The movie is a cheerily amoral New York comedy about greed and lust in the land of opportunity. Vincent Canby of The New York Times enjoyed the film: Xaviera's attorney bails her out of jail and sets her up with a friend of his who is coming in from Montreal.

After a while, she is the most successful madam in New York City and buys out her former madam's business as well.Īll is well until the corrupt cop from earlier in the film sees her and instigates a raid, sending her to jail. Xaviera decides that she can do better on her own, so she leaves to open her own bordello ten blocks away. Instead of paying him off, she goes to work at a local bordello with a madam who offers her a 50/50 split. Xaviera prospers as a prostitute until she is shaken down by a corrupt police officer who takes her money and tries to rape her. She starts meeting up with Yves' friends. Although it makes her feel like a prostitute, she realizes quickly that this may be her calling in life because she loves sex and money. He hands her a large envelope containing cash. Yves announces that he must leave as he has been summoned by the king of a Middle Eastern country. She is asked on a date by Frenchman Yves and quickly falls in love with him and his extravagant lifestyle, as Yves has made a small fortune as a consultant for large corporations and even small countries. Xaviera finds work at the Dutch Embassy as a translator and secretary. Xaviera offers him a choice of her or his mother and he picks his mother. Her suspicions are confirmed when his mother insults her over dinner. Observing how Carl does not help her take her bags off the airplane and his increasingly long morning routine and primping, Xaviera grows concerned he is not the man she thought he was. Plot Īs prostitutes are arrested in New York, a flashback begins to the life of one of them, a Dutch secretary Xaviera Hollander who moved to New York in hopes of marrying her fiancé Carl, whom she met whilst visiting her sister in South Africa. It was adapted from the best-selling memoir by Xaviera Hollander. The Happy Hooker is a 1975 American biographical comedy film directed by Nicholas Sgarro and starring Lynn Redgrave.

The Happy Hooker by Xaviera Hollander