Wiltz has written a fascinating history of the social life in New Orleans during the Prohibition Era. She focuses on the life of Norma Wallace, a prostitute who managed to become a highclass madam and political power. Liquor was the source of her initial stake -- it was ironic that more liquor seemed to flow during Prohibition than before or after -- and she invested it in a house that served the sophisticated desires of the wealthy and powerful. These clients helped protect her from the periodic anti-vice pogroms of the morally fastidious under police chief captain "" and her business boomed. She renovated an old Creole-style house and filled it with beautiful girls who were required to adhere to the strictest rules: matching underwear, no kissing the clients -- they were selling sex, not emotion -- no drugs, and no pimps. Her business acumen was so acute that in one case a wealthy client ran up a tab of $4,500 -- the equivalent of $75,000 today -- in liquor and female companionship for himself and his male secretary. Her clients were not always male. The famous actress Marjorie Rambeau stopped in New Orleans on her way to Los Angeles, made her way to Norma' -- cab drivers often got a percentage of the take -- and proceeded to spend $35,000 in cash, drinking herself into a drunken stupor. When she awoke in her hotel room the next day, appalled at what she had done, Norma refunded $10,000 of her money, still leaving a nice haul, most of which went long-term annuities for herself. She was very good at using information to her advantage. In one case, she recognized a man on the FBI' most wanted list and notified the local police, endearing them to her. The local police and FBI agents were often regular customers, the ultimate in protection, and soon, at age thirty-five, she was one of the most powerful women in New Orleans. Norma had numerous love affairs — she truly loved many men — but the most dangerous of these was when she fell for Sam Hunt, a notorious killer and ally of Al Capone. Sam brutalized Norma' other girls, but with Norma he acted as an old romantic and insisted it was true love. He remained convinced she loved him and was not just turning another trick. He was insanely jealous, and when he happened to see her talking with a former boyfriend, he became enraged. When she married Pete, another old friend who was almost completely blind, Sam became so enraged he started a shooting match at her house and tried once to run her down with his car. His friends finally managed to get him back to Chicago. Norma' marriages rarely lasted long, and, characteristically, she assumed responsibility for their failure, noting that most men wanted their wives to be a combination nun and madam and that she had difficulty becoming the first. She also argued that " make good wives, but madams don'" because a madam has enough income to make herself independent. Many of her girls married successfully and quit hustling. Numerous efforts at reform were implemented during the fifties. The Kefaufer Commission investigation revealed a police department so corrupt and criminally organized that anyone wishing to open a brothel or gambling establishment literally had to pay for police permission. One prostitute testified, after looking around the hearing room, that nine out of ten of the men in the room, including the investigators, had been customers of the brothel where she worked. By the sixties, Norma had given up the business. Most of her police protection friends had retired or suffered from too much close scrutiny. She opened a restaurant that she initially left in the charge of a good restaurateur, but it never did well until she publicly announced she was the owner. Then it took off, everyone wanting to talk to and be seen with the famous madam. She married Wayne, many years her junior, who seemed to be a perfect partner, except that Norma became insanely jealous whenever he glanced at a younger woman. Infamy became her path to fame, and now a super-legitimate businesswoman, she made the cover of New Orleans magazine and received the key to the city. New Orleans has always enjoyed exploiting its own myths and legends, and Norma's fame played right into the selfperpetuated image of its being a "wicked city." Norma eventually tired of living in the country, away from the excitement of the city, and looked nostalgically back to the days of the "public secret" that, she claimed, "took the strain off marriages. . . .But the women's libbers are all running around saying women are prostituting themselves keeping house, having babies. And here's the deal--women get married for one thing, security. They sell it to one man for the rent, food, clothes. When you look at it that way, hookers get more for what they sell. If I was still in the business, though, I'd probably be sending one of those lady liberation groups a check every month. Any landlady will tell you the bossy broads will sure send her a lot of customers."
Ironically, it was her bossing around of Wayne they helped to drive him away, and in her seventies, the fun seemingly having left, she shot herself in 1974.
