14. The Hacienda Arms on Sunset Strip
During the 1930s an apartment complex on Sunset Strip known as the Hacienda Arms Apartments offered more than just leases on residential quarters. It was among the most well-known and popular brothels in Hollywood, with several of the leading stars of the day counted among its satisfied clientele. Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and several other leading men of the time were known to frequent the building known as the “House of Francis”. Several leading ladies were counted among the customers as well, including Talalluh Bankhead, Jean Harlow, and Barbara Stanwyck. According to one writer, MGM studios maintained an open account upon which their stars could charge the services they requested, thus keeping their expenses secret from wives and husbands. The establishment was named for Madam Lee Francis, who often had to have her bouncers remove famous personages who became too boisterous to remain on the premises. They did so discreetly. Tracy was one of them, on multiple occasions.
Francis managed to maintain a level of privacy by providing a stipend to local authorities, reportedly about 40% of the income from her business. Spreading the money about helped her ensure that those whose careers would be damaged by the shock of an arrest on a morals charge were absent from the premises on those occasions when raids were scheduled, as Lee recounted in a book about the brothel entitled Ladies on Call. After her arrest, Ann Forester took over the operation, and it remained in business until 1948, when a drive to clean up local corruption among the elected officials of Los Angeles and the police department they supervised led to the business being closed. The building remains in 2019, housing various offices for companies involved in the film industry.