A book about the rich, the stars, the politicians, and the mobsters who used the services of the creator of the call girl concept, whose real name was Fernande Grudel
"She was probably the most notable successful woman in France since Coco Chanel," described William Stadiem, author of her biography. "She came out of nowhere and created a business. Basically, she invented the call girl. She was the Steve Jobs of S-." She had grown up in the city of Anger, the daughter of a small merchant from the train station; she had arrived in Paris in the 1950s and worked as a prostitute.
Until, in 1957, under the pseudonym Madame Claude, she began managing the work of other prostitutes in what would become the most exclusive luxury brothel in the world.
"Madame Claude thought, 'Why would someone go out looking for girls if they can just call me?'" the author of Madame Claude: Her Secret World of Pleasure, Privilege & Power told Fox News. the secret of pleasure, privilege, and power).
"She pioneered the concept of the call girl and became very, very rich in the process," summarized the Vanity Fair journalist, who is also the author of Marilyn Monroe Confidential, Mister S, a reconstruction of Frank Sinatra's glory days, and Money wood, a chronicle of money in Hollywood in the 1980s.
"If a powerful businessman came to town and felt alone in his hotel, he could call the concierge, and that person would call Madame Claude. Then she would arrange a meeting," he recounted. This was the case of President John Fitzerald Kennedy, who according to the pimp wanted to be with a prostitute very similar to his wife, but with a more evident S- dimension.
"Rothschild, Mountbatten, Agnelli, Ford, Onassis, Pahlavi, Salud, Sinatra, Brando": those last names, she listed in her book, stood out among the clientele of her biography. "She also flew her girls all over the world to meet the rich and famous. She became known as the ultimate French experience in luxury romance," the author added.
In her student years in Paris, Stadiem had heard of her. "It was as French as the Eiffel Tower. A date with a 'Claude girl,' as they were known, was one of the pinnacles of the Parisian experience, like staying at the Ritz or eating at Maxim's or wearing a Lanvin suit", wrote.
The swans—as the woman, whose real name was Fernande Grudet, called them—were very different from other prostitutes in her place and her time. They were very tall, very thin, and very glamorous, like supermodels; they had an education that allowed them to pass as daughters of the upper class. The teeth, the skin, and the hair had to be perfect; It is said that on some occasions she demanded that her employees —there were 400 of them— undergo plastic surgery. They were her objects: her wares.
"Empowerment or exploitation? That is the question," Stadiem wrote. "None of the women I spoke to for this book among those who worked for Madame Claude said that she had been exploited." She then cited a dialogue she had with her cardiologist about the "French paradox": why the French eats fat, flour, and sugar and don't get fat like Americans. "You don't see those who died," the doctor told him.
None of them spoke out against her, none of them went to her funeral either. When Madame Claude died, she was fired by five hairdressers. Neither did her daughter attend.
"If the measure of a person's power is the magnitude and breadth of the secrets they hold, then Madame Claude was without a doubt one of the most powerful people in the world in 1981 when I met her in Los Angeles," Stadiem narrated.
"Between 1957 and 1977 Madame Claude had been the officious Lady of the Republic of the old guard regimes, the governments of Charles de Gaulle and his successor, Georges Pompidou; the one in charge of satisfying the S- whims of leaders, members of royalty, moguls and world stars. His connection to Hollywood and his collection of celebrity clients had caused him to move to the West Coast. Despite the blandishments of Beverly Hills, the sun and the stars, his loyal stars, when I met the elegant French Queen of S-, seemed dispirited by her exile as Napoleon in Saint Helena".
Gruden had left France in 1977 accused of having evaded taxes on millions of dollars of unreported income. Amid Giscard d'Estaing's campaign against prostitution, she denounced a political witch hunt and packed her bags. She was already a legend: a Just Jaeckin film, The French Woman, reconstructed her story that year.
"Claude hated the p-word," the biographer noted. "He vehemently maintained that his famous clientele didn't pay for S-: they paid for an experience, a show. Claude was not in the seedy business of putting bodies on beds. His was the exclusive business of making the dreams of the biggest dreamers come true. of the world".
In Beverly Hills, near the Hollywood dream factory, he received the journalist for months and told him some of the secrets of his clients, that is, of the world's great names. Stadium wanted to convince her to write a book "about those names and about those lives, and also about the lives of the Cinderellas for whom she played the role of the most extravagant Fairy Godmother that ever lived."
After several months of talking to her, feeling her almost her friend, Stadiem was met with a surprise: "Without prior warning, Madame Claude did what is known as a French exit: she disappeared without a trace and without saying goodbye. ".
Grudet's high profile in Hollywood had drawn the attention of French tax authorities and US immigration authorities. She retired to a cattle ranch in the South Pacific. And in 1985, with François Mitterrand in power, he returned to France, to his sheep farm. It was a mistake: she was taken from her and taken to prison, not once but twice. She finally retired on the Riviera. "I was never able to reconnect with her," wrote the biographer, "She died in Nice in 2015. She was 92 years old. She had seen it all, she had done it all."
She was left, however, with a huge number of stories, which she poured into this recent post. Kennedy "loved women, he had a hard time not loving them," Madame Claude told him, for example. And Sinatra was not a seducer, he did not play romance: "Most men wanted a relationship with girls, and they had them. Frank had a job, he sang, and that always came first."
The most difficult client she ever had, according to her biography, was Marlon Brando. "He always liked very exotic women. That's why he moved to Tahiti," Stadiem told Fox. "And S- didn't interest him too much. He liked to talk to girls about the inequalities in the world. That was his idea of seduction: convince them of all the things in the world that were wrong and that had to be fixed. They had to be open to change and be very liberal."
Madame Claude was a reckless person, according to her biographer. "She combined the courtesy of a lady from Avenue Foch with the cold blood of a Mafia boss. Claude knew exactly the weakness of the male flesh. He had satisfied the flesh of rulers, despots, dictators, arms dealers, owners of immense and lethal power".
And, above all, he was a walking contradiction. "She was attracted to the aristocracy of the old world and at the same time the mafia hooked her," Stadiem closed her epilogue. "Her genius was the ability to play both scenarios. She could be a tremendous snob, an insufferable elitist, but those are typically French character traits, a heritage from the days of Marie Antoinette. Madame Claude's flaws can be traced to the fact that she was a poor girl in an aristocracy struggling to become a democracy.
