The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld (28 page)

With the scrutiny comes a feeling of loss, perhaps a loss of innocence, when cheap operations promote sex and pornography, and call girls, alone and vulnerable, work the streets, and houses like Norma’s—opulent and protected places to conduct rites of passage—are gone. It’s as if only the outsider, the tourist, can see the city as it once was: read or hear the myths and legends; wander the streets to see where the stories happened; witness Sin City on six blocks of Bourbon Street. If you come to town and expect it, you will find it. Because even with New Orleans as shut down as it has ever been, the residents are still more tolerant than in most places, and they revel in the past; they have a boastful attitude about New Orleans and a belief that it is, indeed, a wicked city.

“I look back on it all and wonder how I ever did it,” Norma said, “but in those days there was so much going on, so much excitement, things happened and you lived with it. Running a house was always a strain, always trouble. But it was never dull. I used to wake up around noon and have my coffee and wonder what this night will bring.

“Things are so different now in the French Quarter. I don’t like the idea of the hippies lying around on the sidewalk. I saw one the other day exposing everything. I remember the time a man peed in my alley and they took him down and fined him fifty dollars. The other day, they were peeing right in front of us in Jackson Square. I don’t like that. But I don’t actually object to the hippies, because I understand their way of life. They don’t want to wind up with a two-car garage and struggling for thirty years with the mortgage on the house. I understand how they feel.

“And girls were more beautiful then than they are now. Maybe it was because they knew how to wear clothes. Girls have typed themselves now, with long hair, miniskirts, and blue jeans. In those days girls all had individuality, because they wore their hair differently, dressed differently, and they loved to dress.

“As for abolishing prostitution—what’s better, to have a nice, clean, sanitary house, or what is going on in the Quarter today, fornicating in the square, parks, everywhere for everybody to see? And don’t think for a minute that every man who visited a house was only interested in a quick screw. Many of them desperately craved companionship. In some cases, houses took the strain off marriages. I know for a fact that some women were glad to be let off sexual obligations. Just because a man goes discreetly to a house doesn’t mean the marriage is shattered.

“But the women 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 bossy broads will sure send her a lot of customers.

“And as dirty, crummy as the French Quarter is today, I still love it. I loved it then because it was good to me; it represented a life I enjoyed. I was very happy there all those years. Yes, it’s dirty and people knock it, and when people knock it, it hurts me.

“The Quarter, you don’t know what it does to me. When I’m there and I have to leave it, I feel a lump comes here . . .

“Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but every now and then around about seven in the evening, that bell rings in my head. I still miss the action.

“You know, in another life, under other circumstances, I might have been a captain of industry. What the hell—maybe I was.”

Bibliographical Note

The most important source for the writing of
The Last Madam
was Norma Wallace’s memoirs, which she taped during the last two years of her life. Being able to hear her voice, her laugh, her inflections, and her accent gave me a sense of the woman that added aspects of her personality and emotional depth that otherwise would have been missing from my story of her life.

The profiles of Norma Wallace by Clint Bolton (
New Orleans
,
June 1972) and Howard Jacobs (
The Times-Picayune
, June 30 and July 1, 1974) were invaluable addenda to the memoirs. Bolton’s article gave a telling glimpse of Wallace’s early life, and the original draft of his interview with her provided additional material. Jacobs, in his inimitable style, covered Wallace’s working life and love life concisely and comically, and he elicited some of her most colorful quotes.

Louis Andrew Vyhanck’s dissertation,
The Seamier Side of Life: Criminal Activity in New Orleans During the 1920s
(Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1979), animated the era and the street life of the city during Norma Wallace’s first working decade, and enhanced her descriptions enormously.

Other vivid writing about that era was done by John Magill, a curator at the Historic New Orleans Collection, in two essays, “Welcome
Old Man Gloom,” about Prohibition in old New Orleans, which was legend for its consumption of alcohol, and “The Dance Craze,” about the city’s obsession with the dance that named the infamous Tango Belt. Both essays appeared in
The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly
(vol. 6, no. 3, Summer 1988; and vol. 10, no. 4, Fall 1992, respectively).

Rosemary James’s articles about Pershing Gervais and Jim Garrison, which appeared in
New Orleans
magazine during the 1970s, and
Figaro,
a New Orleans weekly published in the seventies, brought to life two New Orleans characters who acted on the city and changed it, as well as the course of Norma Wallace’s life.

J. A. Walker’s nostalgic story, “Gaspar Gulotta—The Little Mayor of Bourbon Street” (
New Orleans,
May 1971), gave a lively look at the nightclub proprietor and cigar-smoking brother of prizefighter Pete Herman, and offered a tantalizing excerpt from the Special Citizens Investigating Committee report. The fourth volume of the report,
Prostitution
(April 1954), the transcriptions of the testimony linking police to prostitution, showed the close connections between the law and “the life” and was filled with vivid details and events.

Political works that informed the writing of this book were Edward Haas’s important book,
DeLesseps S. Morrison and the Image of Reform: New Orleans Politics, 1946–1961
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1974), a compelling and highly readable portrait of the man and his times;
Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes: Women and Politics in New Orleans, 1920–1963
by Pamela Tyler (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), which shows the influence and power of women—in politics, in New Orleans, in the world; and Garry Boulard’s
Huey Long Invades New Orleans: The Siege of a City, 1934–36
(Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing, 1998), a superb look at the Kingfish, both the man and the politician, and an evocative portrait of the city in the thirties.

Other essential reading included Al Rose’s indispensable and classic work,
Storyville, New Orleans
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1974); Herbert Asbury’s
The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936), an imaginative rendering of crime and street life in New Orleans before Storyville; Robert Tallant’s descriptive look at life and people in this
unique city,
The Romantic New Orleanians
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1950); and Mel Leavitt’s
A Short History of New Orleans
(San Francisco: Lexikos, 1982), a deft and delightful chronicle of the city.

To these writers and their masterful works, I am deeply indebted.

Acknowledgments

Many people gave freely of their time and memories while I was writing this book. Wayne Bernard’s account of his life with Norma Wallace was essential, as was the belief of his wife, Jean, that Norma’s story should be told. I thank them and the following people, who told their stories about Norma and her times: Sam Adams, Johnny and Pat Badon, Frank Bertucci, Major Albert Cromp, John H. Datri, Francis Davis, Marie Delouise, Richard “Jack” Dempsey, Pete Fountain, Robert Norman Frey, Charles Gennaro, Joseph I. Giarrusso, Sarah Huff, Rosemary James, Captain J. D. Jarrell, Edgar McGeehee, Nick Macheca, Sandy Margiotta, Rose Mary Miorana (who generously lent me the letters Norma wrote to her as well), Helen Moran, Paul Nazar, Barbara Price, Alice Regan, J. Cornelius Rathborne III, Suzanne Robbins, Earl and Elise Rolling, Janice Roussel, Sidney Scallan, Earl Scramuzza, Patsy Sims, Frederick Soulé, and Kathryn Swartwood.

Many thanks to Elaine Newton, who was a skip tracer in a former life and located many people who had been friends and associates of Norma. Her role as detective played a large part in uncovering and demystifying the story of Norma Wallace.

Thanks, also, to Marion Tanner, Nancy Gore, and Noah Robert, who helped find the writer.

Others whose help with finding secondary sources, locating information, and making connections was invaluable are Allain C. Andry III, Phil Anselmo, Joe Arrigo, Bob Bass, Jason Berry, Tony Buonagura, Chris Bynum, Nancy Dibelka, Susan Finch, Frank Gagnard, Beverly Gianna (Director of Public Relations, The New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau), Betty Guillaud, Leonard Gurvich, Rudolph Holzer, Hillary Irvin, Scott Jefferson, Allen Johnson, Mary Allen Johnson, Regina Kramer (curator of the Phil Harris-Alice Faye Collection in Linton, Indiana), Steve Lacy, Susan Larson, Melanie McKay, Valerie Martin, Chief Jimmy Miller, Randy Moses, Lester Otillio, Earl Perry, Diana Pinckley, John Pope, Joann Price, Lee Pryor, Bryce Reveley, Gail Ruddock, Tom Rushing, Julie Smith, Jack Stewart, Ronnie Virgets, Charles Watson, Lanier Watson, and Helen Wisdom.

I would also like to thank the Historic New Orleans Collection, especially curator John Magill and reference librarian Pamela Arceneaux; the New Orleans Public Library, especially Wayne Everard and Irene Wainwright in the Louisiana Division, and the librarians at the Nix branch; and the Tulane University Library, especially Joan G. Caldwell, head of the Louisiana Collection.

A very special thanks to my researcher extraordinaire, Noel A. Ponthieux, who also acted as a detective and got the goods on the elusive madam, her associates, and her adversaries.

Others to whom I am indebted for seeing this book through are my editor, Paul Elie, who set me free; Dan Weaver, who took a chance; and my agent, Jonathan Dolger, who knew.

I am very appreciative of the cheering section, otherwise known as my daughter, Marigny Pecot, and most of all, I thank my husband, Joe Pecot, who listened.