The Last Madam A Life In The New Orleans Underworld

by Wiltz, Christine

• ISBN13: 9780306810121
• ISBN10: 0306810123
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-03-13
• Publisher: Da Capo Press

Summary

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 taperecorded 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 thereand, likeMidnight in the Garden of Good and EvilandPhilistines at the Hedgerow,resurrects a vanished secret world.

Author Biography

Christine Wiltz is the author of four novels. She lives in her native New Orleans.

Table of Contents

Lemon Pie	3	(11)
The Tango Belt	14	(10)
Vidalias and the Good Men	24	(14)
Such a Wicked City	38	(15)
My Two Most Exciting Lovers	53	(17)
Squaring Up	70	(7)
Big Mayor, Little Mayor	77	(12)
Big Mo	89	(8)
Birds on the Wire	97	(8)
The Game	105	(20)
At the Mercy of the Trick	125	(6)
Tricks of the Trade	131	(6)
A Different Kind of Trick	137	(14)
Out-tricked	151	(12)
Jailbird	163	(8)
Endgame	171	(11)
The Discreet Mrs. Patterson	182	(9)
Tchoupitoulas	191	(10)
Striking Out	201	(12)
Obsession	213	(8)
The Gun	221	(8)
The Last Word	229	(10)
Bibliographical Note	239	(4)
Acknowledgments	243