Xaviera Hollander

Xaviera Hollander
Xaviera Hollander by Alan Mercer (2008)
Born	Vera de Vries June 15, 1943 (1943-06-15) (age 68) Soerabaja, Dutch East Indies
Citizenship	Netherlands
Website
www.xavierahollander.com

Xaviera Hollander (born 15 June 1943) is a former call girl, madam, and memoirist. She is best known for her best-selling memoir The Happy Hooker: My Own Story (1971).

Biography

Hollander was born Vera de Vries in Soerabaja, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), to a Dutch Jewish father and a French-German mother. She spent the first two years of her life in a Japanese internment camp.^[1]

In her early 20s, she left Amsterdam for Johannesburg, South Africa, where her stepsister lived. There she met and became engaged to Carl Gordon, an American economist. When the engagement was broken off, she left South Africa for New York.^[2]

In 1968, she left her job as the 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 called the Vertical Whorehouse and soon became New York City's leading madam. In 1971, she was arrested for prostitution by New York police and was forced to leave the U.S.^[3]

In 1971 Hollander published a memoir, The Happy Hooker: My Own Story, that she co-authored with Robin Moore and Yvonne Dunleavy.^[2] The book was notable for its frankness by the standards of the time, and is considered a landmark of positive writing about sex. Hollander details in the book her life as a liberal and open-minded girl. She states 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 has since written 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 called Call Me Madam. For several years in the 1970s Hollander lived in Toronto, where she married a Canadian antique dealer and was a regular fixture in the downtown core.

In the early 1970s, she recorded a primarily spoken-word album titled Xaviera! for the Canadian GRT Records label (GRT 9230-1033), on which she discussed her philosophy regarding sex and prostitution, sang a cover version of The Beatles song, "Michelle", and recorded several simulated sexual encounters, including an example of phone sex, a threesome, and a celebrity encounter with guest "vocal" by Ronnie Hawkins. In 1975 she starred in the somewhat autobiographical My Pleasure is My Business. For the past seven years she has been operating Xaviera's Happy House, a bed and breakfast within her Amsterdam home.

Hollander says she "turned gay" around 1997, establishing a long-term relationship with a woman named Dia.^[1] In January 2007 she married a Dutch man 10 years her junior, Philip de Haan, in Amsterdam.

Films

Hollander has been portrayed in film:

• The Happy Hooker (1975) by Lynn Redgrave
• The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington (1977) by Joey Heatherton
• The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood (1980) by Martine Beswick
• "The Best Part of a Man" 1975 by Artistae Stiftung

And she appears in:

• My Pleasure is my Business (1975) by Al Waxman at the Internet Movie Database
• Xaviera Hollander, the Happy Hooker: Portrait of a Sexual Revolutionary (2008) by Robert Dunlap at the Internet Movie Database

Bibliography

Non-fiction

• The Happy Hooker: My Own Story. Sphere Books. 1971. ISBN 0900735139. 
• Letters to the Happy Hooker. New York: Warner Paperback Library. 1973. ISBN 0446782777. 
• Xaviera!: Her Continuing Adventures. New York: Warner Paperback Library. 1973. 
• Xaviera Goes Wild. New York: Warner Paperback Library. 1974. 
• Xaviera on the Best Part of a Man. New York: New American Library. 1975. 
• Xaviera Meets Marilyn Chambers. New York: Warner Paperback Library. 1976. 
• Xaviera's Supersex: Her Personal Techniques for Total Lovemaking. New York: New American Library. 1976. 

• Xaviera's Fantastic Sex. New York: New American Library. 1978. ISBN 0451151046. 

• Xaviera's Magic Mushrooms. Sevenoaks, Kent: New English Library. 1981. ISBN 0450050645. 
• The Inner Circle. London: Granada. 1983. 
• Fiesta of the Flesh. London: Panther. 1984. ISBN 0586061959. 
• The Best of Xaviera. Sydney: Horwitz Grahame. 1985. ISBN 0725518413. 
• Knights in the Garden of Spain. London: Grafton. 1988. ISBN 0586074325. 
• Child No More: A Memoir. New York: ReganBooks. 2002. ISBN 0060014172. 
• The Happy Hooker's Guide to Mind-Blowing Sex: 69 Orgasmic Ways to Pleasure a Woman. New York: Skyhorse Pub. 2008. ISBN 1602392404. 

Fiction

• Lucinda, My Lovely. Henley-on-Thames. 1983. ISBN 9780856281181. 
• Lucinda: Hot Nights on Xanthos. Henley on Thames. 1984. ISBN 0856281298. "(Originally published 1983)" 
• Erotic Enterprises Inc. Henley-on-Thames: Ellis. 1985. ISBN 0856281425. 
• Happily Hooked. Panther. 1985. ISBN 0586063994. 
• The Erotic Adventures of Sandra. 1986. 
• The Kiss of the Serpent. Grafton. 1987. ISBN 0586070400. 
• Yours Fatally!: Book One of the Golden Phallus of Osiris Trilogy. London. 1987. ISBN 0586070397. 
• Let's Get Moving. Grafton. 1988. ISBN 0586074317. 
• Prisoner of the Firebird. Grafton. 1988. ISBN 0586070419. 
• Lucinda and Other Lovelies. Ellis. 1990. ISBN 0856281980. "Collects Lucinda, My Lovely; Lucinda: Hot Nights on Xanthos; and Erotic Enterprises Inc." 

References

External links

• Xaviera Hollander at the Internet Movie Database
• Official website