The Rabbit Hole of Ill-Repute (Or, the Best Little Wh*rehouse in Kentucky)

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The other day I used the song “The Sidestep,” so brilliantly performed by Charles Durning, in the film The Best Little Wh*rehouse in Texas. For those of you who don’t know, that play (it was a play before it became a movie) was inspired by a real event. In fact, quite a bit of the movie is factual! I was reading some of the “man-on-the-street” interviews in the newspapers in 1973 when Houston TV “watchdog” reporter Marvin Zindler launched a “crusade” to get “the shack outside LaGrange” (yes, the one ZZ Top sang about in that song) closed down after decades of operation. The quotes in the movie, such as “boys will be looking for women and if they can’t find ‘em they’ll rape ‘em,” were ACTUALLY SAID (or quoted in the newspaper). Also, the scene where Burt Reynolds’ character pulls Dom DeLuise’s character’s toupee off happened in real life, when the sheriff (T.J. Flournoy) attacked Zindler while the cameras were rolling. Flournoy destroyed the film, but the audio was left intact to prove it happened. So the “Chicken Ranch” (yes, as the play/movie says, they took poultry as “cash” during the Great Depression) was real. And that led me down a rabbit hole of ill-repute into some of the more famous brothels in America. I read Polly Adler’s autobiography about her “parlor houses” in New York City during the Roaring 20s, where she had politicians, actors, singers, and gangsters (such as Dutch Schultz) as frequent guests. As you probably know, they call prostitution “the world’s oldest profession,” to the point where the late, great humorist Erma Bombeck titled one of her books Motherhood: the Second Oldest Profession. It’s been delicately and not-so-delicately handled in books, movies, TV shows, and music. In the Bible Rahab was a “harlot;” while the euphemism in the 19th century for prostitutes was “soiled dove.” And all of this led me to Mary Todd Lincoln’s house in Lexington, Kentucky. Yes, that Mary Todd Lincoln. Abe’s wife. Our 16th First Lady. Mary Todd was born in Lexington, which is about 80 miles from the rural area where Abraham Lincoln was born. The Todd family was well-to-do and slave owners. (There were two kinds of slave owners in those days: people who regarded their “slaves” as “staff,” and people who regarded their “slaves” as “animals.” The Todd family was reportedly in the former category.) In 1832 they moved into a large house on Main Street in Lexington. After the Todds passed away the house changed ownership a number of times. One of those owners was Jennie Hill, who operated a brothel at the house that once had the future president of the United States as a guest. Belle Brezing was one of the “workers” at the brothel. She moved on to create quite a reputation for herself as a madam…so much so that the character Belle Watling in Gone With the Wind has repeatedly been reported to be based on her. Brezing was famously called the keeper of “the most orderly of disorderly houses.” Wow, whodathunkit?? Kentucky and Mary Todd Lincoln having a connection with “the world’s oldest profession”!! A brief story from WHAS-11’s (Louisville) “Great Day Live” about Belle Brezing. The screen grab is a mirror from Brezing’s brothel.