Le Rat Mort

Paintings and sketches inspired by the cafe and its customers included work by Toulouse Lautrec, Maxime Dethomas, Auguste Chabaud and Maurice de Vlaminck.

Shortly after the newly renovated cafe opened, one of the intellectuals who was a regular at the Nouvelle Athènes had an argument with the owner and brought his friends and his business across the street to the Café Pigalle.

[9] A 1889 French newspaper review of the cafe/restaurant mentions the large rat painted on its ceiling by Leon Goupil, as well as its delicious onion soup, and describes it as a place that was frequented by celebrated artists and writers which had also always been a 'restaurant des femmes.'

[15] The bisexual writer Colette frequented the place and once described a young female music hall dancer wearing a masculine hat as having 'that particular Rat Mort elegance.'

[12] Painters Maxime Dethomas and Vlaminck Maurice both did portraits of women at the Rat Mort, and Auguste Chabaud depicted a couple entering the club.

[20] By 1926 the establishment was described in a guidebook as a cabaret that was "Open from midnight to dawn" with "a celebrated orchestra, lots of beautiful women wanting customers to pay them to dance with them.

In 1934, Le Rat Mort was the scene of a shooting between two members of the Corsican mafia, Jean Paul Stefani and Ange Foata.

[22] Modern scholars have discussed the significance of Le Rat Mort to the history of art, literature, gender and LGBTQ studies.

[23][10] The singer and musician Manu Chao refers to the Rat Mort in his early 21st century song La Ventura: "Un claque à filles de mauvaise vie ù/ que Stafanì y blessa par balle/ Angelo le mafioso/ L'a eu de la chance ce vieux saloud!/ d' s'en tirer comme ca sans trop d'accrocs/

"It's at the Dead Rat in Pigalle,/ a house of ill repute,/ that Stafani shot and wounded/ Angelo the mafioso./ That old bastard got lucky!/ To get away with it like that without too many problems,/ between dogs and wolves/ when the night falls.