Madam, 91, says JFK and Onassis visited her brothel
Paris – She was the most celebrated brothel-keeper in modern French history, revered by the rich and powerful and feared by women who worked for her.
Now, Madame Claude’s influence has been underlined by the claim that John F Kennedy, Muammar Gaddafi and the Shah of Iran were among her clients.
Their names were revealed by William Stadiem, the biographer, who interviewed her in the 1980s for a book that was never published.
Stadiem said she had told him that Rex Harrison and Marlon Brando, the actors, Gianni Agnelli, the head of Fiat, and Moshe Dayan, the Israeli statesman, also frequented her estab- lishment in Paris.
The claims have added further lustre to the aura surrounding Claude in France, where she is on first-name terms with many cabi- net ministers from the 1960s and 1970s.
Born Fernande Grudet in Angers, west France, she was educated at a Roman Catholic school, but became a prostitute in Paris after World War II. Ambitious and determined, she adopted the name Madame Claude when she opened her first brothel in the 1950s, and then moved to prestigious premises near the Champs-Elysees.
Her stroke of genius was to bring to French high society a system whereby clients booked an appointment with prostitutes over the telephone, giving rise to the term ‘‘call girls’’.
Although she has never before revealed the names of her clients, they have long been known to have included illustrious figures.
Now the full extent of her success has been made public by Stadiem, who drew upon his con- versation with her for an article in this month’s edition of Vanity Fair.
She told him that JFK had once asked for a prostitute who resembled Jackie, his wife – ‘‘but hot’’. Jackie Kennedy’s second husband, Aristotle Onassis, was also a client, according to Claude. He would arrive with Maria Callas, the opera singer, who was then his lover. They voiced ‘‘depraved requests that made Claude blush’’, according to Stadiem.
Claude told the biographer that Agnelli had once taken a group of people to Mass after an orgy at her establishment. Marc Chagall, the painter, offered prostitutes sketches of themselves after enjoying their company.
She has often been depicted as despotic and that image was reinforced by Francoise Fabian, the actress who starred in a 1977 film about her life, entitled Madame Claude. ‘‘She despised men and women alike. Men were wallets. Women were holes,’’ Fabian said.
She fled France in 1977 when officials launched a tax inquiry into her business. She moved to California, but returned home a decade later to face a three-year jail sentence. Now aged 91, she lives on the French Riviera.
‘‘There are two things people will always pay for, food and sex. I wasn’t any good at cooking,’’ she told Stadiem. Claude, however, is said to have hated sex.