What the Record Reported 50 Years Ago About Chicken Ranch’s Closure

Television Journalist Marvin Zindler once said that the Chicken Ranch brothel was never mentioned in the pages of the local newspaper during its more than century of operation outside La Grange.

While it rarely was, it’s closure 50 years ago this summer did get front page treatment in The Fayette County Record with both a story (including a quote from then-La Grange Journal newspaper publisher Lester Zapalac, saying ‘I think it’s all right’.) and an editorial. Here’s what those two stories from the Aug. 7, 1973 edition The Fayette County Record said: State, Local Officials on Record that Chicken Ranch Here Permanently Closed The thing that many people said would never happen (or at least vowed would not) happened last Tuesday night. The Chicken Ranch, La Grange’s far-famed whore house, was closed by order of Fayette County Sheriff T.J. Flournoy.

Flournoy, who told reporters he could accomplish this “with a phone call,” did so after a call from Texas Governor Dolph Briscoe requesting the house be closed.

How long it would remain closed was the big question by weekend, and the word from both local and state officials was “permanently.”

“It is permanently closed and that resolves the problem,” Gov. Briscoe told reporters in Austin last Thursday morning, adding that “the laws of this state must be enforced, period.”

His statements came after a scheduled meeting at his office on the matter failed to take place.

The Governor, Attorney General John Hill and Department of Public Safety Director Col. Wilson Spier were supposed to meet with Flournoy, Austin County Sheriff T. A. Maddox (a similar brothel has been operating for several years at Sealy), and District Attorney Oliver S. Kitzman, whose district embraces both counties.

The meeting was called off by Kitzman, who phoned the Governor’s office shortly before the 10 a.m. appointment time to say that the problem had been resolved with the closing of the two houses and that there was no point in meeting with Briscoe.

The Governor told newsmen afterward that, except for a continued Texas Department of Safety investigation of “where the money goes (went),” the matter had been settled.

Col. Spier, the state’s top lawman, said the DPS has had the La Grange house under scrutiny for two months but had come up with no evidence to show that it was linked with organized crime. Talk of such with respect to the Chicken Ranch, originating with a complaint from Houston television newsman Marvin Zindler, had been mainly responsible for the series of meetings and news stories leading to the crackdown.

“It depends on what you consider organized crime,” Spier asserted.

Following a meeting of the three state officials on Tuesday which led to the closures, Hill told newsmen: “We’re going to say to the local people, ‘We want the law enforced, and we want it now’... We all feel the laws of the state cannot be selectively enforced, You’ve got a situation where the law is not being enforced on a local level.”

The Attorney General was in Washington on Friday attending a meeting of the American Bar Association, but his special assistant, Elizabeth Levanto, told The Record that the La Grange brothel “will remain permanently closed… A quiet reopening will not take place.” She said, “It is our understanding that no such reopening is anticipated.”

Sheriff Flournoy underscored this in La Grange. “It is closed — permanently,” he told The Record.

On the day following the closing — Wednesday — television and newspaper reports indicated that a delegation of La Grange officials and civic leaders would show up at the Governor’s meeting with petitions “bearing several thousand signatures” calling for the reopening of the “ranch.”

Flournoy said Friday that the petitions were not presented, As for the meeting, “we saw it was going to be nothing but a television show,” he said, “and we didn’t go.”

Rumors were rife on Wednesday that the La Grange Chamber of Commerce was circulating the petitions, but CC President J. C. Warhol emphatically denied this, as did chamber manager John L. Giese. La Grange Mayor L. W. Stolz Jr. also denied any involvement and declined comment on the brothel’s closing. “It’s a county matter,” he said.

Sparked by reports of the petitions (“Meanwhile,” said the AP’s Wednesday story, “housewives, teachers, businessmen and the weekly newspaper publisher petitioned Gov. Dolph Briscoe to keep Edna’s Fashionable Ranch Boarding House open”), TV crews and news reporters swarmed into town on Thursday, seeking interviews. They got less than they came for — or at least a different reaction from what they evidently expected.

By then, more and more people were speaking out against the brothel and the bad publicity it had brought to their community. There was also a growing tendency to disclaim any part in the petitions.

The two local sources most quoted in the news media with respect to the house’s worthy aspects were Flournoy and Lester H. Zapalac, publisher of The La Grange Journal.

Zapalac was reported by The Austin American as saying, “I think it’s all right. There’s no organized crime attached to it, and it’s beneficial to the community… The girls buy all their clothes here, their eats. It brings in business for the community.”

Flournoy pointed out that Edna Milton, the current madam, contributed $8,000 to the building fund for Fayette Memorial Hospital and $1,000 for the city swimming pool.

“I’ve known Edna for 20 years,” The Houston Chronicle quoted him as saying. “There’s no finer woman that you will ever meet. And in La Grange we don’t have any rape cases or the like that you have in Houston.”

The Chronicle quoted Zapalac: “The people are all for it. They say it has done no harm and a lot of good, I don’t know anyone who is against it.”

But Friday, when KVLG allowed people to call in their opinions without giving their names, the La Grange radio station found plenty of opposition. The final count was 59 opposed to the whore house, 43 in favor. The two broadcasts turned up a wide variety of comments, including that of a man who said his doctor recommended the place to him for his health, a woman who said it had always kept her husband happy, and another man who said that it ought to be reopened along with a second such establishment for women.

Opponents stressed the illegality of the operation, the bad name and wide notoriety given to La Grange, and the hypocrisy involved in its operation. Proponents emphasized that the “ranch” was “good for business” and had “kept down rape and venereal disease.” TV-man Zindler was frequently blamed as an outsider meddling in local affairs.

Zindler began his expose about two weeks ago, calling on Gov. Briscoe for comments and action. The series of news reports culminating last Thursday received nationwide attention, to the point where, last Friday night, jokes were being made about La Grange on the Johnny Carson television show.

Nobody knows when the Chicken Ranch was established. It has “always been there” as far as local memory serves. Some people claim it dates all the way back to 1844.

Last Thursday all doors at the place had signs saying “closed,” along about the time that state and local officials were saying “permanently.”

1973 Editorial: Time to Close Subject, Too

One reason that so much has been said about the Chicken Ranch in the past week is that so little was said, except covertly, until the place suddenly made the national headlines. The prevailing local attitude was: it’s there, it;s always been there, it’s not doing any harm and, besides, I know practically nothing about it. Our favorite rejoiner, often with a grin, was “What Chicken Ranch?”

Now everybody knows, from the governor to the myriad of fans of Johnny Carson, and everybody in the vicinity has finally had his say.

There is clear indication, by radio poll and personal comment, that the majority of La Grange people strongly disapproved of the place and are thankful for its closing. But the relevant comments of last week are all contained in statements by Governor Briscoe, Attorney General Hill and Sheriff T. J. Flournoy, the first two in that bawdy houses violate state laws and this one must be permanently closed, the latter in that it has been — permanently.

We also have had irrefutable proof this past week as to what the place came to mean for our town. That it was decorously and respectably managed we will accept on the word of the experts. But the fact is that, however fashionable, however philanthropic. a whore house is still a whore house. And when your town becomes known from coast to coast for that one thing, the long-range results are scarcely beneficial. When it comes to be joked about on national television… well, it takes a perverted mind indeed to go on saying how good this is for La Grange. Enough has been said about the Chicken Ranch, It is closed. We should close the subject as well and get on with matters of real worth to our town. And we should make very certain that when some eager outsider asks us in the future we can honestly answer, “What Chicken Ranch?”

© The Fayette County Record