Full service : my adventures in Hollywood and the secret sex lives of the stars

Format:

Book

Title:

Full service : my adventures in Hollywood and the secret sex lives of the stars

Author:

Bowers, Scotty author

ISBN:

9780802120076

9781611855814

9781611856071

9780802120557

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication:

New York, N.Y. : Grove Press, [2012]

Physical Description:

xiii, 286 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Contents:

Dream factory -- Gas station on Hollywood Boulevard -- Awakenings -- Full service -- Big city -- Star treatment -- turning tricks -- Boot camp -- Into battle -- Firmament of stars -- Vice squad -- Paternity -- Mixing drinks -- A royal affair -- At the crossroads -- Moving on -- Myths -- Bar service -- Finding out -- Close encounters of every kind -- To each his own -- The young and the restless -- In high places -- Drag queens and music -- True love -- Friends -- The Seventies -- Kew Drive -- Looking back.

Summary:

The wholesome image of America propagated by Hollywood in the 1940s, '50s and '60s is one of the most persistent in popular culture: loving wives, smiling children. But off the set, many of the actors who helped create this image were secretly leading very wild lives, and one man in particular was helping them: Scotty Bowers. At a time when sex outside of marriage was taboo, Scotty built up a reputation as the guy who could discreetly fix you up. Scotty slept with many stars himself, and connected others with his friends. Here, he tells his story for the first time. Scotty came to Hollywood after serving in the Marines in World War II, and began working at a gas station on Hollywood Boulevard. One day, he was approached and picked up by actor Walter Pidgeon, who whisked him off to a friend's villa for the first of many encounters with Hollywood's rich and famous. He developed long-term friendships with stars like Katharine Hepburn and Noel Coward, but he always kept it quiet--until he now provides a lost chapter in the history of the sexual revolution.--From publisher description.

Personal Subject:

Bowers, Scotty.

Bowers, Scotty. (OCoLC)fst01912059

Subject(s):

Male prostitutes -- California -- Los Angeles -- Biography.

Motion picture actors and actresses -- Sexual behavior -- California -- Los Angeles.

Motion picture producers and directors -- Sexual behavior -- California -- Los Angeles.

Geographic Term:

California -- Los Angeles.

Genre:

autobiographies (literary works)

Autobiographies.

Biographies.

Added Author:

Friedberg, Lionel

Electronic Access:

http://www.groveatlantic.com

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... McMinnville Public Library	306.743 Bowers	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Silver Falls Library	921 BOWERS	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Now the subject of the hit documentary Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood , praised by Vanity Fair as "full of revelations" and Entertainment Weekly as "deliciously salacious," Full Service is the remarkable true story of Scotty Bowers, the "gentleman hustler," during the heyday of classic Hollywood.

Newly discharged from the Marines after World War II, Bowers arrived in Hollywood in 1946. Young, charismatic, and strikingly handsome, he quickly caught the eye of many of the town's stars and starlets. He began sleeping with some himself, and connecting others with his coterie of young, attractive, and sexually free-spirited friends. His own lovers included Edith Piaf, Spencer Tracy, Vivien Leigh, Cary Grant, and the abdicated King of England Edward VIII, and he arranged tricks or otherwise crossed paths with Tennessee Williams, Charles Laughton, Vincent Price, Katharine Hepburn, Rita Hayworth, Errol Flynn, Gloria Swanson, Noël Coward, Mae West, James Dean, Rock Hudson and J. Edgar Hoover, to name but a few.

Full Service is not only a fascinating chronicle of Hollywood's sexual underground, but also exposes the hypocrisy of the major studios, who used actors to propagate a myth of a conformist, sexually innocent America knowing full well that their stars' personal lives differed dramatically from this family-friendly mold. As revelation-filled as Hollywood Babylon , Full Service provides a lost chapter in the history of the sexual revolution and is a testament to a man who provided sex, support, and affection to countless people.

Author Notes

Scotty Bowers, now 95, still works as a bartender at private functions in Hollywood.
Lionel Friedberg is an Emmy-winning producer, director and professional writer.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

A memoir about the author's role in the secret sex lives of Hollywood's Golden Age stars. Bowers, a long-time Hollywood hanger-on, delivers a bizarrely upbeat, frequently stomach-churning chronicle of profligacy and perversion that frankly beggars belief. Presenting himself as some unholy amalgam of a pimp, prostitute and Jiminy Cricket, Bowers maintains an unfailingly aw-shucks tone as he details the erotic peccadilloes of dozens of iconic actors, including a coprophagous escapade with Charles Laughton that will haunt the nightmares of most readers. In Bowers' telling, the author, a good-natured Midwesterner freshly discharged from the Marines, became the center of a prostitution underground almost immediately upon his arrival in Tinseltown, cheerfully arranging trysts by the thousands to suit any and all tastes, however outr, while being relentlessly seduced by every homosexual connected to the film industry. Bowers protests continuously that he sees nothing wrong with facilitating adultery and all manner of deviance on an epic scale, as sex is a natural drive that shouldn't be beholden to social mores. This point becomes harder to defend as he glowingly describes his childhood sexual abuse involving a friend's father, customers along his paper route, and various Catholic priests. Bowers' largesse extends to these predators, who are unfailingly described as sweet, kind, gentle, lonely souls looking for a little harmless comfort. This attitude suggests an insane level of denial or merely denotes the fevered musings of a fantasist with no regard for the reputations of dozens of prominent figures in American popular culture. A singularly off-putting and seamy reading experience.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.