Texas Confidential. Michael Varhola
ranged upward to $2 for a visit with the most popular ones. And, while she was not willing to tolerate drinking by her own husband—or by the prostitutes who worked for her—Miss Hattie had no problems with her customers imbibing while they waited their turn with a girl, played cards, or chatted amongst each other.
Other girls who worked at the place over the years included Miss Juanita, whose job it was to sing, dance with, and otherwise platonically entertain the men while they were waiting for a girl; Miss Blue, who had everything from her wardrobe to her sheets in her namesake color and had the best room in the house, the only one with direct access to the bathroom; Miss Mabel, who worked at the brothel to support her husband while he recovered from tuberculosis and then moved back to New Mexico with him and the child she conceived by a customer; Miss Kitty, who eventually retired to a ranch left to her by an appreciative customer in his will (and whose descendants live on it to this day); Miss Rosie, whose room had a catwalk that would get used as an escape route during raids; and Miss Goldie, who eventually entertained just one particular client on condition that he remember her in his will and who had to work at the place into her thirties when he did not, becoming a flower seller when she was too old to turn tricks and eventually dying penniless.
Miss Hattie’s establishment continued to thrive throughout the era of Prohibition, when it became linked to other brothels, speakeasies, and dens of ill repute through a network of subterranean tunnels that ran throughout the entire Concho district. And, during World War II, airmen and soldiers from nearby Goodfellow Field (now Goodfellow Air Force Base) spent their paychecks at the well-known whorehouse.
While Miss Hattie’s operation was obviously illegal, it was also clearly well connected, and, even though it was periodically raided, locals joked that the police would come in the front door and the county judge would run out the back. In 1952, however—some years after Miss Hattie herself had retired from the establishment—the decidedly unhumorous Texas Rangers finally raided the bordello and shut it down for good.
Miss Juanita once used this parlor to entertain visitors to the brothel with music, dancing, and socializing while they were waiting for their turns with the various working girls.
Even after it ceased to operate as brothel, and a new generation of residents forgot that it had even been one, 18 Concho Street continued to be known as “Miss Hattie’s Building.” In the decades after the girls left, it was variously empty, a sporting goods store, and an antique shop.
Then, in the early 1990s, its new owner discovered many of the original furnishings from Miss Hattie’s stored in the upper rooms of the building and, upon investigation, learned what the place had been used for. They put some considerable effort into researching the history of the place and its inhabitants, restored it as best as they were able to its original appearance, and then opened it as a museum (the lower level, in keeping with its tradition of being used for legitimate commerce, is today a jewelry store).
And so today, six decades after it was shut down, Miss Hattie’s is once again open to visitors—and, while they cannot enjoy the house in quite the same way as customers did back then, they can get a glimpse of what one of San Angelo’s most popular and prosperous businesses was like in its heyday.
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Porno, Texas Style
WHEN THEY SAY EVERYTHING IS bigger in Texas, sometimes they are talking about various naughty bits. Dozens of well-known pornographic actresses and actors have hailed from the Lone Star State, and some of these have had stories that were particularly sordid or interesting.
The Bedeviled Chloe Jones (June 17, 1975–June 4, 2005)
In her short life, Chloe Jones’s greatest claim to fame might be having received $15,000 for performing oral sex on actor Charlie Sheen, something she alleged in a 2005 interview—which, according to some, may have led to her demise.
Born Melinda Dee Jones on June 17, 1975, the blue-eyed blonde was raised about one hundred miles northeast of Houston in the town of Silsbee. After her father was killed in a 1982 traffic accident, she and her two sisters were exposed to the various perverts her mother shacked up with. By the time she was fourteen, she had been committed multiple times and experimented with acid, part of the chronic drug and alcohol abuse that would eventually ravage her from the inside out and lead to her untimely death.
Melinda eventually grew up into a disturbed but voluptuous, 5-foot 6-inch, 116-pound, 36D-22-32 young woman. In 1991, the sultry sixteen-year-old married a young Marine and made a go at a normal life, something that lasted about two years, until she started stripping and he filed for divorce.
Her career took off after that and she appeared in a several magazines, both nude and otherwise, including mainstream Vanity Fair, Hustler, Swank, Playboy on numerous occasions and, in April 1994, as the Penthouse “Pet of the Month.” Around this time she married again—a nightclub manager named Michael Taylor—and had three children, a girl, Chloe, in 1996 (apparently by a man other than her husband), and twin boys, Austin and Tristan, in 1997.
In 2001, the industrious Jones kicked it up a notch and moved into the pornographic film industry, where she soon became relatively well known, signed contracts with two production companies, and acquired a professional reputation for being “difficult” and a prescription drug abuser. Three years of that was all Jones could handle and—also affected, perhaps, by her waning health—in 2004 she announced her retirement from the adult entertainment industry. At that point she had performed in eighteen films.
Jones apparently continued to trade on her looks and reputation, however, and to supplement her livelihood as an “escort” for men willing and able to pay a premium for sex. According to a March 2005 interview with the National Enquirer, these included Sheen, who she claimed to have fellated for a whopping fifteen grand in January 2005.
Jones, however, did not last too long after that and died just three months later, in June 2005 at age twenty-nine, with cause of death attributed to liver failure inflicted by an addiction to Vicodin and a lifetime of heavy drug and alcohol abuse. She was interred at Woodlawn Garden of Memories in Houston.
Less than a year later, in May 2006, the supermarket tabloid the Globe published an alleged interview with Jones’s mother that quoted her as saying Sheen had made death threats against the starlet, had played a role in her death, and that she was considering filing a wrongful death suit against the actor. What is known for sure is that Donna Jones Noeller filed a lawsuit against the Globe, insisting she had never actually been interviewed and that her statements had been manufactured.
But the damage was done and some people believed the story—including, apparently, Sheen’s wife, actress Denise Richards, who cited the actor’s failure to deny any involvement in Jones’ death as her basis for obtaining a restraining order against him.
The Devil in Georgina Spelvin (March 1, 1936)
Not every Texas porn star is a train wreck waiting to happen, and some have managed to pace themselves and retire and go on to relatively normal lives after long and prosperous careers. One of these is certainly Georgina Spelvin, best known for her leading role in the 1973 classic The Devil in Miss Jones, widely considered to have significant artistic merit and be one of the best pornographic films ever made.
Born Michelle Graham in Houston on March 1, 1936, the future actress was struck by polio as a child but managed to gain enough mobility to train as a dancer and develop into a 5-foot 5-inch, 118-pound, 35-24-36, brown-haired, brown-eyed woman. She moved to New York City in the 1950s, where she started off as a chorus girl and was thereafter featured in Broadway productions of Guys and Dolls, Sweet Charity, and The Pajama Game. She made the transition to pornography in 1957 with The Twilight Girls (aka, Les Collegiennes), a soft-core lesbian movie.
“I wanted to be an opera singer but my voice wasn’t good enough…. My second choice was ballerina. After that, it was a series of compromises.”
“At first, I wanted to be an opera singer but my voice wasn’t good enough,”