In 1917, during the final months of legal prostitution in Storyville, the red-light district of New Orleans, Louisiana, Hattie is a prostitute working at an elegant brothel run by the elderly, cocaine-addicted … See more

• Brooke Shields as Violet
• Keith Carradine as E. J. Bellocq
• Susan Sarandon as Hattie
• Frances Faye as … See more

Development
Screenwriter Polly Platt developed the idea for the film after meeting with Louis Malle and learning of his … See more

ABC Records released a soundtrack of the film's ragtime score, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adaptation Score in … See more

Marketing
Despite Malle's concerted effort to make the film sanitized of explicit sex, it received significant salacious pre-publicity leading up to its release, … See more

Box office
The movie was met with a lackluster response from moviegoers. It performed poorly in terms of box office revenue, failing to even … See more

While majoring in French literature at Princeton University, Shields went on to write her senior thesis, The Initiation: From Innocence to Experience: The Pre-Adolescent/Adolescent … See more