Madame Claude was a brothel keeper ....
.... perhaps the best there has ever been. Certainly the best in France ....
Until her death on the 19th December 2015, aged 92, in a small apartment in Nice in the South of France, she was the keeper of many secrets. Born Fernande Grudet, she was likely the second daughter of a snack cart vendor at Angers railway station, who fled to Paris sometime in the 1950s. Where she learnt her trade in the Paris back streets after she became mixed up with local gangsters and was pimped, until in 1961 when she went 'into management'.
She later reinvented herself as Madame Claude, and there often, regularly reinvented her past to suit who was asking, claiming various backgrounds, including a period in the concentration camps as a resistance fighter, and other times as an aristocrat born in a château .... she kept the truth of her own life and the secrets of her clients mostly hidden. Perhaps because of her real background, she admitted that she found sex distasteful (she had one daughter from her early days, but whom she barely saw and latterly did not even acknowledge).
Her first base was above a Rothschild's bank near the Champs Elysée, but later her base was a 16th arrondissement Paris hotel (18 Rue de Marignan), where she would pass on jobs via telephone appointments to her 'swans', as she called her girls. This discrete calling system was new, and created the term 'call girls' .... Many of them later went on to marry their clients. Years later she enjoyed nothing more than flicking through society magazines such as Vogue or Harpers to spot her old employees: 'It makes me laugh when I see the photographs of the ladies and countesses in the social pages of Tatler, Harpers and Vogue, and count up which ones started out working for me.'
The 'swans' were nearly always tall and stunning, often with backgrounds as failed models or actresses, with many thought to have come from the then House of Christian Dior Couture. Very often they were Scandinavian, but she also employed some who were local part-time actresses, or middle-class students .... the list allegedly included a Normandy countess, a university professor, the daughter of a French Air Marshall, even a few housewives.
All the swans came to her .... around 20 a month would approach her, usually by word of mouth, and she'd choose just one from the monthly crop after very careful vetting. This included a final vetting via a night with one of Claude's essayeurs, or testers. only then would they get lessons in sex (until they could be described as 'bien au lit' - good in bed), philosophy, table etiquette and art history. The rewards were high for the girls as the charge for their services was considerable (In 1977, the going rate was £200 for an afternoon, £400 for an evening (8pm to 2am), £666 for a whole day), and the swans kept 70 per cent of the money ... some negotiated additional rates that allowed them to earn £4,500 per day (minus 30 per cent of course). These were huge amounts in the 1970's and 1980's.
Her clients included not only half the French governments ministers, but ambassadors, presidents, dukes, lords and Middle Eastern Kings, and also actors Rex Harrison and Marlon Brando, plus Henry FordII of Ford Motors, banker Elie de Rothschild, Lord Mountbatten, Fiat car boss Gianni Agnelli (Agnelli once took a post orgy group to Mass afterwards), John F Kennedy (he apparently asked for a woman who looked like his wife Jackie, but who 'was hot' ... which tells you something), and Aristotle Onassis (he and, and his mistress, the opera singer Maria Callas, were said to be regulars, popping by with lewd sexual requests .... he later dumped Callas, and married Jackie Kennedy which is another story as well). The artist Marc Chagall, who was another patron, gave the girls priceless sketches of their nude self, while the Shah of Iran dispensed jewels like sweets to girls, whom he had flown to him every Friday.
She was finally laid low in her homeland in the 1970's, when President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing came to power on a vow to clean up corruption and prostitution. In 1976 she was targeted by the tax-man for 11million francs (around £5 million) in unpaid taxes, but she opted for exile in the USA instead (she got her green card by marrying a gay American bar waiter). She set up a patisserie and soon started recruiting more swans, however they were not the multi-languaged European sophisticates she had employed in France, but rather American women of different ages and types.
This wasn't really her style, and she failed to make money. In 1986 she returned to France, but had to spend four months in jail (But it was in a 17th century château, and she was allowed her own maid and a hairdresser). Oddly she could have opted to live in Switzerland, having once been married to a Swiss man in order to get the passport.
Finally back in Paris and free of jail, she tried to resume her business model, but in 1992 a wannabe 'jeunes filles', who she had told was fat, informed on her to the authorities, and she was again convicted for pimping. On her release from what this time was a real prison sentence Fiat Owner Agnelli sent her a new fiat as a gift, but her days as a madame were over. In truth she had always held both the punters and the swans as contemptible .... an acquaintance stated that 'She despised men and women alike. Men were wallets. Women were holes.'
In her later years she was occasionally indiscreet about her male clients and their 'preferences' (especially those who had died), but she remained tight-lipped about the identity of the swans. However it's alleged that at least two swans went on to successful Hollywood careers; three more married aristocrats, one was the wife of a very well-known Earl, another is married to an English captain of industry, several more became top models - one married a famous musician. When she passed away (along with many of the male clients), many of the ex-swans, would certainly have been relieved that only they, and the men they met and married, will ever know that they were once a Claude girl.
In her obituaries in the French press, many referred to her as a 'proxénete' - or pimp, which tells you that times were a changed by the time of her death ..... but she didn't give a damn .... 'There are two things that people will always pay for - food and sex. 'I wasn't any good at cooking.'
 |
| Madame Claude of Paris .... |
.... perhaps the best there has ever been. Certainly the best in France ....
Until her death on the 19th December 2015, aged 92, in a small apartment in Nice in the South of France, she was the keeper of many secrets. Born Fernande Grudet, she was likely the second daughter of a snack cart vendor at Angers railway station, who fled to Paris sometime in the 1950s. Where she learnt her trade in the Paris back streets after she became mixed up with local gangsters and was pimped, until in 1961 when she went 'into management'.
She later reinvented herself as Madame Claude, and there often, regularly reinvented her past to suit who was asking, claiming various backgrounds, including a period in the concentration camps as a resistance fighter, and other times as an aristocrat born in a château .... she kept the truth of her own life and the secrets of her clients mostly hidden. Perhaps because of her real background, she admitted that she found sex distasteful (she had one daughter from her early days, but whom she barely saw and latterly did not even acknowledge).
Her first base was above a Rothschild's bank near the Champs Elysée, but later her base was a 16th arrondissement Paris hotel (18 Rue de Marignan), where she would pass on jobs via telephone appointments to her 'swans', as she called her girls. This discrete calling system was new, and created the term 'call girls' .... Many of them later went on to marry their clients. Years later she enjoyed nothing more than flicking through society magazines such as Vogue or Harpers to spot her old employees: 'It makes me laugh when I see the photographs of the ladies and countesses in the social pages of Tatler, Harpers and Vogue, and count up which ones started out working for me.'
The 'swans' were nearly always tall and stunning, often with backgrounds as failed models or actresses, with many thought to have come from the then House of Christian Dior Couture. Very often they were Scandinavian, but she also employed some who were local part-time actresses, or middle-class students .... the list allegedly included a Normandy countess, a university professor, the daughter of a French Air Marshall, even a few housewives.
All the swans came to her .... around 20 a month would approach her, usually by word of mouth, and she'd choose just one from the monthly crop after very careful vetting. This included a final vetting via a night with one of Claude's essayeurs, or testers. only then would they get lessons in sex (until they could be described as 'bien au lit' - good in bed), philosophy, table etiquette and art history. The rewards were high for the girls as the charge for their services was considerable (In 1977, the going rate was £200 for an afternoon, £400 for an evening (8pm to 2am), £666 for a whole day), and the swans kept 70 per cent of the money ... some negotiated additional rates that allowed them to earn £4,500 per day (minus 30 per cent of course). These were huge amounts in the 1970's and 1980's.
Her clients included not only half the French governments ministers, but ambassadors, presidents, dukes, lords and Middle Eastern Kings, and also actors Rex Harrison and Marlon Brando, plus Henry FordII of Ford Motors, banker Elie de Rothschild, Lord Mountbatten, Fiat car boss Gianni Agnelli (Agnelli once took a post orgy group to Mass afterwards), John F Kennedy (he apparently asked for a woman who looked like his wife Jackie, but who 'was hot' ... which tells you something), and Aristotle Onassis (he and, and his mistress, the opera singer Maria Callas, were said to be regulars, popping by with lewd sexual requests .... he later dumped Callas, and married Jackie Kennedy which is another story as well). The artist Marc Chagall, who was another patron, gave the girls priceless sketches of their nude self, while the Shah of Iran dispensed jewels like sweets to girls, whom he had flown to him every Friday.
She was finally laid low in her homeland in the 1970's, when President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing came to power on a vow to clean up corruption and prostitution. In 1976 she was targeted by the tax-man for 11million francs (around £5 million) in unpaid taxes, but she opted for exile in the USA instead (she got her green card by marrying a gay American bar waiter). She set up a patisserie and soon started recruiting more swans, however they were not the multi-languaged European sophisticates she had employed in France, but rather American women of different ages and types.
This wasn't really her style, and she failed to make money. In 1986 she returned to France, but had to spend four months in jail (But it was in a 17th century château, and she was allowed her own maid and a hairdresser). Oddly she could have opted to live in Switzerland, having once been married to a Swiss man in order to get the passport.
Finally back in Paris and free of jail, she tried to resume her business model, but in 1992 a wannabe 'jeunes filles', who she had told was fat, informed on her to the authorities, and she was again convicted for pimping. On her release from what this time was a real prison sentence Fiat Owner Agnelli sent her a new fiat as a gift, but her days as a madame were over. In truth she had always held both the punters and the swans as contemptible .... an acquaintance stated that 'She despised men and women alike. Men were wallets. Women were holes.'
In her later years she was occasionally indiscreet about her male clients and their 'preferences' (especially those who had died), but she remained tight-lipped about the identity of the swans. However it's alleged that at least two swans went on to successful Hollywood careers; three more married aristocrats, one was the wife of a very well-known Earl, another is married to an English captain of industry, several more became top models - one married a famous musician. When she passed away (along with many of the male clients), many of the ex-swans, would certainly have been relieved that only they, and the men they met and married, will ever know that they were once a Claude girl.
In her obituaries in the French press, many referred to her as a 'proxénete' - or pimp, which tells you that times were a changed by the time of her death ..... but she didn't give a damn .... 'There are two things that people will always pay for - food and sex. 'I wasn't any good at cooking.'
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