Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Musicals by Scott Miller

Author:Scott Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Northeastern University Press

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

Part of the reason The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas works so well as a musical—the reason it had to be a musical—is that it deals with people and events for which emotions cannot be openly expressed. And because music is an abstract language, it can convey emotion much more fully and effectively than the more earthbound language of spoken words can.

These were not ordinary musical comedy characters, even though they found themselves in a musical comedy. The proprietress of the Chicken Ranch, Miss Mona, would never tell anyone the depth of her regret over the choices she’s made or the profundity of loss she feels in closing the house, but her song “The Bus from Amarillo” can get at that depth of emotion through its wistful, melancholy music. Sheriff Dodd would never say out loud that he loves Mona, so the simple, gentle, country waltz of “Good Ol’ Girl” does it for him. Doatsey Mae would never have the right words to describe her secret desires and regrets, but when blended with the sweet, sad music box sound of her song “Doatsey Mae,” those hidden feelings find a voice and take on a level of legitimacy and dignity that is very moving. The sad simplicity of her lament about her Frederick’s of Hollywood dreams reveals the lie behind Frederick’s famous slogan, “Don’t Dream It. Be It.” Doatsey Mae will always only dream it.

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the serious little musical comedy that surprised them all (much as Grease did a few years earlier), tells the true story of the high-profile closing of a 130-year-old brothel outside the small town of La Grange, Texas in 1973. But Whorehouse isn’t really about sex any more than Fiddler on the Roof is about violins. At its core, Whorehouse is about how putting life on TV changes it, how it changes people, how the TV camera leaves its heavy footprint on that which it records. It’s a story about the power of the media left unchecked, about privacy, about journalism itself, about America’s never-ending parade of moral and sexual hypocrisy. The Chicken Ranch, the whorehouse of the show’s title, had been in business since 1844. Everybody knew it, and nobody cared. But put it on the TV and suddenly it’s a scandal, it’s an outrage, denounced by all the politicians who had frequented the place themselves. This felt like a folksy, naughty country musical, but it was a really a smart, penetrating piece of social commentary.

After the Chicken Ranch had been closed, Sheriff J. T. “Jim” Flournoy was quoted in the Austin American-Statesman: “It’s been there all my life and all my daddy’s life and never caused anybody any trouble. Every large city in Texas has things 1,000 times worse.” The editor of the La Grange Journal wrote in an editorial, “I think it’s alright. There’s no organized crime attached to it. I’ve never seen anything bad come from it and I’ve lived here all my life.

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