Pretty Woman, the Julia Roberts movie disneyfied prostitution, with a happy-ever-after ending which was repeated decades earlier by girls of Madame Claude, infamous as the most powerful and exclusive pimp in the world. Her indentured employees were famed for their beauty and sophistication, trained like geishas to fit into elite social circles and often sent for plastic surgery. Netflix is now showing an original French film about the procuress whom JFK, Marlon Brando, Charles de Gaulle and the Shah of Iran amongst many others turned to for their illicit escorts who could mingle with duchesses and never be spotted and some even made it up the altar.
Her client list allegedly spanned kings, presidents, government ministers, ambassadors, and leaders of industry and at her peak she even became an agent of the French state and worked for the CIA in a ‘morale-boosting’ operation. When public distaste for state use of high-level prostitution surfaced she was finally done for tax evasion. Despite subsequent skirmishes with the law she evaded prison time.
One of her girls said she hated men. ‘She used them strictly to make money and saw them as nothing more than wallets.’ Another likened her to a ‘slave driver on a plantation in the American South.’ She took 30% of their fees as well as any monies spent on their improvement. At her peak she had 200 girls on her books and was charging $5000 a day for their services.
Born 6 July 1923 9am Angers, France, her earlier years are wreathed in mystery though it was hardly a comfortable or reassuring childhood. She had her Aries Moon in the 8th opposition Saturn in the financial 2nd squaring onto a controlling Sun Pluto in Cancer – not a bundle of compassion, for sure – ego-centric, dominating, cold, hard.
Her Sun Pluto was also in a self-protective Water Grand Trine to Jupiter in money-making Scorpio trine Uranus, formed into a Kite with Uranus (on cusp of 8th house of sexuality) opposition the Virgo North Node – so definitely out of step with the conventional morals of the society. She also had Mars in Cancer trine Uranus. A Water Grand Trine can be healing but it can also be a fantasist, locked into its own bubble of reality.
She also had a Yod of Saturn sextile Neptune inconjunct Uranus – which would certainly mark her out for a unique path in life. She would be rebellious, wilful, a trailblazer, uncaring about convention, even lawless. Evidently she is credited with having created the term ‘call girl’ since her clients had to book by telephone.
She had a daughter who she sent back to be raised by her mother and barely knew.
Sun Pluto in Cancer tied into Saturn and the Moon has echoes of the worst kind of Terrible Mother ever.