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There ain’t nothing like a madame. Claiming to provide an honest, safe and popular business environment away from the dangers on the streets, these women are just helping along what comes naturally.
FRENCH CONNECTIONS
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Fernande Grudet, aka the notorious Madame Claude, ran a thriving high-class call-girl empire whose tentacles stretched from Paris to the Middle East and Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s and which was allegedly protected, and used, by politicians, the police and VIPs as if it were a state service. She handpicked her girls, taught them escort etiquette, chose their lingerie and frocks and educated them in culture, before turning them loose on appropriate clients, many of whom they later married. She was convicted of tax evasion and served a four-month jail sentence in 1986, the same year her memoirs were published. There is now a restaurant called Madame Claude in Jersey City.