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16/10/1899: Time Passes Reynaud By
Declining audiences in the wake of the invention of the cinema finally put an end to Emile Reynaud's eight year tenure at the Musée Grévin when his contract was formally terminated on the 16th October 1899. He was replaced by a puppeteer named Saint-Genois.
Reynaud had given more than 12,000 performances of his Pantomimes Lumineuses to half a million spectators in that time, but had failed to capitalise financially on its former popularity. His cut of the box office had been a mere 10 per cent on top of a flat monthly fee of 500 francs. Concentrating all his energies on his Théâtre Optique meant that business in his toy Praxinoscopes had declined and died, leaving Reynaud with little money. What he had he spent on unsuccessful experiments in stereoscopic cinema. From his sixties onwards, Reynaud took on a series of junior occupations - an assistant in the Gaumont Studios, a gramophone mechanic, and a clerk in an architect's office.
Bitter at his failure, Reynaud, at some point, destroyed his finely-crafted Théâtre Optique and sold the metal for scrap; the bands on which were drawn the thousands of drawings he had painstakingly hand-painted, were loaded into a wheelbarrow and thrown into the River Seine.
Reynaud would die in poverty on 9th January 1918. [ADD]
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