PROSTITUTION IN HOLLYWOOD DURING THE MGM - LOUIS B. MAYER ERA

According to E.J. Fleming, author of "THE FIXERS," a book that focuses on M.G.M. during the Louis B. Mayer era, when Edgar "The Bulldog" Mannix and his gentleman sidekick, Lee Strickland, did the cover-ups for the messy personal lives of actors, often due to their affairs, Hollywood had a number of houses of prostitution that were well known. 

Was Hollywood hyper-sexual?  Were the studios tied into these houses of prostitution where many a woman who came to Hollywood to be a star found employment?

Who used these prostitutes?  No doubt some of the regular customers were men in the business, including stars.

In the Chapter called The Golden Age of Trouble, he mentions a few of the more famous houses.

According to Fleming, Madame Billie Bennet ran a Greek Revival style mansion above Sunset that had 14 suites, a restaurant, and a bar.  She looked and spoke like Mae West and the studios lent Mae's actual costumes.  In the basement there was a wardrobe mistress, make-up men and hairdressers!  Her prostitutes were look-alike of actresses so that a John could hire someone who looked like Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Alice Faye, Carol Lombard, Claudette Colbert, Ginger Rogers, or Marlene Dietrich and indulge his fantasy of being with that star.  (Greta Garbo and Katherine Hepburn were never copied.) Some were "surgically enhanced." 

Similarly, there was T and M Studio, where there were "6 month option girls"  which means actresses who were hired for training by a studio and paid for 6 months, a time to prove themselves so their option could be renewed.  Not saying that Marilyn Monroe worked there, but she was one of those girls, and some biographies I've read about her suggest that she did work as a prostitute for a while.  Supposedly Groucho Marx was a regular customer.  

The House of Frances, owned by Lee Francis.  She had been a prostitute herself in  in San Francisco and Reno and then moved to LA where she owned several houses but her biggest was at 8439 Sunset Blvd.  She paid a lot of money to local officials and police, over 40% of her net and allowed the vice squad to "raid," but never arrest anyone.  She kept Russian caviar and French champagne and gave favors to reporters to keep her out of the paper.  By 1930 she bragged that she could satisfy any request and so to satisfy the request of a Middle Easterner she provided 100 blondes, who died all their hair blonde.  The prostitutes made about $1000 a week.  And the Johns were also Joans, such as Jean Harlow who is said to have paid $500 to take a customer home.  In the lobby of the five star hotel, stars like Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable might read the paper and drink coffee, while maybe Errol Flynn went upstairs.
In the late 1930's Madame Frances began refusing to pay bribes and on January 16, 1940 her house was raided, there were dozens of embarrassing arrests, and she was put out of business.

I hate to say this, but a prostitute working for a time in one of these places probably made much more than the option girls, even the starlets who got small part,

Meanwhile, there was a lot of sex, even orgies, for free to the participants.  According to Fleming, Edmund Goulding had a Beverly Hills mansion where movies stars and call girls even worked in choreographed Sadio- Masochistic sessions.  In Louise Brooks' 1978 interview, she mentioned the place.

There are so very many more options in education and employment than these not so distant days, but just recently have actresses begun to complain about sexual harrassment and rape by film studio executives and people employed in the business, and by the way, I believe Corey Feldman about boys being molested by some of them.

Have I tantalized you to read E. J. Fleming's The Fixers?


To read about LOUISE BROOKS, Mistress of the Month, go to archives February 2014.
To read about Kept Man PAUL NOVAK and MAE WEST, go to archives September 2017
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FAITH  Howard Hughes fifteen year old Mistress in archives May 2014
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MARILYN MONROE, Mistress of SuperAgent Johnny Hyde, in May 2016
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