Maxine

By Joe David Rice

It’s not every day an infamous operator of an Arkansas bordello releases her autobiography, but that’s what happened in 1983 when Maxine Temple Jones published Maxine – Call Me Madame. Being a clever, witty, and thoughtful brother, I purchased a copy for my younger sister who’d just finished graduate school and moved to DC for a job, inscribing it thusly: “To Robbi – with best wishes for a working girl.” I’m not sure she appreciated my attempt at humor. But during the 1940s through the early 1970s, thousands of eager men appreciated Maxine and her comely colleagues.

Although born in the southeast Arkansas community of Johnsville, Maxine got her start “in the rackets,” as she put it, in Paris. Paris, Texas, that is. After high school she moved to that east Texas town to clerk in a department store for $10 a week. Betty, a female associate who always had plenty of cash, offered to reveal her secret for earning extra money on the weekends. Betty was in the hotel room when Maxine entertained her first customer, demonstrating “how to examine a man to make sure he was okay.” With her “taste for fancy, beautiful things,” Maxine had found her calling, earning $20 a trick. “Money was what I wanted more than anything else in the world,” she wrote, “and I knew I’d found the quickest, easiest way to get it.”

Maxine moved to Texarkana where she became a full-time practitioner of the world’s oldest profession. When World War II broke out, she enlisted in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps and was stationed at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, DC. At the war’s end, Maxine returned to her previous line of work in Texarkana for a couple of years, but in 1948 she relocated about 115 miles northeast to Hot Springs, finding employment in a house of prostitution on Prospect Street. A shrewd manager of her money, Maxine saved enough to buy the business in 1950 for $1,000 and made the leap from labor to management. A shiny new Cadillac soon followed.

Hot Springs had evolved into a wide-open town following the war, perfect for Maxine’s entrepreneurial ambitions. Like the casino oper- ators, she paid city officials a monthly “amusement tax” to look the other way. Business was so good that Maxine soon purchased a large two-story building on Palm Street for $15,000 and opened her second house which she dubbed The Mansion. Her bedridden beauties, some of whom went on to become leading ladies in Hollywood, got $150 to $200 to share their talents. The clientele ranged from successful businessmen (among them organized crime members from both coasts) to prominent politicians – federal judges, the state’s attorney general, and well-known members of Congress. It wasn’t unusual for Maxine to clear $5,000 a night.

But Maxine’s success led to problems. Her amusement taxes went up and up and local law enforcement agents periodically raided her establishments under the pretense of cleaning up the city. And then Maxine got on the wrong side of the mob, a situation which seriously complicated her life. Following her arrest and conviction on prostitution charges in 1963, she served time in Cummins Penitentiary. Later, after providing information on illegal gambling in Hot Springs to federal authorities, she received a full pardon from Governor Winthrop Rockefeller and moved back to Hot Springs.

At some point Maxine decided to write her memoirs, noting “I want people to know the truth about this town I live in.” Her original manuscript identified hundreds of customers and corrupt officials – to include a long list of preeminent politicians. Envisioning a flood of injunctions and lawsuits, her publisher persuaded Maxine to substitute false names to protect the guilty.

While Hot Springs native Bill Clinton didn’t appear in Maxine’s autobiography, she’s mentioned in his. He recalled that during his adolescent days, he and his friends would get on the telephone and call her place time after time, tying up the line. Agitated by the resulting inconvenience to her clientele, Maxine roundly cursed the young pranksters.

Maxine Temple Jones died at the age of 81 in a nursing home in Warren on April 15, 1997.

Joe David Rice, former tourism director of Arkansas Parks and Tourism, has written Arkansas Backstories, a delightful book of short stories from A through Z that introduces readers to the state's lesser-known aspects. Rice's goal is to help readers acknowledge that Arkansas is a unique and fascinating combination of land and people – one to be proud of and one certainly worth sharing.

Each month, AY will share one of the 165 distinctive essays. We hope these stories will give you a new appreciation for this geographically compact but delightfully complex place we call home. These Arkansas Backstories columns appear courtesy of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at the Central Arkansas Library System. The essays have been collected and published by Butler Center Books in a two-volume set, both of which are now available to purchase at Amazon and the University of Arkansas Press.