The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld [Hardcover]

Christine Wiltz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2000

In 1916, at age fifteen, Norma Wallace arrived in New Orleans. Sexy and shrewd, she quickly went from streetwalker to madam and by 1920 had opened what became a legendary house of prostitution. There she entertained a steady stream of governors, gangsters, and movie stars until she was arrested at last in 1962. Shortly before she died in 1974, she tape—recorded her memories-the scandalous stories of a powerful woman who had the city's politicians in her pocket and whose lovers included the twenty-five-year-old boy next door, whom she married when she was sixty-four. Combining those tapes with original research, Christine Wiltz chronicles not just Norma's rise and fall but also the social history of New Orleans, thick with the vice and corruption that flourished there—and, like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Philistines at the Hedgerow, resurrects a vanished secret world.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Actually, they called themselves "landladies" in New Orleans, though that didn't change the nature of their business: running houses of prostitution in the city's wide-open French Quarter. Beginning in 1920, when she was still in her teens, Norma Wallace managed a high-class bordello for an affluent and influential clientele, evading the police and asserting her sexual freedom "like a man" despite the nominal confines of several rickety marriages. Obsessive love for a man 39 years her junior and her first-ever jail term finally put Wallace out of the business in the mid-1960s, but her memories were still vivid and raunchy when she tape-recorded material for an autobiography in the two years before her suicide in 1974. Novelist Christine Wiltz makes good use of those recordings in an earthy narrative filled with great anecdotes, from how the name of Wallace's dog became local slang for an out-of-town customer to the time an undertaker's premises served as her temporary place of business. Wiltz also interviewed many of Wallace's lovers and associates; she draws on popular journalism and scholarly monographs with equal acuity to flesh out Norma's story. Her perceptive biography of a colorful and complex woman is equally satisfying as a social history of 20th-century New Orleans. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly

Mystery and nonfiction writer Wiltz (Glass House, etc.) offers an affecting portrayal of the woman who for 40 years ran the last successful high-class brothel in New Orleans, and of her vanished demimonde. Born into poverty in 1901, Norma Wallace became a streetwalker in her teens, but by the early 1920s had decided that a more comfortable, profitable living lay in being a "landlady"--running a discreet, lavish, politically protected house of prostitution. Shrewd and ambitious--and a strict madam--she quickly became an underworld force within the wide-open New Orleans of the 1920s-1940s, enjoying numerous romances along the way with a Capone-linked gangster, then-blind champion bantamweight Pete Herman and entertainer Phil Harris, among others. Norma's first serious arrest came only in 1962, and it sped her retirement a few years later. Wiltz, who makes excellent use of Norma's tape-recorded, unpublished memoirs (Norma died in 1974), understands that this tale is necessarily one of corruption and acquiescence in mid-century urban America: Norma could not have prospered without the ritualized, baroque corruption of local law enforcement as well as the town's leading economic lights and political figures, who often checked their pious selves at Norma's door. Wiltz thus elevates a sometimes impeccably assembled historical narrative above its elementary bawdy elements into something more elegant and fragile: the resurrection of a secret world, like those uncovered by Luc Sante and James Ellroy. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber (January 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571199542
• ISBN-13: 978-0571199549
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #920,652 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book and an Excellent Book if you are From New Orleans, January 6, 2000

By 

John Case (Slidell La.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld (Hardcover)

New Orleans is one of the most visited cities in the USA. Even the casual visitor has been told the stories of prostitution and corruption in the majestic French Quarter. The story of Norma Wallace based in part on her audio taped autobiogaphy gives the present day reader the best look at what this life was really like. The writer is convincing, by naming names and places, that the world's oldest profession was almost respectible, even in the last half of the 20th century. The research done to write this book is amazing. The opinion you form of Norma, by the end of the book,is surprising. A good book and a must if you are familiar with New Orleans

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Underside of the Underside, February 1, 2000

By 

jack olsen - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld (Hardcover)

I was a young investigative reporter living in the French Quarter in the era Christine Wiltz writes about, and I saw it all -- the political payoffs, the crooked cops, the upscale whores and the spavined sluts, the overstuffed and pompous city fathers, the pimps and touts and junkies. What a rich mix it was! Wiltz, a native Orleanian, put the odor of pralines and boiled crawfish and "buster" crabs back in my nostrils for the first time in 50 years. She's caught the era perfectly, and with considerable writing skill. "The Last Madame" is as authentic as an open grave in the St. Louis Cemetery.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Colorful And Tragic, March 31, 2002

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld (Hardcover)

When the subject of this book shrugs off being shot in the ankle because she got a 7-carat diamond ring out of the affair, you know this is no ordinary person. Norma Wallace was one of the last Madams' of New Orleans. For more than 4 decades she ran her various houses that were the locations where young men were brought for their introduction to the carnal pleasures of adulthood, where actresses and actors frequently paid visits, and where a good percentage of politicians and law enforcement officers also passed some time. The book is not a glorification of what was at times a brutal existence. The book and the behavior of many is entertaining, but when reality becomes a bit too easy, incidents that were absolutely horrible brought reality back with great intensity.

This is a story of a woman who knew what she wanted at a very young age, and who by the 1920's was making 100,000 per year. To survive and thrive during changes in political landscapes she was not only an exceedingly shrewd businesswoman, she was also a grand manipulator of politicians, and law enforcement. She managed to fit in 5 marriages, a relationship with a nationally known gangster, and the creation of a wildly successful restaurant business in with all her other interests. This woman was one of the original practitioners of multitasking.

All of this came with a price, the same man who was a gangster might try to kill her one night, her jewelry that was valued at 70,000 decades ago and which she wore daily would make her a target. And for 40 years there was always some new rookie cop or politician that wanted to make his mark by closing her down.

The story is wild, amazing and true; the read is almost as fast paced as her life.