Famous brothel keeper Claude takes sex secrets to grave

PARIS, Dec 25: In a small apartment in Nice in the South of France where she'd hidden herself away in her last years, 92-year-old Fernande Grudet died peacefully this week.

She took with her to the grave the extraordinary, shameful secrets of some of the richest and most famous men ever.

Better known as Madame Claude, she was the world's most exclusive brothel keeper whose clients included not only ambassadors, presidents, dukes, lords and Middle Eastern kings, but also actors Rex Harrison and Marlon, Henry Ford of Ford Motors, banker Elie de Rothschild, Lord Mountbatten, Fiat car boss Gianni Agnelli and John F Kennedy.
During the 60s and 70s she ran a stable of beautiful, cultured girls – many of whom went on to marry the very men who procured them.
The artist Marc Chagall gave the girls priceless sketches of their nude self, she revealed, as she considered a tell all biography to be written by William Stadiem.
Some of her clients had very specific if odd tastes. Kennedy asked for a woman who looked like his wife Jackie, but 'was hot'.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the man who would become Jackie's second husband, Aristotle Onassis, and his mistress, the opera singer Maria Callas, were also regulars, popping by with sexual requests so startling they made even Claude blush.

One senior French cabinet minister arrived with a briefcase full of peacock feathers.

Once safely upstairs in a room with a vast fireplace, he climbed onto the mantelpiece, popped a feather in his backside and, in a state of intense sexual excitement, started to shriek: 'Cock-a-doodle-doo!'

And she teased with tales of car magnate Gianni Agnelli taking a post orgy group to Mass and the Shah dispensing jewels as if they were sweets.
Her client list – and few would doubt its truth – was an oddball, eccentric one, that included Israeli military leader Moshe Dayan, actors Marlon Brando and Rex Harrison, countless politicians and police chiefs.

Madame Claude's chic 16th arrondissement Paris number was guaranteed to be in all the little black books of the day and jealously guarded by the elite of the time.
In her obituaries in the French press today, many referred to her as a 'proxénete' - or pimp.

But Claude wanted much more for her 'swans', as she called her girls. She enjoyed the thrill of seeing her 'jeunes filles' married off to titles, money and fame.
And she prided herself on providing a sophisticated service for often-jaded men who could buy anything and always needed new experiences.

Her swans were always tall and stunning - usually failed models or actresses and many are thought to have come from the then House of Christian Dior Couture. She preferred foreign girls, usually Scandinavian.

Some were part-time actresses, others beautiful middle-class students. There was a Normandy countess, a university professor, the daughter of a French Air Marshall, even a few bored wives.

Claude rarely recruited, although she had a few 'rabatteurs' (the word for the beater in a pheasant shoot) among her friends.

Mostly the girls found her by word of mouth. More than 20 a month came to her — and she'd choose just one.

The first test for suitability involved them emptying their bags over her desk and any clutter meant instant dismissal.
Then the inspection. First it was teeth, then hair and eyes until, finally, she'd tell them to strip.

Not, she always insisted, because she got a thrill out of looking at naked girls, but to check their reaction.

'A young girl, very sure of herself, very beautiful, tres bien, would say yes, and get undressed. Nothing to hide. Everything was perfect.'
Others would start more timidly.

'I would say, "maybe you should take off your bra" and I knew it wasn't going to be beautiful.'

The final hurdle was a night with one of Claude's essayeurs, or testers. These were friends who sampled the girls and reported back with helpful observations — 'good', 'useless' or 'worth educating'.

Before they went on 'escort duty', they were taught the rigorous rules of etiquette required by their 'buyers' who liked to show them off in public.
They spoke at least two languages, knew to eat asparagus with the left hand, fork only for fish and seafood and, of course, never add to a simple spoon of caviar.
Tutors instructed them in art and philosophy. Visits were arranged to art galleries to understand the culture of countries.

And, even more importantly, the many varied ways to please a man sexually. All had to be 'bien au lit'.
'With Madame Claude's swans,' one woman told Mailonline, 'We all turned a blind eye. It was, if you like, or should have been, simply a business transaction.
'I knew my husband would be returned to me in good condition, satisfied, happy and, usually, safely returned to me.

'Unfortunately many weren't, as these girls had everything and more.'
Their price was high and they got 70 per cent of it, as Claude, the astute businesswoman, believed they would cheat her if given less.

In 1977, the going rate was £200 for an afternoon, £400 for an evening (8pm to 2am), £666 for a whole day. Weekends were negotiable for the 400 girls on the books.
There was a rumour that the CIA hired Claude's girls to help boost morale during the Paris peace talks — intended to end the war in Vietnam — in 1973.
But just as those swans who disappeared into the highest echelons of society have remained mysterious, so, in many ways did Claude, only entering the public spotlight when caught by that other oldest profession – the taxman.

She fell foul in the 1970s of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the centre-right president who came in on a vow to clean up corruption and prostitution.
Targeted by the taxman for 11million francs (around £5 million) in unpaid tax, she opted for exile in the USA.
There, she set up a patisserie and started recruiting more swans, this time of all ages.

Joan Collins, in her 1997 memoir, Second Act, recalled a lunch encounter with a girlfriend and Claude in a Hollywood restaurant in the late 70s where they were propositioned.
'You two girls could do very well indeed,' said Claude. 'Your husbands don't have to know and I believe you could make enough money to buy yourselves a few little extra baubles.'
They, of course, turned her down.

But Los Angeles was not for her and she slipped back to France, spending four months in jail where she was allowed her own maid and a hairdresser.
Once released she returned to Paris and yet again tried to build up a stable of 'jeunes filles.' Her mistake was to tell one, who thought she was perfect, that she was overweight.
The girl became an informant, according to Stadiem, writing in Vanity Fair last year, and she was again convicted for pimping.
By now, a new generation were fascinated by this woman who held all the secrets of a louche, anything goes era.

A film, a documentary, even her own memoir, though, failed to tell the whole truth about Claude or reveal those secrets.
We know she was the second daughter of a bourgeois family from Angers and fled to Paris in the 50s when apparently she became in thrall to gangsters and began to work in the sex game.
She reinvented her background though, numerous times – as a member of the Resistance, as a concentration camp victim, as an aristocrat born in a chateau, but always she slipped through the net of truth.

A more likely alternative has her dad running a snack cart at Angers railway station and an early life on the back streets of Paris learning her trade the hard way. Though she did, apparently, have a concentration camp number tattooed onto her wrist.

However, the tiny, bird like, elegantly dressed Grudet did admit she found sex distasteful although she had a daughter whom she barely saw and latterly did not acknowledge.

She once said in explanation of her choice in life: 'There are two things that people will always pay for - food and sex.
'I wasn't any good at cooking.'

And yet, according to one of her friends, Sylvette Balland, spoken to by Stadiem, Claude told her: 'She told me that when she was 40 she looked at herself in the mirror and said, "Disgusting. People over 40 should not have sex".'
She always knew that only the really tall, good looking girls got the punters and she would never be top league.
In truth, Claude barely concealed her contempt for both client and swan. Françoise Fabian, the actress who starred in a 1977 film about her life, entitled Madame Claude said: 'She despised men and women alike. Men were wallets. Women were holes.'

For her it was all about control, and power and the hidden joy of pointing out her swans now married and on the arms of the world's most influential.
Those who knew her say she had a cold cruelty to those she'd 'made.'

She enjoyed nothing more than flicking through Vogue or Harpers to catch up on old employees: 'It makes me laugh when I see the photographs of the ladies and countesses in the social pages of Tatler, Harpers and Vogue and count up which ones started out working for me.'

Greek socialite Taki told Vanity Fair, as did many others, that Claude's girls may have started as her swans but many also used the experience and training to do very well for themselves.
'To say someone was a Claude girl is an honour, not a slur,' he said.

It's said at least two went on to successful Hollywood careers; three married aristocrats, one is the wife of a very well-known earl, another is married to an English captain of industry, several became top models — one married a famous musician.

Many of the men her girls serviced are now dead, so their names on Claude's 'books' with their preferences noted, are no longer quite as dangerous as they once were.

Many of the swans, though old now, will certainly be relieved that only they, and the men they met and married, will forever know that they were once a Claude girl.