Remembering Polly Adler

Every so often there will be a "scandal" when a prostitution ring gets busted. And while sex always sells, the media goes especially nuts when the ring in question turns out to have been run by a woman.

Back in the 1980s, there was the Mayflower Madam, Sydney Biddle Barrows, a lady with a distinguished pedigree (private schools, good jobs in the legit world, a descendant of the Mayflower passengers). More recently there was Kirsten Davis, the ridiculous character whose agency was involved in the Spitzer scandal back in 2008.

New York City has always produced eccentric characters doing weird, fascinating, and sometimes illegal things -- so it's no surprise that our madams are equally colorful.

But perhaps the most colorful of madam in NYC history was Polly Adler. Born a Jew in Russia in 1900, her family sent her to Massachusetts to live with relatives so she could avoid the horrible, state sanctioned anti-Semitic pogroms. After growing up, she moved to NYC and opened her first brothel near Columbia University. Her establishment became the best in the business, the most popular brothel in town. She had to turn away clients and woman who wanted to work for her, the demand was so high. She would get busted every so often -- and then went right back to work. Her clients included the powerful columnist Walter Winchell, Mayor Jimmy Walker, a soon-to-be famous singer named Desi Arnez. Polly even became personal friends with the famous writer and notorious wit Dorothy Parker.

And yet it wasn't the law that was Polly's most formiddable enemy -- it was the mob. Shakedowns, violence, and an unending stream of threats put her life in perpetual danger. Eventually she went to jail and finally quit the business in the 1940s, moving to Los Angeles, writing a book about her life, and dying in 1962 -- at age 62.

Polly Adler was a denizen of another age, another NYC. Her life was one of glamour and danger, of excitement and pain. She had an amazing life -- just one that I don't think any of us would ever really want to live ourselves.