On a recent trip to Miami, Vanessa and I went to see the new documentary about Scotty Bowers: Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood. High hopes, of course. And yes, it was indeed good. Amazing to see and hear Mr Bowers talk about his adventurous life. We strongly recommend you take a look at this film if you come across it. More info can be found at SCOTTYMOVIE.COM
It also brought to mind reading his autobiography, Full Service. It’s such a beyond-belief-book that I strongly suggest reading it, regardless if you see the film or not. Here’s a review of the book I wrote right after having read this “Hollywood Satyricon” tome of sexual escapades. Enjoy!
SCOTTY BOWERS: FULL SERVICE
Scotty Bowers arrived in Los Angeles right after World War 2. As a young ex-Marine that survived the mayhem of the battle of Iwo Jima, he was determined to live life to the fullest. Armed with a ”healthy” libido, he did just that. Starting out as a pump attendant at a gas station on Hollywood Boulevard, he was soon picked up by gay Hollywood actors and studio workers. Ever happy to make a buck and satisfy his customers, Bowers also extended his services to helping others get their rocks off. Never pimping – ie, never charging for his sexual match-making services – but always connecting successful Hollywood people with young men and women who couldn’t seem to make their ends meet.
If this sounds like just another sordid tale of a post-WW2 California life of vice, it very soon turns out to be a larger than life sexual fairytale. From the mid-40s and up until the Aids-scare of the early 80s, Scotty Bowers was the person to see when you needed quick and reliable sexual connections. We’re not necessarily talking about Hollywood Babylonesque depravities (although there’s plenty of those too in Bowers’ book), but mainly sex-starved and often closet-contained gay and straight people out for carnal kicks.
Bowers soon became an almost mythical character in Los Angeles, catering to all tastes when making himself available. His little black notebooks of possible connections helped satisfy Hollywood people and other celebrities year after year after year. Bowers himself has always taken pride in the fact that he never charged anyone for arranging sexual encounters. His own money was made from bartending and his own ”tricking”. His willingness to help others has been phenomenal (pathological?). He even inseminated wealthy childless wives simply because he was asked to, and later on posed no questions, as agreed. Accomodating the sexual desires of others have kept Mr. Bowers very happy, it seems.
It’s remarkable that this mind blowing book is published while he’s still alive – 88 years old this year. The main reason that this is possible is of course that most of the people he writes about are dead. He seems to be the last man standing from that promiscuous era. Tennessee Williams once wrote a novel about Bowers and his legendary services but scrapped it on request of Bowers himself. 2012 seems to be a more appropriate time for these tales. As a companion volume to Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon books, Full Service is absolutely without parallel or match.
What’s the fuss about then? Well, the public image of Hollywood stars as healthy, wholesome and heterosexual is quickly smashed to smithereens. The studios’ PR people must have had a lot to do to keep naïve movie-fans from suspecting what was really going on after dark. Especially as many of these stars were also sexual ”stars” expressing what Bowers frequently calls ”healthy” libidos.
But life for Mr. Bowers has been made up of more than tricking and setting up dates. His many friendships and his apparent empathic lifestyle early on made him a part of Hollywood life and culture. Not merely on a level of gossip and carnal encounters, but also in altruistically interacting with quite often dysfunctional people. It was Bowers who convinced Néstor Almendros to take his nomination for an Academy Award for best cinematography 1979 seriously, and who actually drove Almendros at break-neck speed to the actual award ceremony, where he could pick up his Oscar. It was also Bowers who helped Linda Lovelace give highly paid ”lectures”, teaching Hollywood wives in their autumn years how to do what she did so well in ”Deep Throat” (slightly earlier attempts in strictly gay crowds reversed the situation – the attendees gave Lovelace more advice than the other way around). Bowers also persuaded King Farouk of Egypt to lend his enormous collection of pornography to Alfred Kinsey, in the professor’s ever expansive research of human sexuality. He also set Kinsey up to watch as young people from various sexual persuasions expressed their ”inclinations”, completely uninhibited. Enjoyable research, I’m sure!
Full Service is an oversexed journey through a luxuriously secluded Hollywood. We are matter-of-factly told entertaining stories about Tyrone Power (a ”doo-doo queen” – use your imagination! – just like Charles Laughton), George Cukor, Cary Grant, Kate Hepburn (as butch as they come and with bad skin to boot), former UK King Edward ”Eddie” Windsor and his wife Wallis, Spencer Tracy, Vivien Leigh (an ”amazing” lover), Somerset Maugham (a voyeur), J Edgar Hoover (transvestite), Edith Piaf, Cole Porter, Noël Coward, John Carradine (an S/M slave), Harold Lloyd (enjoyed taking nude pictures with 3 D cameras), Rock Hudson (compulsive cruising) et cetera, et cetera. That so much sexual experience has been accumulated by one single person seems almost hard to fathom.
Charles Laughton seems to have been the overall most depraved of them all, and James Dean, Montgomery Clift and Roddy McDowall the most unsympathetic. Considering Mr. Bowers’ general easy-going attitude and enormous tolerance of kinks and quirks, these last three must have been truly horrendous people.
Just like Kenneth Anger’s books, Full Service puts one’s own movie-watching in entirely new perspectives. Another similarity with Hollywood Babylon is that Full Service is not a literary trip at all. No ornaments or stylistic tricks of seduction. The book is a very basic recounting of an incredible life in an incredible era and in an incredible place. Occasionally, however, Bowers drifts into theoretical discourse. In a passage on Noël ”Master” Coward, he digresses quite eloquently: ”When it comes to sex every single person is different, but those differences are usually so slight, so subtle, that unless you’re really tuned in you can overlook them or not even be aware that they exist. Good sex is all about how much is too much, how little is too little, about that thin dividing line between consistency and variety, between meeting the expected and surprising with the unexpected. It is about that delicate moment of touch in exactly the right place at the right moment to heighten the experience, to create a sizzling electrical charge that permeates the full body from head to toe.”
And occasionally there’s also a wonderful sense of dry humour involved. Bowers on John Holmes, who did anything with anyone for money: ”Drug dependency, the demands of the pornographic industry, and a lack of inherent intelligence were an unfortunate combination.”
Full Service gives us a lubricated insight into what was really going on, at least within some circles of Hollywood life. It proves, yet again, that fact is often a lot weirder than fiction, simply because people are a lot weirder than temporary moralities make them out to be. Scotty Bowers deserves massive credit for sharing these… Uh, intimate memories.
Scotty Bowers with Lionel Friedberg: Full Service (Grove Press, 2012)
