Dirty Girl Things
Friday, August 31, 2007
Number Ninety-Six
Lars Ihring. Master Photographer.
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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant. Unpretentious. Unconventional. ©
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Number Ninety-Five
Life is so soft and quiet, and cannot be seized. It will not be raped. Try to rape it and it disappears. Try to seize it, and you have dust. Try to master it, and you see your own image grinning at you with the grin of an idiot.
-- D.H. Lawrence, John Thomas and Lady Jane.
Constance Reid was 23 years old when she married Cambridge graduate, lieutenant, and mine owner Clifford Chatterley in 1917. After a short-lived honeymoon, Clifford was drafted to fight on the Flanders battlefront, from which he returned badly wounded and fated to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
The film begins in the year 1921, after the young couple moves to Wragby, one of the Chatterley family properties. Constance looks back longingly to the years before her marriage, when she spent her time with artists and students of her own age, also enjoying long trips abroad. Now she feels lonely and isolated in a rural environment that bores her. And yet, it is her taciturn gamekeeper Oliver Parkin, a man whose life and background is so diametrically opposed to her own, who awakens in Lady Chatterley a desire she has never felt before.
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Winner of five major prizes, including Best Film and Best Actress at the 2007 César Awards, France’s equivalent of the Oscars®, this frankly sensual yet never vulgar film is based on the second of three versions of D.H. Lawrence’s tale about an earthy passion that is both innocent and subversive. A Kino International Release.
D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover provoked outrage and scandal when it first appeared in 1928, only ten years after women had won the right to vote in England. In it, the young wife of a paralyzed aristocrat, discovers the pleasures of the flesh with her husband’s gamekeeper. The novel shocked, as much by its graphic and unabashed language that many considered pornographic, as by its scathing depiction of the class system in England. He published a second version—the source of this film—which eliminated the unsettling language but retained the bold imagery. Lawrence’s grasp of the regenerative powers of life itself imbued his work with humanism and a unique vibrancy. Although Pascale Ferran does not ignore the class backdrop to the story in her adaptation—she draws it in with a few deft broad strokes— what gives this film its authority, is her vision of Lawrence’s transcendent relationship to nature. As Constance Chatterley moves out from the frigid interiors of the stately home where she has been withering at the side of the paralyzed Clifford, and moves deeper and deeper into her odyssey—a world of guiltless intimacies—the screen bursts with a panoply of lush exteriors, forests, fields, birds, trees that as Constance says seem to “talk to each other.” The natural world opens its secret door to the lovers. These elegiac images give their story a breadth and resonance that transcends time, place, class and nationality. The film garnered the director, Pascale Ferran, and Marina Hands, as Lady Chatterley, Césars this year.
—Dorna Khazeni
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Review by Nigel Andrews, the Financial Times
Before Pascale Ferran’s Lady Chatterley begins, all the ducks are in a row for critics to shoot at. Could anything invite more derision, or promise more cross-cultural canards, than another French screen frolic based on D.H. Lawrence’s sexy classic? (The first was a steamily inane 1981 stripteaser starring Sylvia Emmanuelle Kristel). Though the new film draws on an earlier version of the lady-and-gamekeeper novel, a draft Lawrence titled John Thomas and Lady Jane, that is no protection. The 168-minute length and eye-candy lead actress Marina Hands would seem to increase the possibilities for louche lunacy. The motto of the cinema is “You Never Know”, Lady Chatterley is the best French film in recent memory. Fearless of cries of “Frangleterre”, it steps straight into Lawrence’s mansion in the English Midlands, where a French-speaking Constance and Clifford Chatterley (Hippolyte Girardot) convince us as imaginary Anglos, while the changing seasons - from dripping scarlet-and-gold autumn to cuckoo-voiced Spring - are gorgeous enough to be scenic tender anywhere. Hands’ heroine is a young beauty, going wintry with a crippled Clifford’s talky soirees with war veteran friends. (Every soundbite here seems to chime with her wasting ennui. “No vital organ was hit, yet he died instantly. . . “ ) Jean-Louis Coulloc’h’s as Parkin the gamekeeper—who became Mellors only in the novel’s last version— is a sturdy miner’s son with a heart of anthracite, slow to ignite but incandescent once started.
The brilliance of filmmaker Pascale Ferran’s approach is her slow stalking of Lawrence’s themes. Yes, the story is about sex. But before sex, it is about loneliness, the daytime silence of the great house broken by the solitary footfalls or creaking boards. After that—after the first frenzied couplings—it is about the birth of intimacy. The sex is done as montages, erotic jigsaws of visual detail (a hand unfastening a garter, Constance’s face transfixed in a kind of perplexed rapture). Later there is the mutual flower-arranging scene on his and her genitals. Again, these could be laughable—or prurient. Again, they aren’t. For we are caught up not only by the carnality, but by the sentimental education, by the fastidious charting of the way a touch, a word, a look, a surrender of the eyes or senses can unlock the emotions, unfreezes the heart.
The actors seem to be discovering the story along with us. Marina Hands takes the cliché of “awakening sexuality” and gives it a frisson of the new. She makes rapture seem at once transforming and a little terrifying. Jean- Louis Coulloc’h, no young pinup but a bunchy yeoman, whose mind as well as body seems initially musclebound, acts as if knots were being untied, one by one, in his soul. The lovers’ last dialogue scene, in which they work out a lasting sexual-conjugal pact, is not only touching but catches a pre-echo of the revolutionary. In this tale set in England in the 1920s, we hear again the brave, early, industrial whir of the making of sexual equality.
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Interview with “Lady Chatterley” Director Pascale Ferran
by Erica Abeel, indieWIRE
It used to be a rite of passage for American tourists to smuggle “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” past Customs, feeling terribly hip. Then Roth v. United States pried D.H. Lawrence loose from the heavy-breathing censors, and through the ‘60s and ‘70s, he rose high in the college canon. Today, after a pounding by feminist critics, the apostle of sensual joy has somewhat fallen off the radar. Enter Pascale Ferran, a brilliant French filmmaker, to shake the dust off Lawrence’s most notorious novel. “Lady Chatterley,” as Ferran titles her rapturous film, is the story, famously, of noblewoman Constance Chatterley’s passion for the gamekeeper of her disabled husband. Adapted from “John Thomas and Lady Jane,” Lawrence’s second version of the novel (Stateside we read the wordier third), “Lady Chatterley” has become something of a cinematic event. It marks the return not only of Constance and the gamekeeper cavorting naked in the rain, but also of Pascale Ferran, a filmmaker admired in France, but little known here.
After an eleven year hiatus, following “Coming to Terms with the Dead” (awarded the Cannes Camera d’Or in 1994), and “The Age of Possibility” in 1995, Ferran has made good on the abundant promise of her earlier work. “Chatterley” has collected no fewer than five Cesar awards (French Oscar equivalent).
Ferran has pulled off the daunting task of adapting a tale about sexual fulfilment with minimal plot, built around love-making scenes, which in themselves mark plot points. Since the chasm of class fails to scandalize today as it did when the book was published in 1928, Ferran chose to foreground the theme of “love as an opportunity to access intimate truths.”
The Franco-German arts channel ARTE, which embraced her project from the start, gave Ferran the freedom to cast an ensemble of actors who bring to the story an immediacy and truthful ring that never falter. Marina Hands’ Constance, her life ebbing away at Clifford Chatterley’s side in his stately manor, conveys, after her encounters with Parkin, a woman reborn. Hands is in practically every frame, and we discover this luminous actress as Connie discovers herself.
As the taciturn Parkin, Jean-Louis Coulloc’h, with his earth-hugging build, conveys an aura of “deep France,” a dignity not yoked to money or status, and—Ferran’s words—“incredible virility.” As Clifford, paralyzed south of the waist by war wounds, Hippolyte Girardot is watchful and coiled with rage at life’s low blows, a man who owns everything, but controls little.
But why is Parkin pronounced “Park-keen,” and all these people speaking French in an English coal-mining community? Thanks to Ferran’s artistry we give this discordance a pass. Her genre-crossing “Chatterley” plays like a piece of music, with sets of motifs repeating and adding meaning with each repetition. Early on, for example, Clifford and his Cambridge-educated cronies discuss battle casualties, observing that “the body works in mysterious ways.” The line is expanded in quite another direction each time Connie and Parkin meet in the cabin to explore the body’s mysterious ways. And in this richly suggestive script, Connie’s trips through the forest from manor to cabin act as a refrain, each time upping the ante and building in intensity.
That Connie’s transformation converges with the spring awakening, in lyrical images alive with the forest’s sounds, might border on cheesy. While the scene of the lovers sticking posies in each other’s pubic hair might border on the ridiculous. But this stuff is pure Lawrence, an author who found God in the “life force” as incarnated by nature; who on an ordinary day might write: “the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture...” Ferran’s adaptation is also unexpectedly poignant. I defy anyone to watch the closing scene, when Constance and Parkin speak their hearts, without misting up.
For all its glories, though, the aspect of “Chatterley” that’s bound to grab notice is the innovative way Ferran has filmed love-making. The candor of the six sex scenes ("How curious, it’s tiny now, like a little bud!") go against what Ferran terms the “currently ‘authorized’ representations of desire in cinema.” iW and Ferran discussed this topic and more when the filmmaker, a small woman with a great laugh and the look of a philosophy student, was in New York for the screening of “Lady Chatterley” at the Tribeca Film Festival. Kino Film will open the film in limited release beginning Friday, June 22.
indieWIRE: What prompted you to adapt this novel for film?
Ferran: I’m the opposite of you, I didn’t know D.H. Lawrence at all. I discovered him very recently in a book, “On the Superiority of Anglo Saxon Literature.” Lawrence is underrated in France. We have a cliche image of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” as a rather musty erotic novel from the past. No one had told me it’s simply the most beautiful love story in the world [laughs].
But I greatly prefer the 2nd version [Lawrence wrote three markedly different versions]. The third was too hard to adapt: the industrial revolution figures heavily, it would require a large cast.
When I read the second version, I had the feeling that everything that I would have to take out of the third, if I adapted it, Lawrence had already done in the second. It was as if he authorized me, actually said to me, ‘Take the second version and feel free to do what you want.’ It was very strange. The book speaks to me intimately about my life, and I have the impression that it does the same to millions of people.”
iW: If they’re lucky.
F: Right, if they’re lucky [laughter].
iW: A question about form. Why all those short takes in the early part of the film. There’s one of Connie, for instance, just dozing off in a chair in front of the cabin [before connecting with Parkin].
F: It’s the way the film manages the issue of time. Through those pointilistic scenes I was trying to convey that in the beginning, everything sort of merges together for Connie. But after the love scene with Parkin, she exists again in the intensity of the present moment.
iW: What made you decide to use such devices as voiceovers and intertitles. A paradox for me is that the film is both literary and very cinematic.
F: The intertitles gave me more freedom. I didn’t have much time to write the script. And above all, I wanted to avoid musty classicism and that academic style.
iW: Like Masterpiece Theater.
F: Exactly. I like the great stylistic liberty in Lawrence, his spontaneity...the passages in stream of consciousness. He’s the anti-Flaubert, who was a perfectionist working over each sentence hundreds of times. I mean, Lawrence wrote his novel three separate times, and each time he wrote it in three months.
Marina Hands and Jean-Louis Coulloc’h in a scene from Pascale Ferran’s “Lady Chatterley.” Image courtesy of Kino International.
And I thought, I have six months to adapt it, no big deal, I’m going to do it quickly. Giving priority to places I need to get to in the story. And if I’m not sure how to create a scene, I’ll just use intertitles. That allowed me to accelerate or slow down when I needed to.
For example, an intertitle reads, “For two days Constance didn’t go to the cabin because Clifford’s aunt had arrived”—and then the aunt leaves and you see Connie dashing through the woods like a lunatic. In that way you’re more in her head, her energy. I find it a freer and more modern way of telling a story.
iW: How did you prepare the actors for the love scenes? Two of them are in real time...
F: We worked [laughs].
iW: Could you give an example?
F: We rehearsed those scenes. They’re very important and also very scary. Because filming such intimacy exposes both actors and director. And you fear not being up to the artistic challenge it presents.
I kept saying to the actors, and I think they agreed: ‘There are not many films that do those scenes convincingly. And: we’re going to adapt this great book, and we’re going to film it convincingly, in a way no one has done before.’ And I thought, isn’t this presumptuous? who the hell do we think we are? [laughs]
So I thought we must absolutely rehearse those [love-making] scenes exactly the way we’d rehearse scenes of dialogue. But in this case, there aren’t words. So two or three months before the shoot, we spent a week, just the three of us, in a little dance rehearsal studio. Just doing work exercises. In the morning a dancer came in to do warmup exercises with the actors that involved physical contact. [And if “La Dolce Musto” is to be believed, they also looked at the undergarments--garter belts and panties --- and tried to get used to them.]
I absolutely wanted, by the end of the week, a complicity between us. A lack of modesty. It was also important to be able to pronounce words without embarrassment--and bearing in mind that later on there would be a crew. To be able to say, ‘At that moment there’s penetration...’ And after a certain moment you ejaculate. These are hard words to say--it’s even hard now” [laughs, along with a translator sitting in]. If beween the three of us we couldn’t say these words, we’d have...zip.
We had to get to the point where the actors touch each other as part of the work, and not connected to any desire between them as real people. Like dancers.
iW: You mean the actors weren’t actually aroused?
F: Of course not [laughs].
iW: It sure looked like it.
F: Well, yeah. The characters desired each other, but the actors themselves, no.
iW: But he had a hard-on--you know, in that scene.
F: Well, that’s work, too [laughs]… He had a hard-on because the character was supposed to at that moment. It’s artifice in the same way people kill each other on screen.
I don’t mean to say that it’s not possible at certain times to mix it all together. But hey, if actors had to be madly in love with each other, the film would get too complicated. These actors felt enormous respect and empathy. But our starting princple was that there would be no desire between them. Though we needed to portray it.
The fact that the actors could hide behind their characters made it [more] rea; and gave them the courage to unveil themselves. The closer we got to the spirit of the character--and the farther from the actors themselves--the easier it became for them to express very intimate things.
In the same way, because I could hide behind a story that takes place in England in 1920, and doesn’t directly tell my life story, I was able to expose myself so much. Otherwise, you know, it would be obscene, impossible…
iW: How is your way of filming love-making different from the more usual ways?
F: In the two authorized representations of desire and sex, there’s first the almost obsolete way, where as soon as the lovers are in bed, the film brutally changes in nature: music, dissolves, ellipsis. While in the “modern” style, sex is detached from all affect, basically the high-life of animal drive. Only the body talks.
I’ve shown the whole megillah--how you’re the same person before, during and after love. All your human possibilities function in the love scenes. They’re saturated with emotion. At least I modestly tried for that. What’s so deeply modern about Lawrence’s book is that it puts the body first, but doesn’t pit the body against the characters’ thoughts or feelings.
iW: I wondered why in Connie’s passage from repressed wife to passionate lover she never felt any guilt.
F: So did I. But I love that, it’s true to the book: there’s never a sense of sin or transgression. That’s what scandalized in England when it was published. I find that aspect magnificent and liberating. Even Marina [Hands] said, No no, there’s never a shred of guilt [laughs].
iW: You made Clifford oddly sympathetic, despite his defense of class inequities.
F: Yeah, I had to show why Connie had been in love with this man at one time. It wasn’t an arranged marriage. And he was a product of his period and class. When he could walk he would have been quite seductive
iW: Parkin and Connie’s final speeches really blew me away.
F: I’m delighted you like that scene, it’s the most controversial in the film. Some people loved it, others who liked it less think the film could almost have ended before that.
For me that would be completely impossible. What’s great about Parkin’s journey is that he finds language. He dares to express emotion. Everyone struggles with that, men more than women, perhaps. And the fact that this character--who throughout the film has so much trouble speaking--would dare to acknowledge how Connie has changed his life… For me that’s really powerful.
iW: In that final speech, where Parkin speaks of his feminine side, I heard Lawrence speaking of himself.
F: Yes, and thoughout the film the poles reverse. The lovers take turns being passive and active--or actively passive--they switch around. And Parkin is unbelievably virile, but sometimes shows a feminine delicacy and childishness.
iW: Do you consider the ending optimistic?
F: Oh, for me it is. I can’t imagine a more opitimistic ending. The future is open. And the future will be what Constance and Parkin choose to make of it, or don’t. But for two and a half hours you’ve watched them put something together. Surely they’ll again manage to reinvent their lives. Even if they fail, these people are so much better than in the beginning, more beautiful, more evolved, more venturesome… With their bare hands they’ve invented a new world.
iW: One last question. Lawrence was obsessed with relinquishing ego and wilfulness. The kind that’s expressed in that scene when Clifford’s motorized wheelchair conks out, but he insists on driving it up the hill...
F: Yes, that scene and the futile expression of will is very faithful to the book. I want, I want, therefore I’ll conquer.
iW: Since Lawrence promoted a freer, more open way of dealing with life, I was wondering: in making this film did you tap into that?
F: I’m so glad you asked that, you’re the only journalist who has. It was precisely my working method for the film: that it would not be based on my will alone, but on a communal effort. Even the technicians’ input was important. My working method was “c’est par la douceur on attrape les choses” [it’s by gentleness that one accomplishes things], not by enforcing will. Of course the standard image of a director is pure will. I tried not to be in that position. I wanted a living process.
* * * * *
Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant. Unpretentious. Unconventional. ©
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Number Ninety-Four
THE WORLD’S BEST HOTELS FOR DIRTY WEEKENDS
Need a naughty weekend away? Stephen Bleach (of the Times of London) reveals the world’s sauciest hotels.
The dirty weekend is on the danger list. According to a survey released last week, two-thirds of Britain’s couples haven’t had one in the past year: a quarter have never had one at all. The figures paint a graphic picture of a disturbing downward trend.
And we know why. We’re bored. Whenever a list of “sexy” hotels appears in the papers these days, it’s the same old bunch of celebrity hang-outs and slick designer haunts. It’s routine — and as any good sex therapist will tell you, routine is the deadly enemy of a good sex life. What we need is a little variety.
So, we’ve come up with a shamelessly eclectic selection of wicked weekends. There’s debauchery and romance, lusty log fires and priapic lighthouses, literary erotica and saucy cinema — something for every taste and occasion. Get out there and get frisky. The world’s a sinful place — and here’s where to get your share.
HOTEL PELIROCCO, Brighton
The traditional home of the dirty weekend has acquired a few stylish new hotels of late, but for sheer sauciness, none of them can match the Pelirocco. The most upfront room is Betty’s Boudoir, lined with pictures of the cult 1950s bondage starlet Betty Page and equipped with a pair of handcuffs attached to the leopard-print bed.
If that sounds a bit full-on, try the Bubble suite, with its circular bed ... and circular mirror on the ceiling above. When you’ve a spare moment, peruse the room-service menu: as well as traditional champagne and rose petals, it also lists various battery-operated appliances (batteries are included, thoughtfully) and a range of DVDs that would make even Betty blush.
COMBE HOUSE HOTEL, Gittisham, Devon
Lascivious gimmicks are all very well, but if your libido leans to the romantic rather than the raunchy, little can compare with a country-house hotel.
We choose Combe simply because it’s gorgeous — no spa, no pool, no designer names, just a perfectly intact Elizabethan manor in 3,500 secluded acres. It offers award-winning food and only 15 rooms: our favourites are the quirky Pitt, with its bed under a mullioned window; and the Willington, for the thought-provoking four-poster. Both are straight out of the pages of a racy period novel, with stunning views over a verdant valley where thoroughbreds roam free. So rip those bodices and get busy.
HOTEL DU VIN, Henley-on-Thames
Our readers love HdVs, telling us they’re stylish and good value, with a degree of character you wouldn’t expect in a chain. But you haven’t yet said they’re sexy. We can only assume that’s because not enough of you have stayed in the Dom Pérignon suite at Henley. The bed is a colossal 8ft x 8ft (and whatever anyone says, we know size matters), but that’s not the clincher — it’s the spectacular wet room that does it. Converted from the old brewing copper (the building originally produced Brakspear’s bitter), it has the biggest showers in the land: two heads, each of them an enormous 24in wide. Either is easily big enough for a couple to get clean and dirty simultaneously.
WEST USK LIGHTHOUSE, Newport, Gwent
If you’re a sucker for obvious phallic symbolism, you’ve got to love a lighthouse. “West Usk is not as tall as most,” concede the owners, “but it’s considerably bigger in circumference.” You can’t argue with that. It’s been voted one of the most romantic B&Bs in the country, but it has a sensual side, too — specifically in room 9, where the water bed will, if you use it enthusiastically, mimic the motion of the ocean outside. Granted, the hotel is a touch ramshackle, but that adds to the charm: it’s also friendly and quirky (there’s a Dalek in the hall, for some reason), and, if you snuggle down between the 2ft-thick walls while the first of the autumn storms rages outside, the perfect love nest.
BALINAKILL, Argyll
Real fires are sexy things. For every log you chuck on, another layer of clothing has to come off. Unfortunately, most hotels miss the point, confining their open fires to the public areas — not half so much fun. At Balinakill, though, 8 of the 11 rooms have their own real fires to romp by. “We’re surrounded by trees, so it seems a shame not to use them,” says the genial owner, Susan Macdiarmid. The place itself, an 1890s mansion with lovely views over to the island of Islay, is not as posh as Combe House, but it drips with oak panelling, polished wood floors and character. Hardy types can go fishing or deer-stalking, or walk the lovely coastline.
ABROAD
THE HOTEL, Lucerne
Being both Swiss and minimalist — an ardour-dampening double whammy — the Hotel sounds unpromising. But no: it’s genuinely friendly, genuinely stylish and sexy. With a touch of carnal inspiration, the French designer Jean Nouvel has printed film stills from arty erotic classics on the bedroom ceilings: Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, Almodovar’s Matador and Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire.
DAR MOUASSINE, Marrakesh
If exotic means erotic, you can’t beat Marrakesh. It’s an Arabian Nights fantasy — rich, strange and just a 3-hour flight away: leave early afternoon and you’ll be there in time to watch the sunset turn the city walls blood-red from your rooftop terrace. There are dozens of riads (traditional lodgings in the old city) to choose from, and most are fabulous. We pick this one simply because it’s intimate (six rooms) and reasonably priced, but still luxurious, with four-posters, painted ceilings, thick walls and a satisfying feeling of antiquity: the subtlest of seductions.
THE LIBRARY HOTEL, New York
A library? Yawn. But this book-stuffed boutique hotel on Madison Avenue isn’t all worthiness and hush. The number 800.001 might mean little to most of us, but librarians will already have twigged: under the Dewey classification system, that’s Erotic Literature, and room 800.001 is packed full of it. Casanova’s autobiography, the Kama Sutra and a slew of other sensual classics line the walls, with erotic prints in between.
THE PALMS, Las Vegas
Sin City has come over all family-friendly of late. Don’t be fooled: Vegas is still America’s prime den of iniquity. Strip shows, swingers’ clubs — not for nothing does the US porn industry hold its version of the Oscars here. There are trashy flophouses aplenty, but for wickedness with a little style, the Palms is the place.
It has the coolest nightclub, in Rain, and concerts at the Skin pool area, while the Ghost Bar overlooks the city, but for your own private party, splash the cash and get a Playpen on the 28th floor. They’re set up like pole-dancing clubs — proper dancefloor, disco lights, Bose sound system, mirrored ceilings — and the pole itself is (conveniently) right by the king-size bed. Sleazy? Only if you do it right.
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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant. Unpretentious. Unconventional. ©
Number Ninety-Three
COUPLES VOTE SEX HOTEL A HIT
by Patrick Barkham, The Guardian
Upstairs, Gina Walker toys with the black straps hanging from the ceiling. “You sit here, your arms go in there and your legs are spread out there. The big ladies, they have a whale of a time swinging all over the place. Oooh, it’s a fab club.”
Downstairs, surrounded by smoked-glass mirrors in a softly lit bar, thirtysomething couples in smart casuals sip champagne cocktails on leather sofas. The Ricky Martin song She Bangs plays on the sound system.
The Liberty Hotel squats in the Leicestershire countryside on the edge of the A5, a convenient 10 minutes from the M1 and the M6. BMWs and Mondeos line up in the car park. It looks a comfortable stop for a sales rep.
But at weekends Liberty becomes Liberation, a high-class club for swingers that is set to transform the seedy image of swinging and the staid hotel industry. What once seemed an outré lifestyle is fast becoming a common secret for an estimated 500,000 couples in middle England.
Such has been the hotel’s success since it opened on Valentine’s Day that a 140-bedroom branch is proposed outside London. Other Liberation franchises are likely to be established near Leeds, Carlisle and across the UK.
Lone perverts are out; jazz, spa baths and fluffy white bathrobes are in. As couples enter the bar, paying £25 on the door and a £30 annual membership fee, there is little to indicate anything other than an ordinary country club. Beyond a discreet glass cabinet displaying a “cordless micro-pleasurer” and a “vibrating finger vibe”, lies the “playroom”.
Ms Walker, 37, a guide and “door supervisor”, shows guests the voyeurs’ room, and a series of other rooms in dark red decor, with double beds, mirrors, lava lamps, and various contraptions, including stocks and “the swings”. In the corner are wet wipes, bowls of condoms and piles of clean towels.
The club is the brainchild of former KPMG accountant Neil Armstrong-Nash, 37, and his wife, Lianne, 35. They tried several swinging clubs but were put off by what Mr Armstrong-Nash calls “the shag and go” concept: sleazy dives with drinks in plastic tumblers, where couples are plagued by that habitual irritant of the swingers’ scene - the single bloke who has paid to get in and feels entitled to sex.
Liberation is “couple centred” - 90% of its 1,000 members are heterosexual couples. It has strict rules - no cameras or mobile phones; a closed door means a couple don’t want to be disturbed; staff never join in - and an emphasis on people only doing what they are comfortable with.
No professions are barred, but single men and women are vetted. “We have one 25-year-old single guy who comes here,” said Ms Walker. “It’s his recreation. He’s really good-looking and the women just love him.”
Friday night is “new swingers” night. Eight visibly nervous couples are greeted by Mr and Mrs Armstrong-Nash, who give them an introductory speech, champagne and dinner.
“Swinging is a very positive step so long as you are in a stable, long-term relationship; it is not something you should do to fix your relationship,” said Mr Armstrong-Nash.
In the bar, more experienced swingers, including Lindsey, 37, and Craig, 33, arrive. Preferring to go under assumed names, the couple, a company director and an operations manager who live in the Midlands, say that swinging must remain “the biggest secret you have” because of the misconceptions. They have been coming to the hotel for seven months, finding it “more sophisticated”, with better “etiquette” and a nicer class of cliental than traditional swinging clubs.
“The one thing about swinging is that everyone respects boundaries,” said Craig. “It’s not about putting your car keys in a bowl and swapping partners. There are no people running around naked. There are no mass orgies. It is all a choice. Nothing is a foregone conclusion.” But, he conceded: “Once you have been here a few times the boundaries will move.”
Craig added: “It’s a liberating feeling coming to a club like this. During your working day it gives you more confidence. If I’m honest, the reason I come here is because it’s so naughty.”
* * * * *
Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant. Unpretentious. Unconventional. ©
Number Ninety-Two
A VERY MODERN MISTRESS
by Natasha Courtenay-Smith of the London Telegraph
She’ll go from one married man to another and is under no illusions about her lover ever leaving his wife. But is today’s ‘other woman’ really as happy as she makes out, asks Natasha Courtenay-Smith
Leanne Parker is 35, single and works as a PA in London. She lives on a leafy street in Putney and likes shopping and going out drinking with her girlfriends. So far, so ordinary. But Leanne is also a serial mistress, and not by accident. In the past three years Leanne has had affairs with six different married men, and she is sure that over the coming months there will be more.
‘Some people like men with dark hair, some like men who are tall, but I like married men,’ she says with a casual laugh. ‘It’s become almost like an addiction for me. It gives me more satisfaction sleeping with men who are married than with men who are single. It feels great to think a man might choose me over the person he has chosen to marry, and I’m not ashamed of being a mistress - why should I be? The last three years have been the best of my life.’
Shocking as Leanne’s attitude may seem, she is not unusual. An examination of more than 13,000 sex lives for Britain’s biggest ever sex survey, the British Sexual Fantasy Research Project, led by the psychotherapist Brett Kahr, revealed that 23 per cent of 30- to 40-year-olds have had sex outside their relationship or marriage. For many the rise of the internet has made illicit sex more viable, providing them with the anonymity they need to keep an indiscretion more discreet. Women - and men - in search of affairs are using websites such as Loving Links and Itsmyfantasy. According to research by Sarah Bridges, one half of the husband-and-wife team behind illicitencounters.com, a website that offers discreet and extra-marital dating for married men and women, there are about 250,000 Britons having an affair at any one time.
Of course, infidelity is nothing new. What is new is the attitudes of some of the women caught up in its web. Because in contrast to the traditional image of a mistress - desperate to get her lover to leave his wife - today’s mistress is under no illusions about the future of her relationship: she takes what she needs from her lover and gets on with the rest of her life. ‘It’s almost like we’re seeing a revival of the 16th-century courtesan,’ says the novelist Tess Stimson, author of The Infidelity Chain. ‘There’s definitely a new generation of women out there who are saying, “Yes, I do want a man but I don’t want any aggravation.” They’re usually in their thirties - any younger and they’d end up falling in love - and to them monogamy seems rather old-fashioned. As women are becoming more independent, they are turning their back on the traditional ideas of what makes them romantically happy and are writing their own agenda. A married man is not going to be too demanding and is not going to get too close. And, because he feels guilty, he’s more likely to lavish his mistress with gifts and treats, too.’
But, aside from its moral bankruptcy, is this not a damagingly shallow way to live? The psychologist Gladeana McMahon, the author of How To Make Life Happen, believes that women who choose to be mistresses indefinitely often have underlying emotional problems. ‘In the short-term, yes, there are benefits to being wined and dined by a married man, particularly if you’ve just come out of a lengthy relationship and don’t want to get serious again. But then you’d expect anyone in that situation to get bored and move on to someone who can give her more. In the long-term, a mistress misses out on emotional security, support and intimacy. When you delve beneath the surface, you usually find that mistresses are not as happy as they say they are.’ What’s more, experiencing a series of mistress-type relationships may inhibit a woman from making a more profound partnership later on.
A new BBC drama series, Mistresses, to be broadcast next year, will feature four thirtysomething friends who each have a different experience of infidelity, from an events organiser having a fling with her boss, to a GP sleeping with a terminally ill patient. The producer and co-creator, Lowri Glain, believes that many women drift into such a position, rather than seeking it out. ‘Nobody wakes up wanting to be a mistress one day; it’s a situation you find yourself in. We’re all kind of living in a rootless way, renting accommodation, moving where the job is, so you have anonymity with it, and with the anonymity comes a sort of secret life.’
Leanne’s secret life began when she registered with itsmyfantasy.com. After just a fortnight she set up a date with Mark, a website designer. ‘I knew by then he had a wife, but I wanted to meet up with him anyway. After all, if anything he was the one who should have been feeling guilty, not me. It never even crossed my mind to ask Mark if he was thinking of leaving her.’
Within four months Leanne had tired of Mark, and another married man, Ashley, caught her eye. ‘The only time things were slightly awkward was when his wife called just as he was pulling me into his arms one day. He took the call, while I just sat on the bed and waited. As soon as he put the phone down we were all over each other again.’
Although Leanne’s relationship with Ashley has since cooled, she still sleeps with him occasionally, as well as several other married men she met online. ‘People may think what I do is wrong, but the way I see it, there must be something not right in the marriage if a man is looking elsewhere,’ she says. ‘There’s never any false hope on my part so I don’t feel crushed when he returns to his wife. No one is getting hurt.’
Yet Susanna Abse, the director of the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships in north London, believes something more complicated is going on. ‘Being a mistress is often a defence mechanism to prevent a true relationship developing. Often she has suffered a terrible hurt or disappointment herself and won’t risk depending on anyone again.’ This may be why the modern mistress tends to be slightly older - thirties onwards - and to have endured one or more serious relationships that have damaged her in some way.
‘A more complex Freudian theory is that mistresses are somehow playing out their Oedipal dilemmas. One of the most difficult phases babies go through is to realise that they are not the centre of their mother’s world, and in fact their mother has a relationship with someone else - usually their father. It is thought that those who continually have relationships with someone who is married are unconsciously attacking the relationship between the primary couple in their own life - their own mother and father - of whom they may have been envious.’
Leanne got divorced three years ago and concedes it has affected her attitude towards men. ‘Although I crave physical affection, conversation and sex, I’m not ready to have another relationship so, yes, that is a motivation in what I do now. I’m protecting myself from getting hurt again,’ she says. ‘At the same time, the more I go on, the less I can see myself entering a relationship. Some of the men I meet have been married for less than a year, and I can’t help but feel that men aren’t trustworthy. I’m beginning to think the way I manage things now may be the best way of doing things.’
Like Leanne, Sandra Addy, 41, a housewife and mother of two from Crawley in West Sussex, uses the internet to meet married men. But, in her case, she sees it as protecting her own marriage. Sandra’s 15-year-old daughter, Megan, has cerebral palsy. ‘Because of the stress caused by Megan’s condition, my marriage has been virtually sexless for ten years,’ says Sandra. ‘How we managed to conceive our eight-year-old son is nothing short of a miracle. We’ve been in separate bedrooms for five years but stay together for the children.’
A year ago Sandra logged on to illicitencounters.com and, after three months of emailing six different married men, met up with Michael, a surgeon. ‘His emails and texts just stood out over the others,’ she says. ‘I also liked the fact he had a medical background. I wasn’t planning on going on at him about my daughter, but I hoped it would mean he at least understood something about the position I was in.
‘For our first date we met at the Savoy. We had a candlelit dinner with champagne, and it was wonderful. To be honest, I didn’t really give my husband much thought when I was with Michael. I’m not saying I don’t feel at all guilty, because I do - a little. It’s just that after everything I’ve endured with my daughter I think it’s time for me to do something that makes me feel good.’
Sandra meets Michael once a week and believes her affair is having a positive effect on her family. ‘I’m much happier around the house, simply because I’ve got a bit of weekly light relief,’ she says. ‘I don’t snap at the children so much and I don’t feel so stressed out and depressed about my lot.
‘A year ago I was overweight and dressed like a frump. Since my first date with Michael I’ve lost a stone in weight, and the dowdy jeans and sweatshirts I’d slipped into wearing every day have been replaced by smart trousers and heels. I now go to the gym, and get my hair cut and coloured regularly. Overall I feel a lot happier. The old me, the woman I was once was, has finally come back to life.
‘But I wouldn’t exactly call this the perfect ending for me. I never walked down the aisle expecting I’d end up in this situation. Sadly, though, real life is not a fairytale.’
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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant. Unpretentious. Unconventional. ©
Number Ninety-One
INFIDELITY PLEASE, WE’RE BRITISH...
by Cassandra Jardine of the London Telegraph
We’re twice as likely to be unfaithful than the French. Cassandra Jardine meets a woman who knows why
After three years spent researching adultery around the world, Pamela Druckerman’s antennae for people with something to disclose are, she says, “fantastic”.
I can see how she has persuaded men and women to reveal the innermost secrets of their marriages.
When I ask: “Isn’t porn an issue?”, she puts down her forkful of veggie burger to stare with round blue eyes… and waits.
‘Mrs Infidelity’ looks as if she would sit in this state of suspended animation for ever, compelling strangers to disclose secrets they would keep from their closest friends.
Panic-stricken, I explain that I ask about porn only because she doesn’t touch upon it in her book. Her antennae are twitching frantically.
Lust In Translation (Penguin US) is an entertaining tour of the extramarital goings on of the French, Russians, Japanese, Indonesians, Hasidic Jews and Americans.
Though the British are represented only by an interview with Edwina Currie (about her fling with John Major) and a few paragraphs on our tabloid press - which has turned C-list celebrity infidelity-spotting into a sport - the book reveals that British infidelity is twice the figure of other Western European countries.
Some 9.3 per cent of married and cohabiting British men, and 5.1 per cent of women, admit to having had more than one partner in the past year.
Druckerman is tireless in her campaign to rip the duvet off illicitly fornicating couples.
Despite being a 37-year-old almost-newlywed with a child of 19 months - in fact, partly because of it, I learn - she is fascinated by adultery.
When it came to Brits and Americans, she had always assumed we would be almost indistinguishable from each other. But, in the three years that the New Yorker has been married to an Englishman - Simon Kuper, a sports writer for the Financial Times - she has discovered over dinner tables that we have our own unique extra-marital culture.
Relaxing with people over a meal is her way of finding out what really goes on.
“Sometimes I wish that I could tell people that I’m an accountant,” she claims. Rubbish: she seems to relish the way almost everyone is fascinated when she mentions her work.
“It’s the people who say ‘Huh’ and turn away who have something to hide.”
We may not be as strange as the Japanese: their men pay to spend evenings in simulated Tube trains so that they can rub up against women, a practice that may be necessary since double-beds aren’t sold in Japan and women sleep with their children until they are six years old.
Nor are we as rampant as the Russians who treat infidelity as almost obligatory, a practice that probably has its roots in the Soviet era when extra-marital sex was almost the only affordable pastime. But our high adultery rates are based on what this New Yorker sees as a strange mix: sex and alcohol.
“People think that what they do after work when they’ve had a few drinks doesn’t really count. In that way, Britain reminds me of South Africa where, despite Aids, there are high levels of infidelity.”
The drinking culture’s role in our courtship rituals has surprised a woman who spent her teens and early twenties in America.
“I was introduced to men through blind dates, each worse than the last.
“You Brits go out with a group of friends and drink a lot. If you fancy someone, you snog them or go home with them, and wake up in the morning and decide if you want to see them again.”
However, the speed with which we then get serious may explain why women are mostly unfaithful in their twenties, and men in their thirties.
“In Britain, you assume it’s an exclusive relationship when you start going out with someone. In America, we are allowed to date several people at once until we have had ‘the talk’ about exclusivity.”
Once the British and Americans marry, however, we share a low tolerance for straying.
“It comes from no-fault divorces. We think everything should be perfect.”
We also have similar attitudes to guilt - a belief that what’s really important is not extra-marital sex itself, but lying to your partner - or, in the case of politicians, Parliament or Congress.
We aren’t yet as guilt-stricken as Americans who feel so desperate when they misbehave that 50,000 infidelity counsellors are making a fat living out of assuaging their guilt.
Druckerman believes the therapy industry fans insecurity: “I’ve met women who won’t even let their husbands look at car ads.”
Other differences between the two countries are a matter of degree.
“In Britain, you are not quite so moralistic or open to charges of hypocrisy. Your politicians no longer present themselves as having the perfect family. And you tend not to describe serial adulterers as sex addicts, which is a way of pathologising something that’s natural.”
When she studied for an MA in International Affairs, Druckerman had no idea that she would end up taking the subject so literally.
Her own list of international affairs, conducted while a student and foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, includes relationships with men from Brazil, Egypt, Israel, Argentina, Japan and the Ukraine.
But it was not until she was contemplating monogamy that she found herself thinking about how different cultures view sexual fidelity. At the time, she was moving to Paris to live with her husband.
“The chief stereotype I had of the French was the idea that they all spend their cinq à sept hopping into bed with other people’s spouses.”
Examining this and other stereotypes seemed like an excellent way of putting her international experience to good use - and more exciting than reporting on companies’ annual results.
What she discovered, as she sat, eyes wide, ears flapping, at cafe tables - just like today - is that the French are actually less inclined to adultery than most. The percentage of married and cohabiting people who had more than one partner in the past year is 3.8 for men and 2.0 for women, half the levels in Britain.
The figures are borne out by Druckerman’s personal experience. During her years in Paris, she was propositioned only once, by a Moroccan taxi driver who asked her to become his fourth wife.
“Mmm, tempting,” was her reply. From this, she concludes that the French reputation for sophistication in relation to extra-marital affairs is a hangover from the Liaisons Dangereuses days of loveless marriages among the upper classes.
Whatever the cause, she applauds the result.
“At least if they do it, they enjoy it,” she observes, as I’m sure every adulterer would agree.
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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant. Unpretentious. Unconventional. ©
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Number Ninety
I Modi (The Ways, also known as The 16 Pleasures) is a famous, essentially lost erotic book of the Italian Renaissance.
Around the year 1520 the Italian artist Giulio Pipi, known as Romano, made sixteen very explicit erotic drawings of men and women having sex. These were reproduced as engravings and titled I modi (The Positions). None of them seems to exist anywhere. The engraver, Marcantonio Raimondi did his time in jail, but after his release he worked on another version of this series together with Pietro Aretino, a writer and commentator who also wrote erotic literature.
Their version of the engravings together with sonnets was published in 1527 with the title Sonetti Lussoriosi (Lustful Sonnets). Again, none of these seem to have survived.
But a myth had been created, or, has been taken up in later times. Baron Frederick Waldeck (1786-1875) claimed he had copied them.
The heliogravures in this exhibition were published in 1892 in France as another re-edition of Aretino’s Sonetti or Romano’s Positions. 500 copies of this book were handcoloured and numbered.
(from All Art dot Org)
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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant. Unpretentious. Unconventional. ©
Monday, August 20, 2007
Number Eighty-Nine
“Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one’s soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.”
Joséphine Baker (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was an American-born French entertainer, most noted for her singing career, while in her early career she was a celebrated dancer (she is often credited as a movie star, although she only starred in 3 films in her early career). She was given the nicknames “Black Venus” or “Black Pearl” and “Créole Goddess”, while in France she was known in the old theatrical tradition as “La Baker”. She became a citizen of France in 1937. She is also noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in North America, and for being an inspiration to generations of African-American female entertainers. Josephine Baker adopted 12 orphans of different ethnicities and nationalities.
She started her career as a street performer, dancing in the street as a child. She entered vaudeville joining the St. Louis Chorus at 15. She then headed to New York City during the Harlem Renaissance, performing at the Plantation Club and in the chorus of the popular Broadway revues Shuffle Along (1921) and The Chocolate Dandies (1924). She performed as the last dancer in a chorus line, a position in which the dancer traditionally performed in a comic manner, as if they were unable to remember the dance, until the encore, at which point they would not only perform it correctly, but with additional complexity. She was then billed as “the highest-paid chorus girl in vaudeville.”
On October 2, 1925, she opened in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where she became an instant success for her erotic dancing and for appearing practically nude on stage. After a successful tour of Europe, she reneged on her contract and returned to France to star at the Folies Bergère, setting the standard for her future acts. She performed the Danse sauvage, wearing a costume consisting of a skirt made of a string of artificial bananas.
In later shows in Paris she was often accompanied on stage by her pet cheetah Chiquita, who was adorned with a diamond collar. The cheetah frequently escaped into the orchestra pit, where it terrorized the musicians, adding yet another element of excitement to the show.
Rise to Fame
After a short while she was the most successful American entertainer working in France — whereas in the U.S., she would have suffered from the racial prejudices common to the era. Ernest Hemingway called her “ ... the most sensational woman anyone ever saw.” In addition to being a musical star, Baker also starred in three films which only found success in Europe: the silent film Siren of the Tropics (1927), Zouzou (1934) and Princesse Tamtam (1935). Although Josephine Baker is often credited as a movie star, her starring roles ended with Princesse Tamtam in 1935.
At this time she also scored her greatest song hit, “J’ai deux amours” (1931) and became a muse for contemporary authors, painters, designers, and sculptors including Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Christian Dior.
Under the management of Giuseppe Pepito Abatino — a Sicilian stonemason who passed himself off successfully as a Sicilian count, Baker’s stage and public persona, as well as her singing voice, went through an extraordinary transformation. In 1934 she took the lead in a revival of Jacques Offenbach’s 1875 opera La créole at the Théâtre Marigny in the Champs-Élysées of Paris, which premiered in December of that year for a six month run. In preparation for the her performances she went through months of training with a vocal coach.
In the words of Shirley Bassey, who has cited Baker as her primary influence, “ ... she went from a ‘petite danseuse sauvage’ with a decent voice to ‘la grande diva magnifique’ ... I swear in all my life I have never seen, and probably never shall see again, such a spectacular singer and performer.”
She was so well known and popular with the French people that even the Nazis, who occupied France during World War II, were hesitant to cause her harm. In turn, this allowed Baker to show her loyalty to her adopted country by participating in the Underground, when she smuggled intelligence to the resistance in Spain coded within her sheet music. After the war, for her underground activity, Baker was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d’Honneur by General Charles de Gaulle, and also the Rosette of the Résistance.
Yet despite her popularity in France, she never obtained the same reputation at home. Upon a visit to the United States in 1936, she starred in a failed version of the Ziegfeld Follies (being replaced by Gypsy Rose Lee later in the run) her personal life similarly suffered, and she went through six marriages, some legal, some not. During this time, when Baker returned to the United States, she was allegedly at a dinner party and began to speak in French as well as English with a French accent. An African-American maid was reputed to tell her, “Honey, you is full of shit. Speak the way yo’ mouth was born.” She had the woman fired.
In January of 1966 she was invited by Fidel Castro to perform at the Teatro Musical de La Habana in Havana, Cuba. Her spectacular show in April of that year led to record breaking attendance.
In 1973, Josephine Baker opened at Carnegie Hall to a standing ovation.
Civil rights involvement
Though based in France, she supported the American Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s. She protested racism in her own unique way, adopting twelve multi-ethnic orphans, whom she called her “Rainbow Tribe.” Her adopted children were: Akio (Korean son), Janot (Japanese son), Luis (Colombian son), Jarry (Finnish son), Jean-Claude (Canadian son), Moïse (French Jewish son), Brahim (Arab son), Marianne (French daughter), Koffi (Ivory Coast son), Mara (Venezuelan son), Noël (French son), Stellina (Moroccan daughter).
For some time she lived with all of her children and an enormous staff in a castle, Château de Milandes, in the Dordogne in France. Baker bore only one child herself, stillborn in 1941, an incident that precipitated an emergency hysterectomy.
She refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States. Her insistence on mixed audiences helped to integrate shows in Las Vegas, Nevada. Nevertheless she was near bankruptcy until she was given an apartment and financial assistance by her close friend, Princess Grace of Monaco, another expatriate American living in Europe.
She also worked with the NAACP. In 1963, she spoke at the March on Washington at the side of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Wearing her Free French uniform with her Legion of Honor decoration, she was the only woman to speak at the rally. After King’s assassination his widow, Coretta Scott King, approached Baker in Holland to ask her if she would take her husband’s place as leader of the American Civil Rights Movement. After many days of thinking it over, Baker declined, stating that her children were “ ... too young to lose their mother.”
Death
On April 9, 1975, Baker starred in a retrospective revue at the Bobino in Paris — Joséphine à Bobino 1975, celebrating her 50 years in show business. The revue, backed by Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, opened to rave reviews and quickly became the rage of Paris. Demand for seating reached such an extent that fold-out chairs had to added to accommodate spectators. The opening night audience was comprised of Prince Ranier and Princess Grace, Sophia Loren, Mick Jagger, Shirley Bassey, Diana Ross, and Liza Minnelli, among many others.
On the morning of April 10 Baker was found lying peacefully in her bed surrounded by newspapers with glowing reviews of her performance. She had slipped into a coma. She was rushed to Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, where she died at the age of 68 on April 12, 1975.
She became the first American-born woman to receive the highest French military honors, the Croix de Guerre, at her funeral, which was held at L’Église de la Madeleine. Paris came to a standstill on the day of her funeral, and 20,000 filled the streets to watch her procession. She was interred at the Cimetière de Monaco.
“Place Joséphine Baker” in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris was named in her honor. She has also been inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. The first ever swimming-pool over the Seine which has been launched for the 2006 edition of Paris-Plage, is named “Piscine Joséphine Baker” after her.
In 2006, the director of the Opéra-Comique of Paris, Jérôme Savary, presented his À la Recherche de Joséphine (Searching for Josephine), a musical inspired by Baker’s musical revues and songs from her early career. It tells the story of a French director in search of a star for his Parisian show in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He finds Joséphine Baker, who becomes the toast of Paris. It was hugely successful and has even toured in Louisiana.
(Note: Article from Wikipedia, which also has some videos of Josephine performing).
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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant. Unpretentious. Unconventional. ©
Number Eighty-Eight
Louise Dahl-Wolfe
I believe that the camera is a medium of light, that one actually paints with light. In using the spotlights with reflecting lights, I could control the quality of the forms revealed to build a composition. Photography, to my mind, is not a fine art. It is splendid for recording a period of time, but it has definite limitations, and the photographer certainly hasn’t the freedom of the painter. One can work with taste and emotion and create an exciting arrangement of significant form, a meaningful photograph, but a painter has the advantage of putting something in the picture that isn’t there or taking something out that is there. I think this makes painting a more creative medium. — Louise Dahl-Wolfe, 1984
Louise Dahl-Wolfe was one of the most celebrated photographers of the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Her work had enormous impact on great photographers such as Horst, Avedon, and Penn. Working in the heyday of Harper’s Bazaar, she pioneered the use of natural lighting in fashion photography and shooting on location and out of doors.
As a staff photographer for Harper’s Bazaar from 1936 through 1958, Louise Dahl-Wolfe introduced a witty, relaxed, and natural aspect to fashion photography and, in the process, helped “define the post-war look of American women.”
She preferred portraiture to fashion photography and was a pioneer in the technique of color photography. She made memorable portrait photographs of leading figures from politics and the arts including Mae West, Cecil Beaton, Eudora Welty, W.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Orson Welles, Carson McCullers, Edward Hopper, Colette and Josephine Baker.
Tom Neff created a superb documentary Louise Dahl-Wolfe: Painting with Light highlighting Dahl-Wolfe’s career, which can be seen on The Documentary Channel.
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“California Desert” & “Colette”
“Dappled Nude” & “Isamu Noguchi”
“Japanese Bath” & “Mary Jane Russell in Dior Swan Hat”
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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant. Unpretentious. Unconventional. ©
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Number Eighty-Seven
Viewing Pleasures.
Hotel Babylon is a tantalising and seductive insight into the sexy world of the five-star hotel industry, where money not only talks but can buy just about anything you desire!
Inspired by Imogen Edwards-Jones’ searing exposé of life behind the scenes of London’s luxury hotel industry, Hotel Babylon takes viewers on a journey beyond the glamour and façade of the smiling faces and glittering chandeliers and into the frenetic, non-stop world of the staff.
Among the many famous names who’ve checked into the hotel during the first two series, either playing themselves or a character in the show, are Joan Collins, Steven Berkoff, Anthony Head, Chris Moyles, Chantelle Houghton, Kacey Ainsworth, David Walliams, Cherie Lunghi, Jerry Hall, Kelly Brook, Julian Clary, Les Dennis, Russ Abbott and Jennifer Ellison.
Although Hotel Babylon looks as if it’s made in a genuine upmarket boutique hotel, it’s actually shot on a huge set in Buckinghamshire.
The hotel’s look is down to Production Designer Paul Cross, who visited almost every five-star hotel in London in his research.
Hotel Babylon isn’t based on any one particular real hotel. “It evolved as an amalgam of three or four very different hotels,” reveals producer Chris Aird.
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Interview with Tony Basgallop, Lead Writer/Series Creator from the series BBC website.
Tony Basgallop’s, Lead Writer/Series Creator, writing credits include EastEnders and To the Ends of the Earth. He wrote four out of eight episodes of Hotel Babylon, and came up with the storylines that run throughout the series, established the characters and set the tone of the show. He tells us about the process.
What was your first thought on being asked to turn the book into a series?
My first thought was: “How much will they pay me?”. My second thought was: “What if it turns out like Crossroads?”
How did you turn the book, which is really a series of anecdotes, into an ongoing story?
The book was a great research document, and set the style and the tone of the show. But the book is condensed over a twenty-four hour period and so obviously we had to create a world that stretched beyond that.
In terms of week-by-week storylines the trick was to always find a way of introducing self contained stories that not only involved the guest, but also emotionally involved the regular member of staff. Easy, really.
Hotels are naturally transient environments so stories of the week work well, but we also wanted our main, regular characters to develop over time. Most dramas use this format [an arc plus a story of the week] because it gives the greatest scope for storytelling.
Explaining all the ins and outs of the hotel business must have been a challenge?
The series is narrated by Charlie, the Deputy Manager, as a sort of insider’s guide to hotels. Using voiceover and visual montages meant that we could add detail about the hotel experience without having to force it into strained dialogue.
We always wanted a very slick and visual style to the show, and the montages gave us that. Not every anecdote can make a rounded story, though, and so a lot of great stuff from the book never made it into the series.
Tell us about choosing which characters to focus on.
The choice of characters was largely governed by which parts of the hotel we wanted to show, and who had the most potential for stories. Because we were building the hotel as a set, we ruled out the kitchen early on, so we didn’t need any chefs.
Our two main characters are management, which allows them access to pretty much anywhere, and always keeps them in contact with the guests and the staff. Gino the barman, Derek the doorman, and Tony the concierge are all from the book. The book also refers to Jackie from housekeeping, but we never actually met her. So we tried to stay as close to the book as possible.
A lot of the characters are hugely bitchy - do you enjoy writing bitchy dialogue?
The thing about working in a service industry is that you have to be so polite to the guests, always calling them “sir” and “madam”. It’s about presentation.
So when the staff talk amongst themselves they don’t need to be polite and relish the opportunity to speak their minds. And yes, I particularly enjoy the bitchy dialogue. Which is why I created the character of Anna, the head receptionist - who wasn’t in the book.
There’s a lot of very saucy moments too.
The naked Finnish couple [in episode one] were fun to write. Obviously there’s a limit to what you can show but the directors will always push things as far as they can.
What was it like seeing the set for the first time?
It was incredible. It’s such a huge, elaborate set. You instantly feel like you’re in an actual hotel, despite it being in a warehouse. The views from the windows are these huge prints of the London skyline which, when properly lit, look very authentic.
Were there any fights between you and the other writers over who got which anecdotes from the book?
No fights, but a few swear words. Toby [Whithouse], Howard [Overman], Harry [Wootliff] and I all got together early on in the process, as I was still writing the first script.
They all got a grip on the characters and had stories of their own that they wanted to tell, as well as their favourites from the book. We approached each episode with a theme, so the anecdotes that best served those themes fell into order.
Did you visit many hotels for research?
Imogen and I went round some of the most renowned five star hotels in London before I started writing. At one place, that shall remain nameless, we posed as a best man and a bridesmaid looking to book a wedding in the hotel. It was incredible. They gave us access to the suites, the banquet halls, the swimming pool, the sauna…
We also stalked a few bars and restaurants just watching the staff do their job. Gino, the barman from the book and the series, is an actual person - though not called Gino.
Which bit are you proudest of?
I’m proud of most of it, in particular having Joan Collins play an obscenely rich guest in episode seven.
You never know if what works on paper will work on screen. After we see how the audience react to series one we will hopefully know how to approach series two.
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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant. Unpretentious. Unconventional. ©
Number Eighty-Six
Introduction to Champagne Pol Roger - Excellence and Independence
Established in 1849, Champagne Pol Roger remains family-owned and proudly independent to this day. The history and spirit of the company mirrors that of the family who bear the same name: a respect for nature, a devotion to quality and a certain joie de vivre.
As one of the smaller houses, Champagne Pol Roger owns 87 hectares of vineyards on prime sites in the Vallée d’Epernay and the Côte des Blancs, drawing the remainder of their supplies from individual growers, many of whom have supplied Pol Roger for generations. Its cellars, extending to 7 km, lie on three levels in the chalk below the streets of Epernay and are among the deepest and coolest cellars in the region: contributing to the slow maturation and creation of fine, persistent bubbles which are the hallmark of all Pol Roger champagnes.
The History of the Family
Foundation
Champagne Pol Roger is one of the very few remaining houses still owned and run by the founding family, who remain responsible for the winemaking and selection of the cuvées each year.
Pol Roger was born on 24th December 1831 in the village of Aÿ. He elected not to follow his father’s footsteps by entering the law, but received his support when he showed a determined interest in the wine trade. Pol set up in Aÿ as a négociant or wholesaler at the age of 17, drawing initial business from his family’s contacts and clients of his father.
The following year, 1849, saw the birth of the new champagne house as Pol Roger began to create his own cuvées (for release from 1853) rather than bring in wines solely from other houses. His sales for the first six months of operation were 3,769 bottles and 825 half-bottles. Today that has grown to around 1.5 million bottles per annum.
Establishing the brand
Historical events for Pol Roger champagnes in England began in the second half of the 19th century, which saw the rapid development of the business, in what was a golden era for champagne. In 1876 Conrad Reuss of Reuss, Lauteren & Co. of Crutched Friars, Mark Lane in the City of London was appointed as the first UK agent for Pol Roger, selling in to the top end of the hotel trade, prestigious clubs – and the following year to the Royal Household.
In 1887 Maurice Pol-Roger, the son of Pol who with his brother Georges had changed their surname by deed poll to Pol-Roger, paid his first visit to England to learn the business here, starting a close relationship between the family and this country that has been maintained ever since. By 1888 HRH The Prince of Wales and Prime Minister Gladstone were amongst those enjoying the pleasures of Pol Roger.
The second generation
On the death of Pol Roger, his two sons took over the stewardship of the company. Then in 1900 tragedy struck when the major part of the cellars in Epernay collapsed destroying 1.5 million bottles, much of it destined for England. Other champagne houses and agents rallied round to support Pol Roger and help the company maintain its export business.
In 1908 Winston Churchill, then in the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade, became a customer for the first time, beginning a lifelong association with the brand.
The Royal Warrant was awarded to Pol Roger in 1911 and Pol Roger was served at the Guildhall luncheon held on George V’s Coronation Day, 30th June.
The War Years
During the First World War hostilities affected Epernay (occupied by the Germans during the month of September 1914) and champagne production and exporting, since the front line remained just over 20 miles away for most of the duration of the war. In the interwar years, sales of champagne in England only picked up slowly, but were strong again by 1923 in large part due to the outstanding quality of the 1914 vintage.
In 1934 Champagne Pol Roger opened their new celliers at 34 Avenue de Champagne, still a landmark building in the town. In the same year King George V held a reception for 800 guests on the occasion of the marriage of his son the Duke of Kent to Princess Louise, serving Pol Roger.
Germany’s invasion of France in May 1940 and aerial attacks on Epernay led to the suspension of shipments to England. Nothing was heard from the Pol-Roger family until France was liberated by the Allies in 1944.
Modern Times
The post-war years saw only a gradual restoration of exports to England as military and domestic market requirements in France restricted supply. In the 1950’s the poor harvest of 1951 and the growth of local co-operatives led to the Pol-Roger family purchasing vineyards and developing existing land to control a fully owned area of 87 hectares to produce nearly half of their grape requirements and thus assure quality and supply.
In 1955 the introduction of ‘White Foil’ Non-Vintage (now Brut Réserve NV) helped to rebuild sales in England. An agent was employed in Scotland, Dick Yorke, who became the brand’s ambassador there.
In 1966 the English agency arrangements changed, with the purchase of the Reuss business by H.P. Bulmer of cider fame.
In the 1970’s worldwide sales of champagne topped 100 million bottles for the first time, but fluctuating harvest and the oil crisis of 1974 affected sales dramatically. The beginnings of the 1980’s saw two poor vintages and very high grapes prices, and a second energy crisis. By the middle of the decade, with a high proportion of wholly-owned vineyards, sales recovered and the Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill was launched in June 1984.
Following three excellent vintages, in 1989 the opportunity came to change the company’s sales representation in Great Britain, and Bill Gunn M.W, who had been responsible for the brand at Dent & Reuss, was appointed in 1990 Managing Director of a new company, majority-owned by Pol Roger in the UK – Pol Roger Ltd, with offices in Ledbury, Herefordshire. The company progressively took on the agencies for a number of independent, family-owned businesses producing premium wines and spirits. In 1993 Pol Roger Ltd assumed the agency for Scotland from RMR Yorke & Co. Pol Roger Ltd moved to Hereford, its present location in 1998.
Sir Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Churchill had a lifelong ‘attachment’ to Pol Roger champagne and insisted on enjoying the wine at the most dangerous and dark periods of wartime. He famously borrowed a slogan of Napoleon’s to describe his passion for this supremely invigorating champagne: “In defeat I need it, in victory I deserve it”.
Winston Churchill was born in 1874, the same year from which an outstanding Pol Roger vintage was created – a cuvée which was to provide the foundation for the brand’s reputation in England.
Winston became a customer of Pol Roger for the first time when a Cabinet Minister and President of the Board of Trade. He ordered a supply of the 1895 vintage.
By 1914 Pol Roger had become the champagne of people of prominence, and the 1906 vintage sealed this position, being consumed at many royal functions. Winston Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, retained his loyalty to the brand.
During the Second World War, Churchill maintained a stock of Pol Roger always at hand, even having a case loaded onto flights into foreign war zones, as both defeats and victories ‘justified’ its consumption. (Allied troops, after the liberation of Epernay and France in 1944 had special stocks of Pol Roger labeled and reserved for their use).
In 1944, Churchill attended an informal luncheon held by the British Ambassador in Paris, Duff Cooper and his wife, where he was introduced to Odette Pol-Roger and a lifelong friendship developed. Odette was one of the renowned ‘Wallace Collection’ – the three beautiful daughters of French Major General Wallace. The coming together with Odette was described as ‘a beautiful December – May relationship, quite harmless and smiled on by Mrs Churchill, who much admired Odette – who personified the best in France’. Every year on Winston’s birthday, November 30th, Odette would send a case of Churchill’s favourite vintage while stocks lasted – the 1928.
Churchill described Odette’s home at 44, Avenue de Champagne, in Epernay as ‘the world’s most drinkable address’ but sadly was unable to complete his promise to tread the grapes with ‘my bare feet’. Instead he sent her a signed copy of his memoirs with the inscription ‘Mise en bouteille à Château Chartwell’. In 1949, he was still attached to the 1928 vintage, insisting that it be the only champagne served in his lodgings in Strasbourg for the Council of Europe meeting.
In January 1965 Churchill died. As a tribute to their most loyal client, through whose cellar it is estimated more than 500 cases of Pol Roger had passed in the last ten years of his life, a black border was added to the labels of all bottles of ‘White Foil’ sold in the United Kingdom.
Then in 1984 Pol Roger introduced the Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill, the launch taking place at Blenheim Palace, his birthplace. In 2006 the Cuvée was re-released in a new livery with lively shades of marine blue and red recalling the resplendent uniform worn by Sir Winston during his tenure of the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports.
The champagne reflects the rich, mature, full-bodied style of Pol Roger champagne made before the Second World War, the style that Churchill preferred. Christian Pol-Roger explains: ‘The composition is not disclosed – Winston Churchill never asked about the exact composition of our cuvées – but Pinot Noir dominates, blended with Chardonnay. The grapes are from Grand Cru vineyards under vine in Churchill’s lifetime.
In 1990 the black band of mourning on ‘White Foil’ was lightened to navy blue, recalling Winston Churchill’s ‘loyalties to the Senior Service’ as a former First Lord of the Admiralty.
* * * * *
Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant. Unpretentious. Unconventional. ©
Friday, August 03, 2007
Number Eighty-Five
The Best Little Whorehouse in Chicago
The story of the city’s most exclusive brothel—and the reformers who shut it down. By Dan Kelly, of the Chicago Reader
KAREN ABBOTT STARTED her first book scouring microfilm of the Chicago Tribune at the University of Georgia library. The sister of her great-grandmother had disappeared during a trip to Chicago soon after the two emigrated from Slovenia in 1905, and Abbott, an Atlanta-based journalist, was curious about the city and times that had claimed her. Her research led her to the Levee, Chicago’s red-light district, where many missing women were said to have ended up, and then to Ada and Minna Everleigh, madams of the infamous Everleigh Club. “It’s cheesy,” says Abbott, who spent three years writing Sin in the Second City, released this week by Random House, “but I came to think of them as family. I have pictures of them hanging up in my house right now.”
Little is known of the Everleighs’ background. They claimed descent from Kentucky aristocracy but are believed to have come from a Virginia family hit hard by the Civil War. Simms was their real name; Everleigh—a pun—was assumed, as were, the women insisted, their southern accents. “Just piecing together their whole background,” says Abbot, “they were ingenious in how they learned to present themselves.” After running a brothel in Omaha, the women moved to Chicago in late 1899 to establish a high-class bordello.
Ada and Minna bought a retiring madam’s mansion at 2131-2133 S. Dearborn and put out a call for women interested in work free from pimps, abuse, and indentured servitude. Madam Vic Shaw, the sisters’ greatest business rival, kept a professional whipper on staff.
The Everleighs hired women who were attractive, experienced, and drug- and alcohol-free; the minimum age was 18. Younger sister Minna instructed them in charm and culture, covering subjects ranging from literature to the art of seduction. She dressed them in couture and dubbed them the Everleigh butterflies.
House rules were strictly enforced under threat of immediate expulsion: no picking pockets, no knockout drops and robbery, and no boyfriends. The girls also had to pass monthly examinations for venereal disease. They were paid well and those dismissed were easily replaced from the Everleighs’ long waiting list of candidates.
To stay open the sisters had to placate crime lords and politicos alike. Ike Bloom, who fronted a sleazy Randolph Street dance hall, set a sum of ten grand a year for protection by the likes of Chicago Outfit founder James “Big Jim” Colosimo. “Tribute” was also paid to First Ward aldermen Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna and “Bathhouse John” Coughlin.
Visiting the Everleigh was an experience available only to the elite. The parlors were lavishly furnished with paintings, sculptures, a perfume fountain, a gold-leaf piano, and solid gold spittoons. Clients could enjoy rare wines, string orchestras, and fireworks. The dining room served gourmet fare. “A lot of the patrons came just for the meals,” Abbott says. “The girls were almost a side attraction.”
By most accounts the sisters were high-hatted and tough as nails but had hearts as gold as their gilded parlors. The soft-spoken Ada was considered the brains of the operation—she balanced the books and was responsible for hiring; Minna socialized in the parlors with guests and was known for her sass. “I wish I could be more like her,” says Abbott. “To not care what anybody thinks ever is sort of liberating.”
Entrance was by referral letter only, and clients were expected to spend a minimum of $50 per visit or face banishment (a three-course meal could be had for 50 cents at the time). High-profile guests included Prince Henry of Prussia, who made a special stop at the Everleigh during a visit to Chicago in spring of 1902. “It was more of a gentleman’s club,” says Abbott. “The cachet of being able to go there, just because they turned down so many people. It became an exclusive badge of honor just to be admitted.”
Occasionally the house was caught up in scandal. When Marshall Field Jr., son of the store founder, was found shot at his Prairie Avenue home on November 22, 1905, rumor spread that one of the Everleigh butterflies had done it. The coroner’s report backed the official story—that he’d shot himself while cleaning his hunting weapon—but gossips insisted he’d been wounded during a visit to the club the previous night and smuggled back home by the sisters.
Unlike earlier Everleigh narratives like Charles Washburn’s Come Into My Parlor, Abbott’s account devotes a lot of space to the progressive politics of the era. The number of women who worked outside the home jumped from 3,100 to 38,000 in the 30 years between 1880 and 1910, she says: “Everybody was freaking out about women entering the workforce in such large droves, leaving their rural homestead and entering the big city.” Not all of them found legitimate work, and when women started disappearing the nation was gripped by a white slavery panic, fueled by anti-immigrant sentiment. The only way a good white Christian girl could become a whore, Americans were convinced, was if she was seduced, drugged, and sold to a brothel.
Religious reformers descended upon the Levee, preaching and pamphleteering in an attempt to shame patrons and “save” the district’s women. The Everleigh sisters referred to these late-night missionaries as “firemen” and welcomed them to the house to talk to their girls. None of the butterflies were said to have shown any interest in leaving.
Abbott says the Reverend Ernest Bell started preaching outside the brothels in 1902 after he was propositioned in front of the Chicago Theological Seminary. He admonished the district’s sinners to repent despite being bashed and gassed by Levee pimps. “If I were a novelist I wouldn’t have been able to name him Ernest,” Abbott says. “I think he really believed in what he was doing and his motives were true and good and upright. He really believed he was saving women from Satan’s clutches.”
Others reformers, like Clifford Roe, an assistant state’s attorney, jumped on board to further their own political interests. “I think Roe was a bit more Machiavellian and manipulative with the facts,” says Abbott. He developed a side business lecturing and writing books with sensational titles like Panders and Their White Slaves.
The white slavery scare was also used as an excuse to attack the non-Protestant immigrants pouring into the country. Both Bell and Roe pointed the finger at foreigners in their condemnations of theatrical agencies, dance halls, and ice cream parlors. “Shall we defend our American civilization, or lower our flag to the most despicable foreigners—French, Irish, Italians, Jews and Mongolians?” Bell wrote in his 1910 book Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls.
Chicago prosecutor Edwin Sims fought prostitution in Chicago and was the inspiration for the Mann Act of 1910, also known as the White Slave Traffic Act. “I am determined to break up this traffic in foreign women. It is my sworn duty, and it should be done to protect the people of the country from contamination,” he told the Tribune in 1908.
“Some of the things the federal officials were saying I had to read twice,” says Abbott. “Like ‘War on Terror,’ they had their political talking points and they used them very effectively to manipulate the public and push their own agenda forward.”
Mayor Carter Harrison II, who usually turned a blind eye to illegal goings-on in the Levee, was eventually forced to reckon with the reformers’ growing political power. In 1911, after a friend from outside Chicago showed him “The Everleigh Club, Illustrated,” a leather-bound brochure with national distribution, he ordered the brothel’s closure.
Gradually the other brothels, dives, saloons, dance halls, gambling parlors, and opium dens of the district were also shuttered. On July 24, 1933, workers tore down the building that once housed the Everleigh Club, “heedless of the fact that they were wiping out one of the most lurid chapters in Chicago history,” according to a Tribune report from the time.
Although rooted in ignorance, the white slavery panic did give women, who were still a decade from suffrage, a rallying cause. “Through the end of it they started having hearings about women’s wages, [asking] how can a girl work in a factory for six dollars a week and not be expected to supplement her income doing nefarious things?” says Abbott. “The white slavery scare was a chance for [women] to insert themselves in political discourse.”
Meanwhile books like Roe’s, which included scenes of terrified harlots escaping brothels in flimsy negligees, made sexuality an acceptable topic of conversation. “Those narratives were like porn for puritans, but it was the first time people could discuss that, in a way, and not be considered untoward,” Abbott says.
As for the Everleigh sisters, after just over a decade doing business in Chicago, they’d amassed a million dollars in savings—$20.5 million today, Abbott estimates—and even more in jewelry, art, and Oriental rugs. They changed their name to Lester and moved to New York, where they bought a brownstone on the Upper West Side and founded a poetry discussion group with local ladies who knew nothing of their past. Minna died first, on September 16, 1948, at the age of 82. Ada lived until 95, dying January 6, 1960, in Charlottesville, Virginia.
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The Golden Age of Chicago Prostitution: A Q&A with Karen Abbott from the Freakonomics Blog
Sin in the Second City, a new book by Karen Abbott, offers an in-depth look at the prostitution trade in turn-of-the-century Chicago. In particular, Abbott focuses on the Everleigh sisters, two madams who ran a high-class brothel on South Dearborn Street that earned them extraordinary wealth and international fame. Abbott agreed to answer our questions about her book.
Q: Could you describe the economics of the Everleigh brothel? What was the total income? Salaries for the Everleigh madams and their prostitutes? Food/decorating budget?
A: On a busy night, the Everleigh sisters could make as much as $5,000. They spent $18,000 per year in renovations alone, including the upkeep of a $15,000 gold piano and several $650 gilded spittoons. They allotted a budget of $2,000 to $5,000 a month for imported spirits. The sisters sold bottles of champagne for $12 in the parlors and $15 in the bedrooms, but never beer or liquor. They also paid about $800 a month in protection fees [to law enforcement officials].
The Everleigh Club “butterflies,” as they were called, pocketed from $100 to $400 each week—an unthinkable salary in other houses. “One $50 client is preferable to ten $5 ones,” Minna [Everleigh] advised her courtesans. “Less wear and tear.” A man had to pay $50 just to walk in the door, in an era when a three-course meal cost fifty cents. Dinner in the club’s Pullman Palace Buffet could cost another $150.
When the sisters retired, they had $1 million in cash, the equivalent of $20 million today.
Q: Tell us about the legality of prostitution. What was the stance on enforcement in the 1900s? How has it changed?
A: Prostitution was technically illegal at the turn of the last century, but it was also ubiquitous. Today’s image of the drug-addled streetwalker toiling under the menacing glare of her pimp wasn’t the norm back then. When the Everleighs were in business, every city with a population of more than 100,00 had a bustling red light district where dope fiends, pickpockets, and brawlers got their kicks next to lawyers, ministers, moguls, and, of course, politicians. Vice thrived, with municipal indulgence.
Brothels were considered a necessary evil; prostitutes kept “respectable” women safe from rape and the baser fantasies of their husbands. The Progressive-era reformers challenged this way of thinking, which led to a major culture war. The Everleighs were targeted because they were this gleaming, shining symbol of open and protected vice, known around the world.
Q: Does the Everleigh experience relate to the current scandal involving a D.C. madam? How damaging was it to one’s career or reputation to be associated with a brothel in the early 1900s? In your view, do the same rules still apply?
A: Absolutely! Prostitution and politics are inexorably linked, both literally and figuratively. The press inevitably zeroes in on the politician in the aftermath of such scandals: How sincere was his apology? Can his career survive? His marriage? The focus is rarely on the prostitute, who wields tremendous power in these situations. It’s a fitting paradox: these “fallen” and “ruined” women can easily bring the fall and ruin of others.
The Everleigh Club might be the only brothel in American history that enhanced, rather than diminished, a man’s reputation. Clients reportedly boasted, “I’m going to get Everleighed” tonight, which helped to popularize the phrase “get laid.” A man wouldn’t want to be seen at the “lower” houses, however. There’s an anecdote in the book in which Minna recruits a harlot named Suzy Poon Tang from a lesser brothel to service a special client who would only enter the Everleigh house. They truly adopted Marshall Field’s business philosophy: give the customer what he wants.
Q: If the Everleighs existed today, would their business plan still succeed? Would their investment be better suited for, say, a web site?
A: They were incredibly inventive, maverick businesswomen, and I think they would have adapted well. Ada [Everleigh] was the brains of the operation. She maintained the books, interviewed the prospective Everleigh “butterflies,” and generally kept the operation running smoothly. Minna was the outgoing sister, a master social manipulator who attracted clients, advertised effectively, and cemented the Everleigh Club “brand,” if you will.
If they were operating today, I think they’d have a multi-pronged approach: run an elite, discreet call girl service, and also an online experience in which a man could “visit” a virtual Everleigh Club. He could explore the different parlors, listen to the three-stringed orchestras, and mingle with courtesans. After he made his choice, they’d connect via web cam. And if the sisters were arrested, I don’t think they’d squeal like the D.C. Madam [did]; it’s an unforgivable breech of madam etiquette.
Q: Were there any particularly surprising facts that you came across — revenue streams, perhaps, you wouldn’t have anticipated?
A: The most shocking statistics were in the Chicago Vice Commission report, issued in 1910 after reformers conducted exhaustive interviews with prostitutes, madams, streetwalkers, dance hall girls, and every other denizen of the Levee district. The red light district’s annual profits were calculated, “ultra” conservatively, at nearly $16 million per year ($328 million today). The report counted no fewer than 1,020 brothels in Chicago and five thousand full-time prostitutes — a number that didn’t account for the thousands of streetwalkers, part-timers, and girls who hustled on the side. One madam at a fifty-cent brothel testified before the Commission that she and just one prostitute earned $175 to $200 per week. She also claimed that she herself entertained 60 men in one night for fifty cents each. She had $7,000 in the bank.
During one particular survey, girls were asked why they entered the “sporting life.” Nine answered they were seduced; three could not earn enough to live by any other means; two were enticed into the life by other women; two were too “ignorant” to do any ordinary work; two lost their husbands by death and two by desertion; two said they were naturally bad (one said she was “born with the devil in her,” the other that she was “bad with boys before she was 15”); two said they wanted to afford fine clothing; and two claimed they were ruined by drink.
The Commission called oral sex “pervert methods,” and reported that it was on the increase in the higher-priced houses. The girls who performed “pervert methods” earned two to three times more than “regular girls.” Such methods, the reformers discovered, were practiced almost exclusively in the Everleigh Club, on the advice of the Club’s physician.
Q: Did police officers, government officials, and prosecutors receive a discount for services?
A: Minna set a policy of entertaining newspaper reporters and state legislators for free. It worked: the Everleigh sisters got press when they wanted it, and stayed out of the headlines when they didn’t. They also made necessary donations to a roster of politicians in Springfield in attempts to help thwart harmful state legislation, including one check for $3,000.
Q: How were prices set? What was the price disparity between rates for the house’s most popular woman versus the least?
A: In the Everleigh Club, every girl entertained for the same price; there wasn’t any hierarchy. If you were accepted as an Everleigh butterfly, you were going to earn more money than any prostitute in the world.
There were set prices for other services in the Levee, however. The price for stopping an indictment on a charge of pandering was $1,000. On the complaint of harboring a girl, $2,000. Massage parlors paid $25 a week for protection from prosecution; larger houses of ill fame, $50 to $100 a week, with $25 more if drinks were sold. Saloons paid $50 per month to be allowed to stay open after hours, and $25 per week for each poker or craps table. Prices were set by two crooked alderman, “Bathhouse” John Coughlin and Hinky Dink Kenna, and their lieutenants made collections every week. Over the course of a dozen years, according to Minna, Levee bosses collected $15 million in graft payments. The Everleigh Club alone kicked in more than $100,000 in cash.
Q: You mentioned a Chinese prostitute whose unique services were requested by a wealthy Chicago businessman. What other preferences did men of the era exhibit? In your view, have these preferences changed in the last century?
A: There were some other “unique” services. One of my favorites was an Everleigh Club client by the name of Uncle Ned. Once a year, around the holidays, Uncle Ned would pay enough money to rent out the entire club just for himself. He didn’t want wine, or gourmet food, or a bath, or even to climb the stairs. He requested two buckets of ice, into which he thrust his bare feet. He drank a tall glass of sarsaparilla, and then shouted, “It’s a wonderful day for an old-fashioned sleigh ride,” while the girls danced around him singing “Jingle Bells.”
Another odd bird was a guy nicknamed the “Gold Coin Kid.” He always brought a bag stuff with — you guessed it — gold coins, and requested a courtesan named Doll. She would recline on her bed and let him toss the coins between her legs. Every time he hit the bull’s-eye, he let Doll keep the gold.
There were also “strip-whip” matches at the lower houses, during which harlots would wrestle naked and whip each other bloody. When Prince Henry of Prussia visited the Club, he got off on watching the harlots rip apart a cloth bull with their teeth—a reenactment of the murder of Dionysus’ infant son. There was something for everyone in the Levee — just like today.
Q: How was race handled in the brothels? Were white and black prostitutes kept separate? Did the members of the profession flout the racial conventions of the time, or stick to the mainstream view of racial inequality?
A: The Levee district was segregated in very specific ways. There were brothels where light-skinned black women serviced only white men, and other houses where dark-skinned women catered only to black men. Girls in Japanese and Chinese houses served white men, and girls in French houses performed oral sex only, and only on white men.
Minna and Ada Everleigh had at least one Spanish prostitute over the years, and several Jewish girls, but no black women. They took pains to insist they weren’t personally prejudiced — “Even though I am a Virginian,” Minna said, “I am not intolerant” — but they knew their wealthy white clientele did not want to mix with other races. There was a famous incident in 1909 when the boxer Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion of the world, was admitted to the Club only because his manager was a powerful player in the Levee. But the Everleigh sisters didn’t predict that their girls would find him so charismatic and charming; five women left with him, and all five were fired.
Q: You discuss at length the media’s role in shaping public opinion on turn-of-the-century prostitution, particularly the issue of “white slavery.” How has media portrayal changed towards prostitution?
A: During the “white slavery” hysteria, prostitutes were considered victims whose souls needed to be saved. They were “fallen” women who could be rescued through prayer and legislation, and returned to respectable lives.
After World War I, when the white slavery panic began to wane, this viewpoint shifted. Prostitutes were regarded as feeble-minded, maladjusted girls who were ruining America’s moral fabric. I think this latter view still holds today, particularly with regard to streetwalkers. No one in my neighborhood in midtown Atlanta cares if the prostitutes on our corner receive any kind of social assistance; they just want them out of sight. These are probably the same people who consume the most online porn. One of the major themes of the book is the cyclical nature of religious fundamentalism in this country. The old adage is true: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Q: A recent study by a Canadian criminology student found that 2/3 of “off-street” prostitutes have never experienced violence in the course of their job, while more than 90% of the study participants had a college education. The results led one Canadian professor to state, “The importance of this research is that it shows that the prohibitionist argument is ideological and political. It provides a huge stumbling block and strongly favours decriminalization.” Do you agree?
A: I think the Everleighs were definitely onto something. The world’s oldest profession isn’t going to go away; why not regulate and tax it? An argument can be made that legitimizing the business would keep its practitioners safer from physical abuse and disease. It seems to work in Nevada.
I’m torn on whether or not sex work is inherently empowering or exploitive for women. I tell all of these fun anecdotes in the book, but, truth be told, a lot of the women entered the sporting life — even Everleigh Club girls — for tragic reasons. Their husbands deserted them, and they had small children to support. Their parents died, and they had younger siblings to take care of. Some were considered promiscuous and kicked out of their homes so they figured, why not get paid? Many Everleigh girls married well and went on to live “respectable” lives, and others met unhappy endings. One committed suicide, and another was found dead in an alley, her hands severed at the wrists so her killer could take her diamond rings. It’s a perennial question: if this is the only choice you have, is it really a choice at all?
* * * * *
Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant. Unpretentious. Unconventional. ©