Results tagged “history” from The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas

If you have an interest in reading and seeing things for yourself, this is the place to be!
While there are links scattered throughout the other blog posts, these here directly relate to wanting to read about "the best little whorehouse in Texas" for yourself.

Go on! Decide for yourself what happened way back in 1973!

Texas Monthly, October 1973. "Closing down LaGrange"
     This article is sentimental, but even-sided about the conflict between the town and Zindler. Good reference for local's comments on the events as well as cool photos.

Time Magazine, August 27, 1973. "House on the Range" Here.

This concise article has a great amount of information and quotes from locals/customers. Sensible and similar to what other Americans would have seen.

Palo Alto College's Small Town Archive Project's page on LaGrange
     Beautiful pictures of the city as well as several local anecdotes, including the Chicken Ranch story.

ABC-13 Eyewitness News, Sept 6, 2005, "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas"
Article by Marvin Zindler looking back at the events that transpired 25 years ago.
     Very interesting and full account of the story from his side, having no interest in the proceedings for the brothel. Specifically recounts all the input that the Texas State government had in the events.

The Handbook of Texas Online, article on the Chicken Ranch
     Summation of Chicken Ranch history up to and after its closing. Pulls largely from Jan Hutson's book on the brothel. The typical story used.

Review and Trailer of the 1983 documentary "The Chicken Ranch" by Nick Bromfield about the Nevadan brothel of the same name (the owners bought the rights).
     This is interesting because it features the attitudes of the working girls about their jobs in an era close to 1973.

YouTube playlist of Marvin Zindler: A Final Farewell, as broadcast on ABS-13 Eyewitness News.
     Part 4 contains information and footage! of  the Chicken Ranch, Flournoy, and Edna.
     Parts 2 and 7 are recommended as well. All parts are under 5 minutes in length.
    This commercial is worth checking out as well.

Cocktail waitress         (1970)   $120/wk            Dancer            (1972)   $350/wk    Housekeeper               (1970)   $80/wk             Truck Driver      (1974)   $14,000/yr

                       

Standard Job Salary                          1971                1972                1973         

Private industries, incl. farm labor    $8144/yr           $8634/yr           $9154/yr      

Domestics                                    $4159/yr           $4478/yr           $4833/yr       

Farm Labor                                   $3783/yr           $3900/yr           $4391/yr       

Federal Employees, Executive Depts.  $8995/yr     $10,331/yr         $11,003/yr     

The real man that the character of Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd is based on.
T.J. "Jim" Flourney, was elected sheriff of Fayette County in 1946 after being the chief deputy sheriff for former sheriff Will Lossein (who had a good relationship with Miss Jessie).
He had a direct line put in at the Chicken Ranch to make nightly calls in order to see if there was any suspicious behavior going on there that day. (This was in the tradition of Lossein's nightly visits to do the same)
Physically assaulted Marvin Zindler when he came to do a follow-up story in 1974, ripping off his toupee and breaking 2 ribs. Zindler sued for $3 million and they settled out of court. The townspeople raised a good deal of money for Flournoy's defense.
Flournoy resigned from office in 1980 due to the amount of publicty the Chicken Ranch story recieved (his wife was sick of hearing about it) and died in October of 1982.


Marvin Zindler writes about his confrontation with Flournoy in 1974:

Eighteen months after the Chicken Ranch closed, I went to La Grange to show that the business economy didn't suffer from the closing of the Chicken Ranch. But I never got to do that story. The sheriff broke my rib, ripped the film out of the camera, exposed it to the sun, but didn't know to destroy the audio track....

..."He began immediately to yell obscenities at Marvin and he began to punch Marvin," said Mark Vela, a former assistant DA. "He grabbed him and was beating his head up against the car door, the window. I was sitting in the back seat. At that point he grabbed (Marvin's) hairpiece. He was in a rage! (He) began waving the hairpiece around and threw it out in the middle of the street."

Houston attorney Richard "Racehorse" Haynes defended Sheriff Flournoy after I sued the sheriff.

Marvin discussed the case with Haynes years later. "Racehorse, you represented Sheriff Flournoy back then, almost 25 years ago when he broke my ribs."

"Well, now, you said he broke my ribs and you sued him. I'll assume he broke your ribs," allowed Haynes.

"Well, ok. I sued him. Was he upset with me?" "Marvin, he not only was upset with you, he was disturbed about it," recalled Haynes. "And I don't know if you knew this, but Sheriff Flournoy was a long-time law enforcement officer. You worked with him before. He knew you, you knew him. I don't know if you knew, though, he had seven notches on his pistol handle. And they were real notches, not put there just to ensure the grip, but they were there because he had dispatched seven citizens on the other end of that revolver. And here you are joining issues against him in his own venue by taking videotape of his courthouse. So& Plus, add that to what you'd already done to him by terminating a long-established best little whorehouse in Texas. "

We settled out of court and I donated the money to charity.

From the 1973 Texas Monthly article "Closing Down La Grange" :

Old Jim Flournoy looks like he leapt full-bodied from one of Bobby Seale's nightmare visions of a county sheriff, a pot-bellied, gun-totin', hulking incarnation of Frontier Justice. Slow-talking, in keeping with his thought patterns, Big Jim's style of dealing with the world is based largely on Threat, and is generally successful. His brother Mike, who is the sheriff over in Wharton County, has a reputation for carrying out his threats, but big Jim's never gone overboard with that sort of thing.

Like his predecessors, Big Jim was easily accommodated to the existence of the Chicken Ranch. Back in 1958 he'd even had a Hot Line installed to connect the Ranch and the Sheriff's Office, and he's one of the biggest defenders of its operations. "It's nevrah caused no trouble round here," he says, "no fights or dope or nothin. I ain't i nevrah got no complaints."...

...He goes on to tell you about the $10,000 that Edna contributed to the Hospital Building Fund, her other munificences, the economic benefits to the community, the low rate of venereal disease afforded by having county-inspected hookers on hand. As Larry Conners puts it, "He makes that whorehouse sound like a damn non-profit county recreational facility."

Most of Big Jim's arguments are pretty specious as well. His figures on rapes, VD, pregnancies and dope (all of which he says there are none of, excepting for niggers) are all bogus, and the $10,000 bequest about equals the annual take on the jukebox. As for the local impact, one local shopkeeper easily dismissed that: "They only got a payroll of a dozen out that. Now how much money you figure a dozen whores're gonna spend in this town?"

The Chicken Ranch was the longest continually operating brothel in the US, at 129 years

Going rate for services about time of closing: $15 for 15 minutes
More expensive options were added in the sixties when Miss Edna took over

Each girl would see 5 to 20 customers a day; for a $300/wk result after Edna took her cut

During 1972 investigation, State intelligence documented 484 persons entering the premises over the course of 2 days. If all of these are customers, and there are 16 girls, the result is over 15 customers per girl per day.

Est. 75% to Edna for taxes, insurance, utilities, food (two meals a day), weekly doctor visits, two attendants, maids, a cook, and laundry bills.

It has been estimated that the ranch had an income of more than $500,000 a year.

 All new employees were fingerprinted and photographed by Sheriff Flournoy before they could start. A criminal record of any kind prevented employment. Previous to this procedure, the sheriff would present the current state of the brothel to the Fayette County Grand Jury twice every year.

Many allegations that the Ranch helped to find criminals by learning of gossip and reporting suspicious characters or men that boasted of their deeds while drunk at night.

 

It's easy to look at the closing of the Chicken Ranch as the product of one man's moral crusade. This is not the case at all.
First, if you have explored any of the entries or links concerning Marvin Zindler, you already know that he was more inspired by the breaking of the law than the the law's moral content.
Second, it was the state government that wanted the 'bawdy house' closed even more than Zindler or the 'Jesus Bunch' did.

1972 - It all starts here when Texas State intelligence officers with the Department of Public Safety begin investigations about organized crime in Texas.

As a matter of course they investigate the Chicken Ranch, as well as another brothel ('The Wagon Wheel') in a neighboring county.

The filed report says that over the course of Nov 17 and 18, 1972, there were 484 persons entering the Ranch's premises. The estimated revenue of the brothel was 1.5 million dollars a year. Locals deny these figures.

Flornoy reportedly threatens the officers with a shotgun for investigating the Chicken Ranch

Because of the report linking the Chicken Ranch to an organized prostitution ring, the Texas Rangers ask Sheriff Flournoy to close the brothel.

Flournoy speaks to Colonel Spiers about this order. Spiers instructs Flournoy to close it for a short while due to the upcoming election.

The Chicken Ranch seemingly closes for a few weeks, but still accepts regular customers at the back door.

1973 - the Chicken Ranch issue resumes when the Texas Attorney General John Hill hears of the investigative report and continued operation of the Chicken Ranch.

Hill tells Fayette county District Attorney Oliver Kitzman to close the Chicken Ranch, showing him the report and figures.

Kitzman refuses, saying that its operation does not bother his constituients and therefore it does not bother him.

After the converstion with Kitzman ends, Hill resolves to have the media contacted about the Chicken Ranch and its abuses of the law.

A phone call is made to Marvin Zindler about this issue and he begins interviews and research.

Correspondent Larry Conners and photographer Frank Ambrose stake out the Chicken Ranch, getting footage of costomers, the girls, and general activity.

They see about 3 dozen customers enter in the space of about an hour.

They return to the Chicken Ranch the next day and Edna Milton comes out and asks them to leave, saying she runs a boarding house.

Zindler speaks to Kitzman, who says that he knew of its existance but had not closed it down due to a problem with law enforcement.

Zindler talks with Texas Governor Dolph Briscoe and gives him the investigative reports.

Briscoe says he will discuss this with the Attornoy General and get further information from the Dept. of Public Safety.

July 1973 - Zindler airs his report on ABC13 Eyewitness News, containing all the information he had gleaned.

August 1, 1973 - the Chicken Ranch has closed its doors for the last time, a week after the airing of the news program.

Governor Briscoe announces, "Colonel Spiers, I'm sure, has advised you that Sheriff Flournoy today advused the Department of Public Safety that in response to a call on Monday that the Chicken Ranch at La Grange is permanently closed."

August 2, 1973 - the Gov was to meet with Flournoy about the Chicken Ranch situation, but dismissed the meeting after hearing that the Ranch was already closed and the girls gone.

This is depressing for the people of La Grange, who have circulated a petition in support of the Chicken Ranch since the airing of the report.
Most of the town's 3,000 population had signed the petition, including mothers and wives.

Here is a guide to all of the historical characters mentioned in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas:

Dolly Parton
p26
Dolly Rebecca Parton (born January 19, 1946) is a Grammy Award-winning American singer-songwriter, author, actor and philanthropist, known for her prolific work in country music. In the 44 years since her national chart debut, she remains the most successful female artist in the history of country music. She is known for her distinctive mountain soprano, sometimes bawdy humor, flamboyant dress sense and voluptuous figure. (As well as being distinctive for large blonde hair in the 1970's.)


Johnny Carson
p79   
(1925-2005) Hosted NBC's The Tonight Show from 1962-1992. The remark that the Chicken Ranch story is either ridiculous because this was solely a local affair, or the issue would have been mentioned in Carson's opening monologue as a comment on the current news issues.
http://www.johnnycarson.com/carson/


Lawrence Welk
p43   
The Lawrence Welk Show begin in 1955 and ran until 1982. The show featured easy-listening music and a 'family' of wholesome performers. Though it was canceled by ABC in 1971, Welk lined up over 200 independent stations to form his own syndicated network. Very popular with all generation of viewers as an alternative to brash sitcoms.   
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/L/htmlL/lawrencewelk/lawrencewelk.htm


Teddy Roosevelt
p11   
(1858-1919) Lead the Rough Riders at charge of San Juan Hill. 26th President (1901-1909)


Matt Dillon (with a toothache)
p49   
Marshal Matt Dillon is a fictional character featured on both the radio and television versions of Gunsmoke. He serves as the U.S. Marshal of Dodge City, Kansas who works to preserve law and order in the western frontier of the 1870's. Radio series 1952-61, television series from 1955-1975


Mike Wallace
p44   
Famous broadcast journalist. Best known for work on 60 Minutes, which he has been with since 1968.    http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/W/htmlW/wallacemike/wallacemike.htm


Sam Houston
p60   
(1793-1863) Born VA, became Gov of TN, exited politics and moved to TX with some friends after living with the Cherokee for a few years. Became very involved in TX politics. His troupes secured TX independence from Mexico and he became the President of the Republic of TX. Continued to serve in various offices until the state seceded in 1861.    http://www.lsjunction.com/people/houston.htm


Tammy Wynette
p19  
(1942-1998) Famous county singer. Best known for her song "Stand By Your Man".   http://www.tammywynette.com/


Walter Cronkite
p44   
Born 1969. Broadcast journalist best known as an anchorman for CBS from 1950 to 1981. Once considered "most trusted figure" in American public life   
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/C/htmlC/cronkitewal/cronkitewal.htm


Will Rogers
p48   
1879-1935. Oklahoman Cherokee cowboy, known for his skill with a lasso (landing him in the Guinness Book of World Records) as well as his sharp wit. His acts became best known for his ingenious jokes as time went on. A 10th grade drop-out, he became a star in 71 films and several Broadway shows. He also wrote 6 books and over 4,000 syndicated newspaper columns.   
http://www.willrogers.com/    http://www.willrogers.org/wrbio.html