Who was Madame Claude, famous pimp? – West France

Fact and Fiction

On clippings, it’s a little blonde with big horn-rimmed glasses, short hair, silk blouses and impeccably knotted lavaliere collar.

On the big screen, in the Madame Claude Just Jaeckin (1977), she is camped by the Imperial Françoise Fabian. The soundtrack is signed Serge Gainsbourg, class

Back on the life of one of the most famous “mothers madams.” – She would have hated the expression – of the last century

. A childhood Angevin

Before calling “Claude”, she was born Fernande Grudet, July 6, 1923 in Angers. His mother comes from a modest background. His father runs a street Diderot sells sandwiches and coffee to the station to supplement his income. Fernande has not seen his older sister, Josephine, died in 1924 at the age of 19 years.

The girl received an excellent Catholic education Jeanne-d’Arc institution and to ‘Immaculate Conception.Le father succumbed to cancer in 1941. larynx Fernande 18 years.

Making a living

Fernande is a single mother, “daughter mother” as we said at then, with contempt. She moved to Paris, a string of odd jobs, prostitute themselves.

In the late 1950s, she created her first luxury prostitution ring at 32, rue Boulainvilliers in the sixteenth arrondissement. She later officiate at 11, rue Saint-Gilles, in the Marais district.

The call girls System

The brothels have been closed since the law of 1946. Mrs. Claude therefore does not take a brothel. The whole system is based on his address book and phone. It connects clients and daughters. They are “call girls”, especially not whores, assures Madame Claude, “revolted by this word degrading”. She maintains schedules, sheets. The pass is trading up to 1000 francs or more. Madame Claude pocketed at least 25% of earnings. Business wise woman, she files the same brand, so no one abuses his name!

In 1975, the “impresario” call girls would have received a percentage in three years, in 1631 trysts, the IRS estimates between 100,000 and 140,000 francs a month.

The “herd” is composed of beautiful girls she wants (she imposes surgeries aesthetics), cultivated preferably at current events, discrete and available.

Many girls were converted into models, actresses, entrepreneurs, etc. Many were bourgeois rows by marrying wealthy clients

worldly Gratin

Customers are rich and often famous. Politicians, artists, diplomats, industrialists, but also police and spooks. Mention the names of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the Shah of Iran, Giovanni Agnelli (founder of Fiat), Marlon Brando …

It does not reveal the name of the French. At the police and intelligence services, it refile probably sometimes pipes and information, which ensures relative tranquility.

trials and jail

In 1975, the wheel turned. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing is the head of state and Michel Poniatowski, Minister of the Interior.

Judge Bruguière began to dismantle the network. The tax authorities demanded 11 million francs (2.1 million euros) to Madame Claude. She fled to Las Vegas.

She returned to France in 1985. In late December, she is arrested in his house in the Lot, close to that of her friend Françoise Sagan to Carjac. Upon conviction, is serving four months in jail.

“retirement planning”, it goes up a call-girl network. Plunges. In 1992, she was convicted of aggravated procuring to three years in prison, thirty months suspended, and a fine of one million francs. Back at the prison in Fleury-Merogis.

Past recomposed

Untangle right from wrong? In 1975 appears “Hello yes or the Memoirs of Madame Claude ‘, written by Jacques Quoirez, brother of Sagan. In 1994, she published “Madam,” an autobiography she signed “Claude Grudet”. Madame Claude also gave interviews on radio and television, including in 1992 to promote her seduction tips on video tape.

We are not obliged to believe what she said. She fantasized heavily fictionalized and his past. Yes, she had a daughter, married twice. No, she was not born into a wealthy family, has never been deported to the Ravensbrueck camp has not had three brothers.

End of Life

She had settled in the south. Le Point announced that she died Saturday at a hospital in Nice, at the age of 92 years.