Xaviera Hollander
| Xaviera Hollander | |
|---|---|
Hollander by Alan Mercer (2008)
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| Born |
Vera de Vries 15 June 1943 Soerabaja, Dutch East Indies |
| Citizenship | Netherlands |
| Known for | The Happy Hooker: My Own Story |
| Website | www |
Xaviera Hollander (born 15 June 1943) is a former call girl, madam, and author. She came to be best known for her best-selling memoir The Happy Hooker: My Own Story.
Hollander was born Xaviera "Vera" de Vries in Soerabaja, Dutch East Indies, which later became part of present-day Indonesia, to a Dutch Jewish physician father and a mother of French and German descent. She spent the first three years of her life in a Japanese internment camp.
In her early 20s, she left Amsterdam for Johannesburg, where her stepsister lived. There she met and became engaged to John Weber, an American economist. When the engagement was broken off, she left South Africa for New York.
In 1968 she resigned from her job as secretary of the Dutch consulate in Manhattan to become a call girl, where she made $1,000 a night. A year later she opened her own brothel, the Vertical Whorehouse, and soon became New York City's leading madam. In 1971 she was arrested for prostitution by New York police and forced to leave the United States.
In 1971 Hollander published a memoir, The Happy Hooker: My Own Story. Robin Moore, who took Hollander's dictations of the book's contents, came up with the catchy title, while Yvonne Dunleavy either transcribed the book or ghostwrote it. The book was notable for its frankness by the standards of the time, and is considered a landmark of positive writing about sex. In the book Hollander detailed her life as an open-minded woman. She stated that during the start of her career, she did not ask for cash in exchange for sex, but her partners voluntarily gave her money and other presents.
Hollander later wrote a number of other books and produced plays in Amsterdam. Her latest book, Child No More, is the heartfelt story of losing her mother. For 35 years she wrote an advice column for Penthouse magazine entitled Call Me Madam.
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