Edna Milton Chadwell, who has died aged 84, was the last madam of the Chicken Ranch, the bordello that inspired the musical and film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
The Chicken Ranch served the men of La Grange — a town of several thousand people between the Texan cities of Houston and Austin — from 1915 to 1973. The establishment had got its name during the Depression, when clients who had no money paid for the girls’ services in farm produce, notably with chickens which were then used for egg production. It was said to be the oldest operating brothel in America when, in August 1973, it was closed down as a result of an exposé on Houston’s KTRK-TV by the investigative journalist Marvin Zindler.
Zindler reported that in two days he had counted 484 men entering the nondescript premises, which contained 11 bedrooms, and ventured that there might be links to organised crime. “It’s illegal to operate a house of prostitution in Texas,” he told his viewers. “And past history shows they cannot function without someone in authority protecting them.”
Within days of the broadcast, the Governor of Texas, Dolph Briscoe, was demanding action. TJ Flournoy, the sherriff of Fayette County, had no option but to comply — although one suspects that he would have preferred to leave well alone. Flournoy had established a good working relationship with Edna Milton, and declared: “[The Chicken Ranch] never caused no trouble round here. No fights or dope or nothin’. I ain’t never got no complaints.”
The brothel apparently enjoyed a roaring trade among local businessmen and students from the University of Texas and Texas A and M; it is even said that a nearby military base laid on a helicopter to ferry soldiers to and from their trysts. “We weren’t ostracised one bit,” Edna Milton claimed. “It was just as if I had a grocery store or an office or a restaurant.”
The business was listed as “Edna’s Ranch Boarding House”. She was careful to shop with all the town’s merchants in turn; paid her taxes promptly; and contributed to local charities and the Little League baseball team. Illegal drugs and pimps were not tolerated at the brothel, and clients who were drunk were refused entry.
Later recalling the afternoon when the police arrived to close her down, Edna Milton said: “I was still in my rollers. I heard this commotion outside and seen these cars and these cameras. I went outside [and] told ’em they were gonna scare the customers away with their cameras and all. But then I found out what they were there for and I got mad.”
The Chicken Ranch quickly became a national news story, and the freelance journalist Larry L King wrote a piece for Playboy entitled “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”, which became the basis for the Broadway musical starring Carlin Glynn, Delores Hall and Henderson Forsythe. Edna Milton herself appeared in a non-speaking part as the original madam, and embarked on publicity tours (including one in Britain, when the show was later brought to the West End). The Broadway production opened in June 1978 at the 46th Street Theatre and ran for nearly 1,600 performances. In 1982 it was followed by the film, which starred Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds. The Chicken Ranch also inspired a famous song, La Grange, by the Texan rock band ZZ Top, released in 1973 on their album Tres Hombres.
One of 11 children, Edna Milton was born in Caddo County, Oklahoma, on January 3 1928. She married at the age of 16 (“only to get out of the house”), had a son who died in infancy and soon decided to leave her husband. Turning to prostitution to support herself, she worked in Houston and Fort Worth before arriving at the Chicken Ranch in La Grange in 1952.
At that time the madam was still Jessie Williams, who had run the place since opening for business during the First World War. But her health was beginning to fail, and within three years the chain-smoking Edna Milton had hung up her garters and taken over the managerial duties. In 1962, after “Miss Jessie’s” death, Edna bought the Chicken Ranch from Jessie’s heirs for $30,000.
After the demise of her brothel, Edna Milton married Clayton Chadwell and retired to obscurity in Phoenix, Arizona. Although she maintained that she never relished publicity, she often spoke of producing a book about her life as a madam — although only after the women who had worked at the Chicken Ranch had died.
Her nephew, Robert Kleffman, described her as “hard-nosed, but with a spine of steel and a heart of gold”.
Edna Milton had been injured in a car accident last October, and died of complications from her injuries.
Edna Milton Chadwell, born January 3 1928, died February 25 2012
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