Joe does Hollywood

As you watch the new movie, "Love Ranch," please note that it is loosely based upon the lives of Joe and Sally Conforte, formerly of Northern Nevada. Conforte is a pimp and the late Mrs. C. was a brothel-running madam. They got very, very rich by selling women's bodies. The whores didn't get rich; they just got screwed.

I have not yet seen the movie, but there's no way that this movie tells the truth about this slimy pair.

As a human being, Conforte makes Bernie Madoff look like Mr. Rogers. When Joe last spoke with a U.S. reporter, he was living large in Brazil, playing bridge and enjoying the ocean view. He's in Brazil because he's a fugitive from U.S. justice; after doing time for tax fraud, he got out and committed more tax fraud (like Al Capone, who was guilty of many crimes but could only be caught for taxes). Brothels were a cash-only business then.

When I was at UNR in the late 1960s, a professor invited Joe and Sally in to tell the class how they were going to perform humanitarian acts to make the world better. They talked a good game, but, strangely, never got around to those acts of charity, except for giving out free frozen turkeys at Thanksgiving and Christmas. (Sally's nephew continues the tradition.)

When Joe started his Northern Nevada career as a pimp — a job description he refused — he tangled with Washoe County district attorney Bill Raggio, who had Joe arrested whenever he showed up in Reno, as a vagrant with no visible means of support. In return, Joe tried to set up Raggio, plotting to catch the DA in a hotel room with an under-age girl. Raggio didn't fall for the trap.

As for prize-fighter Oscar Bonavista, Joe's rule was: Screw the girls, screw my wife, but keep your hands off the money. Oscar violated Rule No. 1 and died for it, shot to death in the brothel's parking lot.

The Reno Evening Gazette and Nevada State Journal won a Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for a series of editorials spotlighting the web of bribes and corruption Conforte wove across Northern Nevada.

If you want to see the real Joe, there's a fun little movie, "Charley Varrick," in which Mob enforcer Joe Don Baker stops by the Mustang Ranch, and is welcomed by Joe C.

In "Love Ranch," New Mexico stands in for Northern Nevada. In "Charley Varrick," Northern Nevada stands in for New Mexico.

As for legal prostitution: There's a brothel about 10 miles east of my home, in Storey County, and others about 30 miles southeast, in Lyon County. Prostitution is illegal in Reno, Sparks, Washoe County, Carson City (the state capital), Las Vegas, Clark County; prostitution is illegal where 95 percent of the Nevada population lives. Are there whores in Reno and Las Vegas? Yep. Free-market economy ... where there are buyers, there will be suppliers.

A friend once waited table for a young man and his friends who had obviously just come from a now-closed brothel near the Fallon Naval Air Station. Why did they go there, she asked. His answer: A girlfriend or wife gets all insulted when asked for special services, but a pro just does the job.

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