EARLY LIFE
Méliès is the third son of Jean-Louis-Stanislas Méliès, his father, and Johannah-Catherine Schuering, his mother. Jean-Louis-Stanislas met Georges's mother in Paris, which he had recently moved to to work in shoe making as an independent business. Johannah-Catherine was the daughter of the bootmaker of the Dutch court until their business burned to the ground, so she was able to guide him in how to make shoes. They eventually married and created a successful shoemaking company on Boulevard Saint-Martin. The family was very wealthy by the time of Georges's birth.
Georges attended Lycée Michelet until the school was bombed in the Franco-Prussian War when he was 7 and continued school at Lycée Louis-le-Grand. This is where Georges started to find his artistic side. According to his memoirs, he always tried composing music, but his pen would wander and start making caricatures of his teachers. He was oft punished by his teachers for making doodles on his textbooks. When he was 10, he started making puppet show theaters out of cardboard and moved on to making marionettes as a teenager. In 1880, Méliès graduated from the Lycée with a baccalauréat which is a prestigious French award for great academic performance.
Georges attended Lycée Michelet until the school was bombed in the Franco-Prussian War when he was 7 and continued school at Lycée Louis-le-Grand. This is where Georges started to find his artistic side. According to his memoirs, he always tried composing music, but his pen would wander and start making caricatures of his teachers. He was oft punished by his teachers for making doodles on his textbooks. When he was 10, he started making puppet show theaters out of cardboard and moved on to making marionettes as a teenager. In 1880, Méliès graduated from the Lycée with a baccalauréat which is a prestigious French award for great academic performance.
Once he graduated, Melies started working at his family business and picked up sewing shoes. He was soon after sent to London to work for a family friend where he discovered his interest in magic through visiting the Egyptian Hall. He soon returned to Paris to study at École des Beaux-Arts, an art school. Yet, his father was quite unsupportive of his pursuit of the arts and Georges took a job supervising the machinery at the family factory. That same year, Georges refused to marry his brother's sister-in-law despite his family's request and married Eugénie Génin, the daughter of a family friend who recieved a large sum of money as a present for her marriage. They raised a boy and a girl, Georgette and Andre, Georgette being older by three years.
Although he was working at his family factory, that didn't stop his interest in the arts. He commonly went to the Théâtre Robert-Houdin to watch magic shows. His desire to do magic kept growing as he began to study under Emile Voisin. As he became increasingly serious about magic, he started performing at the Cabinet Fantastique of the Grévin Wax Museum and the Galerie Vivienne. With the money given to Eugénie as a wedding present, Georges bought out the Théâtre Robert-Houdin and renovated it to start performing at his own venue. Despite the theater's dazzling appearance and quality machinery, the tricks performed were out of date and attendance rates were very low. Over the next nine years, Georges began inventing and thinking to create new and unique tricks which attracted plenty off attention as time continued. His most famous illusion was the "Recalcitrant Decapitated Man" where a professor is giving a speech when his head is cut off. The head independently continues the speech until it returns to his body. Melies was also working as a political cartoonist for his cousin's newspaper, La Griffe. His continuous work on the theater and large contribution to the music scene led to his election as the Chambre Syndicale des Artistes Illusionistes in 1895.
Although he was working at his family factory, that didn't stop his interest in the arts. He commonly went to the Théâtre Robert-Houdin to watch magic shows. His desire to do magic kept growing as he began to study under Emile Voisin. As he became increasingly serious about magic, he started performing at the Cabinet Fantastique of the Grévin Wax Museum and the Galerie Vivienne. With the money given to Eugénie as a wedding present, Georges bought out the Théâtre Robert-Houdin and renovated it to start performing at his own venue. Despite the theater's dazzling appearance and quality machinery, the tricks performed were out of date and attendance rates were very low. Over the next nine years, Georges began inventing and thinking to create new and unique tricks which attracted plenty off attention as time continued. His most famous illusion was the "Recalcitrant Decapitated Man" where a professor is giving a speech when his head is cut off. The head independently continues the speech until it returns to his body. Melies was also working as a political cartoonist for his cousin's newspaper, La Griffe. His continuous work on the theater and large contribution to the music scene led to his election as the Chambre Syndicale des Artistes Illusionistes in 1895.