Hollywood A-list madam Brenda Allen was out of jail in the fall of 1949, but only temporarily. The police payoff scandal that had erupted around her in May 1949 — exactly one year after she’d been arrested in her swanky bordello on the Sunset Strip — was now running its course.

She still had a year left to serve on a pandering conviction, however, and she was in court this day for a hearing on her appeal to have the sentence reduced to time served because one of the witnesses — the undercover policewoman posing as a prostitute who had testified that Brenda had offered her work — had recanted part of her testimony.

Brenda was popular with the press and she was known for showing up for court in the latest fashions. Before the proceedings got underway, she posed for photographs and provided reporters with the breakdown of her outfit. According to the Times, “She wore a suit of black imported gabardine — she stressed ‘imported’ — with light pink lace jabot at the neck. On her head was a pert black hat garlanded in cloth flowers and adorned with baby blue ribbon.

“‘In case you want to know what kind of flowers they are,’ she said, ‘they are primroses.'”

A reporter noted that the “heavy scent of Arabian Night perfume” wafted through the courtroom when she took the stand.