodies flung on top of one another, heads on sticks, and loud war sounds. Lights masterfully recreated this period in history.

When you leave this room you enter a room that shows the process of making a wax person. From the exact eye color to the clothes and position the wax person is in, everything is done prolifically. The next room is actually a big white hall filled with presidents, poets, and governmental figures such as Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, The Kennedy's, and Princess Diana.

As an added treat, visitors step into a movie theater, which bears striking resemblance to a New York City hotel lobby. The movie takes place on New Years Eve in New York. As you take a carriage to Times Square, your taken back in time throughout New York's as by most memorable moment's. It's no doubt delightful and an amusing movie.

However all that I have so far described didn't just appear out of nowhere there's a rich history behind it. The First Wax Museum was founded by Madame Tussaud's herself. She was born in France in the 1761. Her uncle taught her the craft of waxing and she had natural talent. Later on during the French Revolution she was called upon to go through piles of dead, decapitated bodies and find heads to make masks. However she later left France in order to establish a wax exhibition in England. How did it get here? Well an American showman visited it and wanted to buy it and move it to NY. Now 200 yrs. after her death it has come to Manhattan giving us a chance to experience this unique craft.