Regarding Polly Adler

THE JOHN O'HARA SOCIETY

Polly Adler was a well-known New York whorehouse madam in the twenties and thirties.

From a July 9, 1963 letter to William Maxwell:

Two things I never did; I never visited the Statue of Liberty, and I never patronized Polly Adler's. I knew Polly Adler; she was a noisy bore, who looked like Mike Romanoff in drag. I once had an interesting conversation about her with Lee Francis, who was the leading madam in Hollywood, and Miss Francis told me that Polly was no lady and out in public you gotta act like a lady in this business.
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In the sixties I was a frequent guest (not a patron) in an apartment I learned many years later had once been Polly Adler's.

Robert Saliba
rsaliba@aol.com