The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington

Lynn Redgrave is real-life Madam Xaviera Hollander in the big-screen adaptation of her best-selling memoir. Spurned by her mama's-boy fiancé after moving to New York, the free-thinking Dutch woman falls into a whole new career combining business with pleasure as a high-class call girl and an independent businesswoman with an exclusive clientele. It's quite a time capsule, not all that erotic but plenty colorful and packed full of familiar faces in naughty roles: Jean-Pierre Aumont, Tom Poston, Nicholas Pryor, Conrad Janis, Richard Lynch, Mason Adams and Anita Morris. The R-rated feature became a mainstream hit and spawned two sequels, each with a new Xaviera. Joey Heatherton takes the title role in "The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington" (1977), co-starring George Hamilton, Ray Walston, Jack Carter, and Joe E. Ross; and Martine Beswick headlines "The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood" (1980), with Adam West, Richard Deacon and Phil Silvers. All three films in a two-disc set, or you can get "The Happy Hooker" separately.