Waxing lyrical about old resort attraction

And this week we have the answers.

We also take a look back at the Blackpool attraction and its history.

Louis Tussaud was the great-grandson of Marie Tussaud, the creator of the Madame Tussauds wax museums.

He worked at the original museum as a wax figure sculptor but eventually left to set up on his own. He founded a waxwork museum in London’s Regent street in 1890, which was destroyed in a fire just a year later.

Louis moved to Blackpool in 1900 and set up a waxworks in the resort, in the basement of the Hippodrome Theatre, on Church Street.

He later moved it to the Brunswick Cafe in South Beach, before opening the Louis Tussauds Waxworks on Central Promenade, in 1929. His museums were not connected to his great grandmother’s Madame Tussauds waxworks museums.

The Louise Tussauds Waxworks closed in 2010 and re-opened as Madame Tussauds in 2011.

Louis Tussauds did have another museum, in Great Yarmouth, named the House Of Wax, which closed in October 2012.

It gained a cult following and in 2008, was dubbed the “world’s worst waxworks” with some people complaining the models did not resemble the famous people they were supposed to represent.

Here some of our archive photos show lesser-seen side of the old Louis Tussauds attraction over the last century.

Some of the models are shown in the earlier stages of their development, with their heads being worked on by sculptors – including Take That being worked on in May 1995.

Our black-and-white archive photo from 1975 could be a scene from a horror movie, or the curtain call of some futuristic drama, but it actually shows hooded waxworks – ready to be revealed at Tussauds.

And seen in a storeroom, in 1980, at Tussauds Blackpool, singer Kathy Kirby’s legs and several stars seem to have lost their heads too.

The answers to last week’s quiz:

1. The Queen

2. Ronnie Corbett

3. Maggie Thatcher, John Major, Michael Heseltine, Nigel Lawson, Willie Whitelaw, Neil Kinnock, Denis Healey

4. Barry Manilow

5. Sofia Loren

6. Charles and Di

7. Pierce Brosnan

8. Jason Donovan

9. Keanu Reeves

10. Maggie Thatcher

11. Fergie and Andrew

12. Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Sarah Brightman

13. The Kennedy Brothers