She gave herself a title, Lady Diana Harrington.

The New York D.A. gave her another, The Golden Girl of cafe society.

Houston police gave her a third, less flamboyant, title, prostitute.

And Houston police have the final say in the matter since she died there on September 20, 1960, "Diane Harris Graham, 30, D.O.A., circumstances -- unusual".

Early in her life she had discovered that where there were men, there was money, and with the two came luxury and liquor.
She was still in the play for pay business when she died, a top trollop who had given the world's oldest profession one of its rare flashes of glamour.

She never hid the fact that she liked to play.
Her neighbors in the expensive Houston apartment building told reporters that the ash-blonde beauty had talked at times about her past as "the Golden Girl of the Mickey Jelke trial".

It was the trial of oleomargarine heir Minot (Mickey) Jelke for compulsory prostitution in New York that put the spotlight on the international play-girl.
(Jelke later served 21 months when he was found guilty of masterminding a ring of high-priced call girls.
)

Diane was needed as a material witness in the case and New York police searched three continents before they found her in their own back yard -- in a swank hotel, of course.
She had been moving in cafe society as Lady Diana Harrington, a name that made some of the gossip columns.

It was when she was seized as a material witness that she got the designation she liked best.

Clad in mink and diamonds, she listened to Assistant District Attorney Anthony Liebler describe her to the arraigning judge:

"This girl is the Golden Girl of cafe society.

"In 1951 she was a prostitute in New York County.
In the spring and early summer of that year she met a wealthy foreign tycoon who took her to France, where she later met a very wealthy man and toured all Europe with him.

"At Deauville she met an Egyptian by the name of Pulley Bey.
He was the official procurer for King Farouk, now in exile.
She was in Egypt during the revolution and had passport difficulty.
She lied in order to get it.

"We have checked her in different parts of Europe and Egypt and finally back into this country.
She has been acting as a prostitute.

"Our information is that she gave the proceeds of her acts to Jelke".

Diane sobbingly denied this to the court.

"That's a lie.
I never gave that boy a cent.
I am not a prostitute, and I had only one very wealthy boy friend", she said.

During the course of the trial, Jelke backed up part of that statement.

"Diane is the type of girl", Jelke said, "who wouldn't get loving -- even on her wedding night -- unless you piled up all your money in the middle of the floor".

But she seemed to have underestimated the number of her "boy friends".

She came to New York from Detroit as a teenager, but with a "sponsor" instead of a chaperone.
As she told it, "He's a rich boy friend, an old guy about 60".
She was Mary Lou Brew then, wide-eyed, but not naive.
She had talked her "boy friend" into sending her to New York to take a screen test.

The screen test was never made -- but Diane was.
She quickly moved into cafe society, possibly easing her conscience by talking constantly of her desire to be in show business.

She seemed so anxious to go on the stage that some of her friends in the cocktail circuit set up a practical joke.

An ex-fighter was introduced to her in a bar as "Mr. Warfield, the famous producer".
The phony producer asked her if she would like to be in one of his shows.

"I'd love to audition for you", she gushed.

The audition was held a few minutes later in somebody's apartment.
She thought she had great possibilities in the ballet and wanted to show the eminent producer how well she could dance.

After a few minutes he said, "I can't use you if you dance like that.
I'd like to see you dance nude".

She hastily complied.
Diane loved to dance in the nude, something she was to demonstrate time and again.

She developed another quaint habit.
Even among the fast set in which she was moving, her method for keeping an escort from departing too early was unique.

When the date would try to bid her good-night at the door, she would tell him, "If you go home now, I'll scream".
More often than not he would bow to the inevitable.

One who needed no such threats was a French financier.
One of the blonde's yearnings that he satisfied was for travel.
She wanted to go around the world, but she settled for a French holiday.

In an anonymous interview with a French newspaper the financier told of spending several months with her.
"Then she went to Deauville where she met a member of a powerful Greek syndicate of gamblers".

The Greek evidently fell for her, "Monsieur X" recounted, and to clinch what he thought was an affair in the making he gave her 100,000 francs (about $300) and led her to the roulette tables.

She could do no wrong at the tables that time.
And in short order the croupier had pushed several million francs her way.
Smarter than most gamblers, she slipped away from the casino, packed her bag and took the night train to Paris.
No one ever learned what happened to the Greek.

The luxury of Paris' most fashionable hotel, the George 5,, bored the beautifully-built blonde, so she high-tailed it to Rome.

She teamed up with another beauty, whose name has been lost to history, and commenced with some fiddling that would have made Nero envious.

To climax her Roman revels, she was thrown out of the swanky Hotel Excelsior after she had run naked through its marble halls screaming for help.

It was a rugged finish for what must have been a very interesting night.

Discreet Italian police described it in a manner typically continental.

"There had been a threesome at the party in the suite's bedroom: Miss Harrington (this was Diane's choice for a Roman name), another woman who has figured in other very interesting events and one of your well-known American actors.

"The actor had had much to drink and apparently became very violent.
The hotel staff, as well as residents of the Excelsior, told us they saw that both ladies were bleeding from scratches as they were seen fleeing down the hall.

"They were wearing nothing but their scratches.
They were asked to leave the hotel.
No charges were filed".

The girls, after dressing, were indignant.

"You can't do this to us", Diane screamed.
"We are Americans".

In the morning she found rooms directly across from the Excelsior at the equally luxurious Hotel Ambassador.

With the Ambassador as headquarters, she continued to promote good will abroad.
Of course, her benevolence was limited to those who could afford it, but then there is a limit to what one person can do.

By this time Diane was a beguiling lass of 19 and still seeking her place in the world.
She thought royal status might come her way when, while she was still in Rome, she met Pulley Bey, a personal procurer to King Farouk of Egypt.

A close friend of hers in the Roman days described it this way:

"It was a strange relationship.
Pulley Bey spoke no English.
Diane spoke no Italian or French.
She had a hard time making him understand that it was Farouk she wished to meet.

"Pulley Bey insisted that she bestow her favors on him", the friend continued.
It seemed as though she were always auditioning.

No believer in the traditional devotion of royal servitors, the plump Pulley broke the language barrier and lured her to Cairo where she waited for nine months, vainly hoping to see Farouk.

Pulley had set her up at the Semiramis Hotel, but she grew impatient waiting for a royal reception and moved to a luxurious apartment to which the royal pimp had no key.

She picked her own Middle-Eastern friends from the flock of ardent Egyptians that buzzed around her.
Tewfik Badrawi, Mohammed Gaafer and numerous other wealthy members of Cairo society enjoyed her company.

"So extensive became her circle of admirers", Egyptian police said, "that her escapades caused distrust".

The roof was about ready to fall in on Diane's little world, but it took nothing less than the Egyptian revolution to bring it down.
When Farouk was overthrown, police picked up his personal pimp, Pulley Bey.
They also called upon Diane with a request for a look at her passport.

The cagey Pulley Bey, who spoke no English, had taken the passport so that Diane couldn't leave the country without his approval.
Officials provided a temporary passport, good only for return to the United States.

And return to the United States she did, into waiting arms -- the unromantic ones of the New York District Attorney's office.

Held as a material witness in the compulsory prostitution trial of Mickey Jelke, the comely courtesan was unable to raise bail and was committed to the Women's House of Detention, a terribly overcrowded prison.

It is a tribute to her talents that she was able to talk the District Attorney into having her removed from the prison to a hotel room, with her meals taken at Vesuvio's, an excellent Italian restaurant.

Newspapers at the time noted that the move indicated that she was co-operating with the District Attorney.

With the end of the trial Diane disappeared from New York.
It was no longer fashionable to be seen with fabulous "Lady Harrington".

Several years ago she married a Houston business man, Robert Graham.
She later divorced Graham, who is believed to have moved to Bolivia.

Houston police got to know Diane two years ago when the vice squad picked her up for questioning about a call girl ring.
Last May, they said, she admitted being a prostitute.

The next time the police saw her she was dead.

It was September 20, 1960, in a lavishly decorated apartment littered with liquor bottles.
She had had a party with a regular visitor, Dr. William W. McClellan.

McClellan, who had once lost his medical license temporarily on a charge of drug addiction, was with her when she died.
He had been in the apartment two days and was hazy about what had happened during that time.
When he realized she was dead, he called two lawyers and then the police.

When the police arrived, they found McClellan and the two lawyers sitting and staring silently.

The blonde's nude body was in bed, a green sheet and a pink blanket covered her.
Pictures of her in more glamorous days were on the walls.

An autopsy disclosed a large amount of morphine in Diane's body.
Police theorize that a combination of dope, drink and drugs killed her.

"I think that maybe she wanted it this way", a vice squad cop said.
"A maid told us that she still bragged about getting $50 a date.
She was on the junk, and they slide fast when that happens.
At least she never knew what the bottom was like".
I am a carpet salesman.

I work for one of the biggest chains of retail carpet houses in the East.
We cater mostly to nice people in the $5-8,000 annual income bracket and we run a string of snazzy, neon-lit, chromium-plated suburban stores.

I am selling the stuff of which is made one of the Great American Dreams -- wall-to-wall carpeting.

There is only one trouble with this big, beautiful dream.
From where I sit it looks more like a nightmare.

People come to me with confidence.
They depend on my supposedly expert knowledge of a trade of which they themselves know little.

But I knowingly abuse their confidence.