Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age

Madam is the biography of Polly Adler (1900−1962), the most infamous and influential madam in Jazz Age New York. Her 1953 memoir, A House is Not A Home, sold 2 million books and became a 1963 movie starring Shelley Winters. More than a biography, this is a colorful and unusual history of Jewish life told through the perspective of a “good Jewish girl” from a Russian shtetl who immigrated to Brooklyn, and rose to become “the Female Al Capone” and one of the most renowned Jewish-American women in the 20th century. Her brothels were underworld salons that catered to everyone from the Vanderbilts and the Rockfellers to Walter Winchell, Frank Sinatra, Desi Arnaz, the Algonquin Roundtable, Dutch Schultz and Meyer Lansky, and, it was rumored, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

This event is part of our 2022-23 Cultural Arts Speaker Series and will be held in person at our Sam Field Center in Little Neck. To see our full lineup of speakers, click here.

Cost is $8 members, $10 non-members. To register, click here. If you have not already made an account, you must do so first here.

For more information, please contact Sivan Ben-Aderet at [email protected].

Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age

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