The Making Of The Happy Hooker

The Making Of The Happy Hooker, by Robin Moore

October, 1973  Signet Books

A few years ago I reviewed The Happy Hooker, a book I had been meaning to read for years and years, as I’d picked up the majority of the books Xaviera Hollander published at the time. But that review is a bit of a sore spot for me, given that Blogger for no reason whatsoever put it behind a sensitivity filter, flagging it for adult content. I tried editing the title, the image, etc, but nothing worked and to this day the review is stuck behind a privacy screen, and stuff like this makes me laugh because it’s yet another reminder of how things are becoming more and more restricted in our otherwise “progressive” age. (To be filed under: “Sex parties are for me, not for thee.”) 

Well anyway, The Happy Hooker is credited to the titular hooker herself, Xaviera Hollander, but “co-written” by Robin Moore and Yvonne Dunleavy. Published a few years after that bestseller, The Making Of The Happy Hooker is by Robin Moore himself, telling the tale of how The Happy Hooker came to be, and the fallout from the book’s publication. Interestingly, Xaveria published a few more “nonfiction books” under her own name, without Moore or Dunleavy, so I wonder if those books – with titles like Xaviera! and Xaveria Goes Wild! – cover the same ground. I’m betting not, as glancing through them they appear to be more focused on Xaveria’s robust sex life, whereas The Making Of The Happy Hooker is more focused on the uninentional criminal and federal ramifactions that were spawned in the research and writing of The Happy Hooker. 

Moore was an incredibly prolific writer and I’m surprised I’ve yet to review one of his books on here. When I was 10 years old I picked up a paperback copy of his early ‘60s bestseller, The Green Berets, and it’s one of the few books from my childhood that I still have. (It has a lame cover photo of a soldier wearing camo facepaint.) But to this day I have not read the book, nor have I read any of Robin Moore’s many other books. I even have some PBOs he did through Manor Books in the late ‘70s, which might indicate that Moore gradually lost his “name” in the literary world; but then, The Happy Hooker itself was a PBO, and according to this book was the number one selling PBO of all time, with 7 million copies sold. 

I only bring up the “name” stuff because Robin Moore is at pains to remind us that he’s a big-name author throughout the entirety of The Making Of The Happy Hooker. He so often informs us that he’s well-known – at one point he even has a character directly state that “[Moore] is a big-time author” – that I got the impression the guy already knew his “name” was slipping, and was trying to double down on the fame he previously enjoyed. But that’s just my impression. There’s just a level of arrogance to his narrative that is not too disimilar from Norman Mailer’s, in Of A Fire On The Moon. That said, he also just as often reminds us of how skillfully-researched his books are, but then Moore is reportedly the only civilian to ever graduate Green Beret training, all during the course of research for his book on them. 

Well anyway, one suspects he published this book as a further boon to his rapidly-fading literary star; the only reason it seems to exist is so that Moore can provide his own interpretation of the bestselling The Happy Hooker, which is strange given that he was credited as the “co-writer” of the actual book. And a lot of the same material is covered herein, with the caveat that Moore’s “making of” book becomes more of a crime thriller, or at least more of a sub-The Anderson Tapes yarn, with its focus on illegal surveillance and the ensuing fallout of such. The plot is also less focused on Xaviera’s whoring life than it is on the Knapp Commission, which was tasked with rooting out corruption in the NYPD; basically, Xaviera’s cathouse became an illegal listening post for various cops who were trying to bust people. 

But then, Moore cagily asserts in his intro that The Making Of The Happy Hooker is “faction,” stating that some of it is “the fantasy of a middle-aged man who may wish more may have happened under certain exotic and erotic circumstances.” On that note, Moore tells us straight out that he had sex with Xaviera, and a few times at that. Indeed, their first meeting led to the inevitable; Moore has it that he was finishing up work on a book titled The Khaki Mafia, co-writing it with a lovely young dish named June who apparently had nice breasts (in true sleazy early ‘70s style, Moore does indeed tell us about the breasts of his female co-writers), and Moore started getting calls from a foreign-voiced chick who wanted him to visit her. Moore quickly deduced that she was a new hooker in town (this being 1970), and she’d bought the “black book” of another hooker – one who had Moore’s name in her book. 

Well, Moore does visit, and he informs us that Xaveria “wasn’t really a pretty girl,” but she carried herself like a “superstar.” Also, according to this book Xaviera had a tendency to say things like, “I would like to suck your cock” to a man shortly after meeting him, which certainly goes a long ways in making of up for her not being “really pretty.” “[Xaveria] encouraged me into positions I had never tried…taking me deep up into her,” Moore informs us in what will be one of the very few sexual scenes in the book – and one that only lasts a paragraph, at that. We get another Moore-Xaveria boff later in the book, when a horny Xaveria insists Moore stop working on the book and come back into her room: “Xaviera was astride me…begging me to ejaculate in her.” This part is funny, though, as Xaveria’s boyfriend Larry (who wrote his own book on Xaveria, believe it or not – and yes, I have it and will read it someday) comes back, knows what Moore and Xaviera are doing in there, and gets mad – not because of Xaveria’s infidelity, but because he knows Xaveria is giving Moore a freebie! But all is well when Moore hands over fifty bucks, after which Larry’s treating him like his best friend. 

As for The Happy Hooker, Moore has it that he hit upon the idea after that first tustle with Xaveria. But then, he states he’d already been thinking about a book on prositution, and indeed the prologue of the book is perhaps the best part, as Moore relates another funny story. It’s 1968, and Moore has brought in 18 Green Berets for the New York premiere of the film version of his book The Green Berets. They ended up at a fashionable East Side townhouse after the premiere, and Moore piles on the sleazy description of the madam’s five-floor bordello…which is raided by the cops the next day, after Moore and the Berets have left. But it’s from this that Moore got the idea to do a “Hookerbook,” which he informs us was his original title for the book that became The Happy Hooker. 

Moore also makes it clear that Xaveria Hollander did not write The Happy Hooker. He breaks it down in movie terms: “Produced by Robin Moore. Written by Yvonne Dunleavy. Starring Xaveria Hollander.” But then, Moore doesn’t even tell us much about Dunleavy’s contribution, other than her frequent run-ins with Xaveria. Dunleavy is apparently Australian, and is another lovely young thing with “nice breasts” that Moore hires to co-write with him, arguing that a book on a hooker needs a “woman’s touch,” indeed a woman who would understand that Xaveria’s blatant whorish attitude would seem alien to the average female reader. But really, all we learn of Dunleavy is she gets annoyed with Xaveria, who is constantly asking Dunleavy to “help out” at the cathouse, ie serve as a hooker for a group of men who are coming in, etc. 

The book starts off on the sleazy footing we’d expect, with Xaveria casually informing Moore and Dunleavy of her kinky customers and her history of hookering…but it’s also gross, because we get a lot on the “freak” aspect, complete with a dude who likes to eat shit. Literally. But The Making Of The Happy Hooker changes course with the introduction of “Ben the Bugger,” a wiretapping expert Moore hires to bug Xaveria’s place…so Moore doesn’t have to be there all the time, picking up material for the book. Essentially Ben bugs all the rooms, with Xaveria’s blessing, so Moore and Dunleavy can later listen to the tapes and transcribe the sleazy details for “Hookerbook.” 

The only problem is, Ben the Bugger starts tapping the phones and calling over cops, and Moore soon discovers that Ben is part of the Knapp Commission, and Moore has essentially funded an illegal surveillance scheme. This is what The Making Of The Happy Hooker ultimately becomes concerned with, and in fact Xaveria sort of gets lost in the narrative, only appearing willy-nilly, and usually being duped iby Ben the Bugger. At one point he even puts a video camera behind her mirror, controlled by “laser,” so that he can videotape Xaveria as she’s having sex…and since he’s broadcasting on “the high band” of the UHF spectrum, it so happens that one day something slips and the real-life hardcore stuff s being broadcast on “a Puerto Rican station” in New York City, until the Feds hear about it and shut it down…but really they just ask Ben to stop, given that they all are aware of him. I suspect this material could be that “faction” stuff. 

The book does take on the tone of a crime thriller, with Xaveria even agreeing to work with the Knapp boys, using her girls to ensnare people they have their eyes on…like a group of Arabs. Oh, and there’s also a subplot about Ellen, a married British lady Moore likes who takes a job secretly at Xaveria’s so she can get enough money to leave her husband, and Ben the Bugger falls in love with her. The stuff with Ben also has an unintentionally humorous aspect to it, because at one point he zeroes in on a dirty cop named…Don Johnson. And humorously, “Don Johnson” comes off exactly like Sonny Crockett in Miami Vice, just a too-cool cop, but unlike Crockett he’s essentially corrupt. So I guess he’s more like Sonny’s alter ego, Sonny Burnett. 

We do get a recreation of the scene that opened The Happy Hooker: Xaveria and her posh girls thrown in jail with a bunch of street-hardened black hookers. It’s even more outrageous here, with the lead black hooker taking a “small, phallus-shaped gravity knife” from out of her inner recesses and threatening to cut up Xaveria. Also, we learn that Xavera did not like the title “The Happy Hooker,” arguing correctly that she was not a “hooker,” but a “madam.” She wanted the book to be titled “The Happy Madam,” but Moore – who suddenly claims he was the proponent of titling it The Happy Hooker late in the book, despite his earlier statement that he wanted to call it “Hookerbook” – prevails, and soon enough they have a bestselling monster on their hands. 

Moore basically makes The Making Of The Happy Hooker a behind the scenes meets “where are they now?” affair, telling us of the fallout of the book – Xaveria on the witness stand, due to serving the Knapp commission, Ben the Bugger fleeing to England and fighting against extradition, and Moore moving on to his next book. He says nothing of Xaveria’s many other books, no doubt because he wasn’t involved with them (and also none of them were published by Signet). Moore also doesn’t tell us much about his own life, other than mentioning his various books and research for them. He casually informs us he’s unhappily married – and this only after we’ve had a few conjugal visits with Xaviera – but the wife isn’t even named. 

At 184 small, dense pages, The Making Of The Happy Hooker moves at a fairly fast clip, but be advised that the title is a bit misleading. The actual writing of Xaveria Hollander’s book is sort of the framework that Robin Moore uses to tell a tale that is more concerned with wiretapping, bugging, and other illegal surveilling techniques. It also has a topical relevance, as the wiretapping entrapment scheme with the New York-based Knapp Commission and Xaviera seems quite similar to whatever is going on with Puff Daddy today.