Horizontal Collaboration: The Erotic World of Paris, 1920-1946

228 Pages·2015·74.025 MB·English

by  Mel Gordon

AT LAST, here’s the companion
volume to Mel Gordon’s highly praised
pictorial history Voluptuous Panic:
The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin.
Horizontal Collaboration is the
first English-language narrative that
focuses on Paris’ expansive sexual life.
Divided into ten chapters, this exotic
book features the Erotic Liberation
following the Armistice, Flapperism in
the Jazz-Age Era, Montmartre Enter­
tainments, Legal Brothels and Pros­
titution, Sex Tourism, Gay Culture,
Erotomania, Wartime Collaboration
during the German Occupation, and
Postwar Retribution against Vichy
period collaborators.
Lushly illustrated with rare illust­
rations and photographs, you’ll see
the French aesthetic of sex and
horror become even less inhibited
under Nazi rule during World War II,
and why many houses of prostitution
were immediately shut down follow­
ing the end of the war.
Once again, author Gordon has
evoked the forgotten and neglected
particulars of a remarkable, contro­
versial time.

DEDICATED TO
MY PARTNER, BIJOU O'KEEFE.
Greatly appreciated was assistance from the wisest and bravest of cultural warriors:
Christophe Bourseiller, Nicole Canet, Alexandre Dupouy, Nina Hartley, Ira Levine, and Jean-Marie Pradier.
Horizontal Collaboration © 2015 Mel Gordon & Feral House. All Rights Reserved.
Feral House: 1240 W. Sims Way *124, Port Townsend, WA 98368. feralhouse.com
Printed in Korea. 10 987654321
Page 1: Brassai, Prostitute Playing Billiards at a Boîte on Boulevard Rochechouart, 1932
H O R IZ O N T A L
C O lU B O ItA T IO N
THE ERO TIC WORLD OF PARISr
1920-1946
HEL CORDON

PRErÀCE...... 7
CHAPTER ONE
P4RI8 P LÂ I8IR 8...... 11
CHAPTER TWO
PARI8 18 A WOMAN: COCOTTE8,
GARÇ0NNE8, AND POLLE8......37
CHAPTER THREE
THE rLE8l1POT8 OE MONTMARTRE
AND LE8 I1ALLE8......55
CHAPTER FOUR
M AI80N8 CL08E8:
THE 8I1LTTERED M O L8E8...... 73
CHAPTER FIVE
8TA0INQ PARI8: NI0nTCLLB8, M L8IC HALL8,
AND TOLRI8T TR A P8...... 103
CHAPTER SIX
GAY PAREE...... 125
CHAPTER SEVEN
EROTOMANIA...... 149
CHAPTER EIGHT
rilTLER’8 BR0TI1EL AND LIBÉRATION...... 167
CHAPTER NINE
MADAM RICHARD’8 CRL8ADE...... 189
DIRECTORY OE NALGEITY PARI8:
TEIIR TYI10T8P0T8......198
BIBLIOGRAPEIY......214

On December 4'^, 2007, a ten-story-tall “X” beamed across
one of the towering façades of the Bibliothèque Nationale
de France. The elegantly designed fuchsia-pink letter stood
for Pornography. It signaled the inauguration of an exhibition
devoted to the hidden erotic archive in the French nation­
al library. This celebrated collection, formerly restricted to
reputable scholars of French culture and erotica, was known
as LEnferde la Bibliothèque, or the Library’s Cabinet of Hell.
Dignitaries, politicians, and academics quaffed Champagne as
they viewed the forbidden art and publications that spanned
two-and-a-half centuries. The BnF bookstore shelves sagged
with oversized reprints of formerly banned literary antholo­
gies and obscene pictorial albums. Thin red curtains comically
shielded the most explicit items.
Over the next three months, tens of thousands of Parisians
paid ten euros to gawk at the shockingly transgressive imagery
and licentious silent film clips that the Bibliothèque placed in
glass cases or projected across framed movie screens. Only in
Paris, local journalists enthused, would this massive display of
antiquated and contemporary pornography be considered an authentic cultural above: Cover of LEnfer de la
phenomenon and expression of the city’s not so secretive past and proud no- Bibliothèque Catalog (2007)
holds-barred distinctiveness. opposite: Vald'Es. "Dawn in
For the most part, the municipal show was a salute to Erotic Paris and its Montmartre and He Thinks
That Still He Can Remember
aesthetization of all things sexual that reached an apogee during the 1920s
His Name!” 1930
and 1930s. Suddenly the discarded prurient junk and naughty ephemera
from back-alley Montmartre and beyond were accorded a place of honor in