 Appointments Phone Sessions Biography My Life Book Cops & Robbers Photo Album The Artist Dear Dolores Poetry News/Events Politics Articles By Dolores Quotes Excerpts On Film Special Friends Resources Links Home  
|
As you read Dear Dolores each week, and perhaps see her face in the back of this paper advertising an "articulate fetish mistress," it would be a normal assumption to think that she is just in this biz for money. Or to think that what she professes in her column is just an act. Im here to tell you that this couldn't be farther from the truth. Dolores French, to those who know her, is a caring, nuturing and bullheadedly strong individual. When times are easy, she is a simple pleasure to talk to. Aways full of sarcastic witticisms, with a seemingly endless vault of stories to tell. When times get tougher, however, Dolores turns up the heat. Just last month she was up for two days straight helping two friends straighten out a legal cluster-fuck that somehow landed them in the City of Atlanta's Pretrial Detention Center. All in a weeks work for her. So the next time you read her column, or just see her face gracing the page of The Scene, take a minute to know that the woman she presents to you in print is real, and there is even more to Dolores French than she could ever put in a half page column. That is why we love Dolores French. CONFESSIONS OF A TALK SHOW PIMP Atlanta Magazine article It must be October. The days are shorter: the leaves are turning: Oprah, Phil, Sally and Geraldo are leaving messages on my answering service. Fall sweeps are about to begin, and tabloid talk-show producers are frantically trying to line up guests for the November rating period. And why are they calling me? Because I'm "America's most notorious prostitute" {I didn't say that, the Journal-Constitution did}, an author (Working: My Life as a Prostitute) sometime spokesperson for the sex industry. I've done shows from coast to coast in this country and throughout the world. I've become something of a professional guest. But my career doesn't stop there. No, no, no! I've also become a media pimp, a.k.a. a guest booking agent. No doubt you've seen some of my handiwork. Last fall, the Donahue show with the guys who had sex-change operations so they could be in lesbian relationships? My idea. And on Geraldo, sex workers and their hubbies and housewife hookers? My guests. Since sex, (along with surgery and illness) as a topic always guarantees a big audience, I am in particular demand during the rating periods that come four times a year in February, May, July and November, when the Nielsen service calculates the number of viewers each network program has. Each quarter-hour segment of a show is also rated and in some cases rates are recalculated minute to minute. This information is then used to determine the advertising rates for each show, thousands of dollars for a spot on Geraldo or Oprah. We're talking money, lots of it. But these rates also reveal a great deal about us, the viewers, that is at least as bizarre as the sexually-abused-crackhead-child-star-who-grew-up-to-become-a-tattooed-priest-to-nun-transsexual-lesbian-hooker whom we all couldn't get enough of during last spring's sweeps. A television executive who asked to remain anonymous confides, "It's sick but true: Most American viewers, according to the ratings, are horny, bloodthirsty, vicarious pedophiles who want to lose weight and get face lifts, and they just love those Vietnamese potbellied pigs!" Stuart Krasnow, a producer with A Closer Look, counters with, "You know what it really is? People want to know what it's like to experience other people's lives. The average person doesn't really want to meet a serial killer face-to-face, but at a safe distance they are curious to find out what makes someone do such horrible things. Maybe they [the viewers] could never be prostitutes themselves, but you can give them a little glimpse of what it might be like if they were." I met Stuart when he was working on the Joan Rivers Show and put together a segment on professional talk-show guests. The lesbian nun, Rosemary Curb, and the working prostitute, yours truly, were in the pole position. We had done the most talk shows. Then there was Susan Mason, the 450-pound model, and Chili Pepper, the transvestite from Chicago. Altogether we had made thousands of TV appearances. For me, it all started with the Donahue show. It was 1982, and the producer was Darlene Hayes. You never forget your first sex, your first divorce, your first arrest or your first talk show. My friend Margo St. James, the ex-hooker from San Francisco and founder of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), had recommended me to Darlene, who explained that they were trying to put together a show on prostitution. If I was willing to do the show, they would give me another name, put me behind a screen and disguise my voice. And pay my expenses. "If you're going to do all that, what's the point in having me come all the way to Chicago?" I wanted to know. I suggested she just drag some vagrants in off the street or hire acting students and have them pretend to be prostitutes. I wasn't sure I wanted to do Donahue at all, but if I did, I wasn't going to be donning a disguise or sitting behind a screen. At that point, no one had ever gone on TV, used her own name, shown her face and acknowledged that she was a working prostitute. This would be a first. "It's going to affect the rest of your life," Margo counseled. "It isn't something you can take back. Once you do it, it'll be the biggest decision of your life." "Figure out what, if anything, will make you feel good about doing it, no matter how badly the show turns out," my friend, the writer Paul Krassner advised me. That was easy: MONEY! Moneymoneymoneymoneymoney.... Darlene collected me from O'Hare Airport in a black stretch Cadillac limousine with a fully stocked bar, telephone and TV. "The other guests aren't getting paid as much as you, so let's keep your fee just between us," Darlene confided en route. She checked me into the Mayfair Regent Chicago on East Lake Shore Drive. "I want you to be comfortable, so order anything you like from room service. Le Ciel Bleu is a wonderful restaurant on the top floor. Either way, you won't even have to leave the hotel." My suite had five phones; the one in the bathroom was right beside the television. I could live here, I thought. In years to come, I would learn to beware of strangers bearing limousines, and understand that all of this fine treatment is called "segment control". Hundreds of thousands of dollars are riding on each of these shows. The cost of airline tickets, limos, elegant hotel suites and a couple of luscious meals at Le Ciel Bleu is in consequential. It's a flush form of captivity. The producer knows exactly where the guest is at all times. Perhaps the parole board should take a cue. Right up to the time we went on the air, Darlene kept saying, "If at any time you decide you don't want to do this, you can back out." As I was being miked she said, "You're doing something brave and important, but you don't have to do it, or you don't have to do it right now." When she handed me the envelope bulging with greenbacks (the appearance fee, by the way, is always referred to as "compensation for lost wages") Darlene again offered to silhouette me. "Women in this business have had to live in shadows for too long; I'm ready to step out into the light," I said. Let the stoning begin, I thought. I was terrified. Because I was paid in cash right before we went on the air, the only place I had to stick this big wad of bills was in my underwear. If you ever see an old clip of that show and notice me shifting from cheek to cheek, you'll know it's because all those presidents were pinching my posterior. Mary, one of those hookers who had opted for a shadow silhouette and the voice distortion, had brought her daughter along. Despite Mary's instruction to keep her daughter in the green room to watch the show on a monitor, one of the Donuhue staff members stuck the kid in the audience. A woman sitting on the aisle, whom Mary later speculated was a plant, stood up and announced, on camera, that the little girl sitting next to her was the daughter of one of those prostitutes. Mary burst into tears, overcome by the stress of the situation. "How could anyone allow her child to sit here and watch her mother tell the whole world she's a prostitute?" became the theme of the show. Darlene seemed sympathetic and apologized to Mary and her daughter, but that couldn't erase what had happened. Mary cried through lunch; she cried when we went shopping. When I saw Mary and her daughter off at the airport, she was still crying. She boarded the plane with her daughter and there ended her TV talk-show career. But for me that was just the beginning. Margo was right; my life would never be the same again. That was 10 years, five dogs, one husband, one autobiography and a couple of thousand interviews ago. Believe it or not, that first Donohue show was not the worst experience of my life. To be perfectly honest, it's hard to decide which of my media nightmares was the worst. Streetwalking in New York in sub-freezing weather with a miniskirted Sally Jessy Raphael - trailed by her camera crew - in the middle of the night is right up there, but it would be hard to top my adventure with the Miles Silverburg From Hell - type producer, on a local LA talk show a few years ago. Around 6 a.m., I'm escorted from a silver Buick limousine into a Beverly Hills television studio. In the green room, a swashbuckling Miles springs to his feet. En garde! Armed with a clipboard, wielding a ballpoint pen, he urges, "Coffee? Croissants? Quiche?" (Hollywood studios always have a huge catered spread of California cuisine - fresh fruit, yogeurt, croissants and an assortment of mineral water. In contrast, New York green rooms are stuffed with jelly donuts, Cokes, coffee and Cremora.) I ask for a Perrier. The Silverberg wannabe hustles me through hair and makeup. "You give grrr-reat phone," he tells me. "That's the kind of energy I want on the air. Are you sure you don't need some coffee?" I admit that I'm not as perky at 6 in the morning as I am once I really wake up, say around noon. Besides that, LA is my last stop on what Erma Bombeck referred to as "a death march," or book promotion tour. So I explain, "This is my 14th city in 17 days. I have six other appearances to make today. The last one is a late-night radio show. I have to conserve energy between interviews." "Right! Of course! You're a pro. I'm not worried. Save yourself for 'on air', and I'll give you the scoop. We'll show your book over your intro; that will give you about seven more seconds to take your place on the set and relax. You'll already be miked; three more seconds of applause, then you'll have somewhere between four and eight minutes to tell a couple of your best stories. Now, I know that's not much time, and I don't care what you say, but we are in a rating period, so, I want you to work into the interview the words orgasm, penis..." and two others that cannot be printed here, "which I know you'll have no problem doing." He checks off each word on his yellow legal pad. "Penis?" I question. "Oh sure, I've seen you do shows before. Nothing you say ever sounds dirty. The censors'll let it slide - and if they bleep it, so what? People can read lips," he shrugs and smiles. So I'm out there, live on this early morning coffee-in-the-kitchen set, looking into an audience of fresh-faced middle-American tourists - mommies, daddies, kiddies - most of them sunburned from yesterday's visit to Disneyland. It seems to me that it's just too early in the morning for "orgasm", even in California. And quite frankly, I don't want to shock or embarrass people. I don't want to force parents to give a facts-of-life lecture between stars on the Walk of Fame. Meanwhile, off camera, a student intern is waving a poster-size cue card at me with the fabulous four words - one of them misspelled - scrawled on it in huge letters. Right beside the intern is the producer miming like a maniac, "OOOoorgasm," dramatized by eye-popping, hair pulling and praying hands. This is very distracting. I can hardly do the interview. The more I try to ignore him, the worse he gets. I'm getting nervous that the audience is going to see what's written on the poster board. Lord knows they're trying to. The producer and the intern have become the show for everyone in the studio, including the host. Finally, I say, "Please excuse me, I feel that this is very unprofessional, but the producer wants me to work the words orgasm, penis, and...into the interview, but it just hasn't seemed appropriate. So there! You've heard the words. Now maybe we can move on to something else." The Silverberg clone feigns fainting, then in furious frustration he grabs the cue card and wrestles it into a wad. The host, appearing flustered, holds up my book, thanks me for being on, then moves on to a commercial break. Needless to say, I can't get out of there fast enough. Blustering, sputtering and skipping right behind me is the producer. He follows me right through the studio, from the set into the green room, down the hall, down the stairs, past the security desk, out to the parking lot. Jeez, is he going to climb into the car with me? "My career is finished because of you! You'll never be on another program I'm producing again, ever!" he rages. Turning on my five-inch black patent-leather stiletto heels, I look down into his glazed eyes and say, "It's over, finished, and you! are! way! out! of! line! What makes you think I would want to ever again do a show produced by anyone as unstable as you, anyway?" "Me?" "Yeah, you. Take a look at yourself, Einstein," directing him to his maniacal reflection in the tinted limo windows. "Does that Werewolf-meets-the-Nutty-Professor image remind you of a sane character? Noooo! So please, take my card out of your Rolodex and tear it up! You'll find it under F for French, F-R-E-N-C-H, Dolores, and don't you ever call me again!" Silverberg is still adjusting his glasses and trying to tame his hair as the limousine whisks me away to the next studio, a different producer, another world. Because of my TV appearances and high profile, people feel pretty uninhibited about digging for juicy bits of bio. I'm often asked in a sneaky whisper, "What's the most bizarre thing you've ever done?" "TV talk-show sweeps." They snicker as if I'm joking. "But seriously, what's the kinkiest thing anyone's ever asked you to do?" "What a person perceives as kinky or weird, depends on personal experience. Cultural preconceptions are a consideration also," I psychobabble. "Well, let me ask you this: What's something you've been asked to do that you've just flat refused to do?" "The Morton Downey Jr Show." Actually, I didn't flat-out refuse. Like all self-respecting media whores and pimps, I had my price, and the producer knew it. "I could be inspired, " I said. "Just start calling off numbers and I'll tell you when one sounds good. Start with, say, $3,000; no, $5,000 sounds better already." "Five thousand DOLLARS?!" the producer gasps. "No, let me hear six..." Eventually, he agrees to take a figure in the tens of thousands to the senior producer. But he never called me back. Nearly everyone I meet says, "Didn't I see you on Oprah or Geraldo?" They seem to be the catchall representatives of Talk TV. Actually I've only been on Oprah once, and the show was a disaster. Oprah's producer called me late on a Tuesday afternoon asking me to tape the program Wednesday morning. "Wednesday, tomorrow?" I query. Yes, Wednesday. Out of the question, right? Wrong. "Oprah is one of the top-rated shows in America," my agent reminds me. So I'm off to Chicago in a rush. Normally, I do my own hair and makeup for television - ever since a drag-queen makeup artist did me up to look like an escaped extra from Sluts In Space for a talk show in Australia. I like to be camera-ready when I enter the studio. But this will be an exception. I figure I'll just grab my hot curlers and go and let Oprah's hair and cosmetic departments put me together before the show. I get checked into the Chicago hotel with just enough time to hang up my clothes and nap a few hours. Wednesday morning I suspect that something is amiss when the producer says I'll have to take a taxi, or better yet, "Just walk over to the studio - it's only a few blocks." By the time I hike those few blocks the Windy City has blown the hot curls right out of my hair. I have no makeup on, and I'm sweaty. The silk blouse and skirt my dry cleaner rushed through for me are now ready for a re-do. But I'm not worried; this is a big-time national program. The producer meets me on the other side of as elaborate a security system as I've ever seen - metal detectors, X-rays and physical searches. "You guys must have a really tough audience here," I joke. She says, "We've had some threats. You're the first guest to arrive so far." "Oh good, I'll go straight into the makeup department so they'll be finished with me before everyone else gets here." "We don't actually have a 'makeup department', " she says, as though these are pretentious words from another language. "No," to the hairstylist and wardrobe staff also. She deposits me in the barest green room I've ever been in my life and she disappears. During the next two hours I beg, borrow and steal bits of makeup from audience members in a dirty, dimly lit ladies room. The producer had told me the theme of the show would be "What Men Do When They Are Out Of Town," but now, as other guests arrive, she keeps running into the rest room to inform me of changes. The token psychotherapist author and I sit in the green room watching the first half of the show. One guest who travels because of his job says he was once thinking about having an affair with a co-worker. His wife found out. The Lord saved their marriage. Another guest believes her husband is having affairs; he says he's not. This is stimulating TV? What am I doing here? The audience is jam-packed with would-be Vanna White product demonstrators from a trade convention, all of whom pose their questions as though they are Miss America contestants - "My name is Mary Jane Creamcheese from Anytown, Ark. First, Oprah, I want to tell you how glad I am to be here in your studio audience today representing the Widgette Corporation...." By the time the therapist and I are ushered to our seats on the set, there is no semblance of a coherent topic of discussion. Oprah makes a last-ditch effort to corral a concept by asking me if, in my expert opinion, men behave differently when they are out of town. Figuring this is my one and only shot at drumming up some controversy, I say, "People often travel specifically for the purpose of seeking out activities and engaging in behavior, particularly behavior of a sexual nature, that is not simply illegal, but behavior they believe would be completely socially unacceptable to their peer group and taboo among their family members such as pedophilia, homosexuality, sado-masochism or bestiality." Nobody took the bait. Even "bestiality" couldn't save that show. The last time Oprah's producer called they wanted my husband, Michael Hauptman, and me to do a rags-to-riches "Pretty Woman" show. I said, "You haven't read the section of my book about how my husband and I met, have you? We were married at a hookers convention. I was not rescued from a life of degradation, nor have I been reformed the least little bit!" We did not appear on that show. I did do the Geraldo show in 1988, when my book came out, although I had to be talked into it: He's such a prostitute-basher. It took a series of phone calls to my agent and to Penny Price, Geraldo's producer. "You really can't say no to Geraldo," my agent said. "OK," I finally said to Penny, "but I can't guarantee that I won't jump up out of my seat and wrap the microphone cord around his neck and choke him." "Oh!? Would you?" Penny asked, excited. "I hope not. Why would you want me to? "Oh, we'd pull you off of him. We wouldn't let you hurt Geraldo. Walking onto a television set to do a talk show is like parachuting out of a perfectly good airplane into a flock of vultures. Your prevailing thought is just to try to stay alive for a few more seconds. You pray and you swear and you promise various deities and higher powers if you get through this show, you'll never do another one. A friend who was about to be on an interview show asked me for some advice. "You look so calm and clear-headed when I see you on TV. How do you do that? What's on your mind when you're dealing with all those obnoxious people?" "Survival. To simply be alive. I never think of the host or the audience members in negative terms. And I've never done a show without first doing the Buddhist chant, na mu myo ho ren ge kyo, which is asking to become one with the Universe. This is an instinctive survival reaction. I become one with each and every person who comments or asks a question. I know this sounds nuts, but after all the insanity that I've experienced in dealing with the whole television scene, for me it comes down to survival." I'm not alone in feeling this way. Rebecca Rand, a Minneapolis-St Paul massage parlor entrepreneur, tells a wild tale of her appearance on Sally Jessy Raphael: "Just before the show starts, the executive producer goes out to warm up the audience, which means he elicits the response he wants....If there are people in the audience who don't agree with him, he intimidates them into submission, so they're silent through the whole show. He went out into the audience saying, 'We've got some whores here for ya today! Whaddoya think of that?' By the time the show started," Rebecca frets, "they were like little pit bulls trained to kill. "The producer was incredibly manipulative. They kept telling us how they understood our case, how they wanted us to be able to get our point across. What a crock! About 10 minutes into the taping they held up a sign to the audience that read, 'Rebecca is a PIMP!' Now I realize that the whole show is designed just to have a confrontation, not to have anything worthwhile come out of it," Rebecca says with resigned frustration. "They call me a pimp! The only point to their existence is to turn a buck! I used to wonder where the media image of lying, thieving, low-life whores and violent child-snatching pimps came from," she laughs. "Now I know that it's based on the unscrupulous inner workings of their own industry." Now that Rebecca Rand has had her initiation by fire, would she subject herself to such an experience again? "Well sure! Now I know what to expect, so I figure I could handle it better next time," Rebecca says. Despite some of the less than kind comments made herein, I do understand the plight of producers caught up in sweeps. They're also thinking survival. Now that I've tried my hand at coordinating a few of these electronic circuses, as a booking agent, I've developed a lot of respect and compassion for good producers like Geraldo's Penny Price, Edward Glavin with Donahue, and Stuart Krasnow, who has become a dear friend. Last spring, I spent several days trying to pull together a show for Edward Glavin and Donahue. This one involved Rebecca Rand and some of the legal difficulties she's had. The authorities are even going after her daughter, a law student who never had anything to do with her mother's business; they've indicted her for racketeering, claiming she was living off illegal earnings. It took days of non-stop telephoning; but finally, I've got everyone - the guests, the producer, the host - right where I want them. Everything is set, and I'm feeling great, like Rocky on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I am even hearing the music. The phone rings me back to reality. It's Rebecca. Her daughter has finals and can't do the show on the 15th of the month, the day the Donahue show has scheduled it. "I break the news to Ed Glavin. "The kid is in the first year of law school, Edward," I explain. "She has finals." "We've already sent out the schedule listing," Edward screeches. "I'll take the tests...I'll buy the tests...I'll steal the test, Watergate-style...I'll do anything she wants; just name it," he pleads. "If she can't do the 15th, the next date open is the 23rd." "The 23rd! That'll work," I pounce. "No, the rating period will be over by then. This show will be of no value for our purpose by then." "Well, assuming you're still on the air, you will need to do a show that day." "Sure, we're not going to run bars and tone, but we're doing SEX every day of the rating period. As soon as sweeps are swept, sex shows are in the can; then we have to do something 'socially relevant.'" What next, you might be asking by now. What's left for tabloid TV? This fall I may be bringing "Women Who Pass For Male-To-Female Transsexuals," "Recession Sex Slaves," and "Inside A Hookers Convention" to a television screen near you. Deals are pending. And I think things will get even crazier. By the end of the decade, I predict that prostitution will leap from the world's oldest profession to the world's oldest confession. Blazing this trail last winter was born-again, sexually-abused child star/drug addict/prostitute Lauren Chapin, aka "Kitten" of Father Knows Best. I also predict that, within the next few seasons, a popular mainstream actor and actress will go all the way in a movie love scene. The actress will then appear on a talk show to debate pornography vs. art. With any luck, I'll be putting the show together. You know how one thing leads to another. Whatever craziness afflicts the airwaves, I've come to accept being right in the middle of it. I can't seem to avoid it. For instance, one of my talk-show guests has actually been charged with murdering her husband. (They appeared on a Geraldo summer sweeps show about sex workers and their significant others; the killing took place several weeks later - off camera, unfortunately.) At any rate, I soon found myself making a call to my producer friend: "Oh Stuart, a terrible thing has happened. One of my guests has just killed another of my guests." "Oh no, that's horrible." "You don't suppose we could put together a program on talk show guests who kill other talk show guests, do you?" Stay tuned. Dolores French is the author of Working: My Life As A Prostitute and was appointed by former Mayor Andrew Young to the city of Atlanta Task Force on Prostitution. |
