Brothel Turns to Marketing

Last Christmas, a few of the working women were lounging around the Chicken Ranch, just outside Las Vegas, when one of them got inspired.

“She came up to a few of us girls with the idea of making a picture calendar,” recalled Tabitha, a co-worker at the brothel. “We were really excited.”

They weren’t the only ones who thought it was a good idea. A Glendale marketing firm soon got hold of the idea.

Now, discriminating consumers can buy a calendar for home or office with photographs of Chicken Ranch prostitutes. They can also purchase T-shirts and baseball caps bearing the brothel’s logo. There are plans to market belt buckles and perhaps even a chocolate bar.

“This could be a tremendous hit,” said Robert Wortham of CRI Marketing, the husband-wife company that is trying to sell the Chicken Ranch to the people of America.

Wortham was hired for the project because he had previously published a how-to book on taking sexy photographs of your girlfriend or wife. He took one look at the Chicken Ranch and saw all sorts of potential sales.

First of all, he figured, just about any calendar with pictures of lingerie-clad women would sell. Some people would buy this particular calendar because they’re plain curious to get a look at women who sell sex for a living. Others would purchase it for entirely different reasons.

“You could buy Playboy or get a lingerie catalogue in the mail, but this calendar fulfills a fantasy,” Wortham said. “The fantasy is: I can go up and visit this girl. This woman could be mine.”

The $15 calendar and other items, which are now on the market, are being sold through mail order and in Las Vegas gift shops. Wortham will take his line to an upcoming trade show in hopes of getting Los Angeles stores to stock the items as well.

“All we have to do is find a state that will ban this calendar,” Wortham said, “and we’ll make millions.”

That’s not likely to happen. “Romance of the West,” an 18-month calendar, beginning July, 1991, is fairly tame as cheesecake goes. Eight different women are shown in varying degrees of undress, none of which include frontal nudity. And though several shots are of the boudoir variety, none are particularly suggestive.

“Every damn thing in that calendar is tasteful,” said Russell Reade, the brothel’s co-owner and a former high school biology teacher.

Or, as Wortham put it: “Everybody knows what happens in a brothel. We don’t have to beat them over the head with it.”

The photographs are taken in Old West settings, each picture accompanied by a Louis L’Amour-type caption.

For example: “Red was the color of the velvet curtains lining the walls of her private chamber . . . red as the hot coals that warmed the wild prairie nights . . . red as her beckoning lips. Only a fool would ask her to turn out the lights.”

This gimmick plays off the history of the brothel, which was founded in La Grange, Tex., in 1844 and closed down by the governor of that state in 1973. Two years later, a new owner reopened for business in Nevada. The brothel claims to have inspired the Broadway musical and movie “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”

As of yet, no sales figures are available for the brothel’s merchandising effort, but Reade said the Chicken Ranch received dozens of calls from across the country ordering the calendar. The debut of the brothel’s products was broadcast on national television.

As for the retail proceeds, Reade insisted that “around here we do everything on a share and share-alike basis.” So the ladies of the Chicken Ranch will get a slice of the profits. And plans are already being made for a 1993 calendar.

“There have been eight wars in the history of the Chicken Ranch,” said Roxanne Becker, Wortham’s wife. “We’ll do a salute to all the fighting men, who have been consistent customers.”