Full Service

[Danny]

After skimming the 132 Posts labeled POISONOUS BIOGRAPHIES, I couldn't resist mentioning a recent book called,
FULL SERVICE : my adventures in Hollywood and the secret sex lives of the stars by Scotty Bowers.

Now I have read my share of Hollywood tell-alls but I never came across this man's name before. That's why I was surprised at some of the stories he told of his intimacies with the biggest stars in the world. Yes, it is full of sex. Bowers paints himself as the "supplier" of male and female sex partners to some very, very famous people. But my feeling is that he may have told just a bit too much. Too self-aggrandizing to be sure. He himself is the stable-boy of almost all of them. I found that hard to believe.

The scandals are all there. Providing Katherine Hepburn with petite brunette girls, Tyrone Power's insatiable sex drive, Spencer Tracy's latent desires. And don't miss the tale of Charles Laughton's tastes in sandwiches. That alone ought to send you running for the Ipecac.

And yet, like the proverbial car crash ... Just try to look away.

Danny

[entredeuxguerres]

Providing Katherine Hepburn with petite brunette girls,
Danny

I knew it all along! (Hope the sweet things were fairly compensated for such onerous service.) Scotty Bowers...isn't he among the faculty at Berkeley?

[missdupont]

It's very convenient that he's picked stars that are all dead and can't respond to his allegations, isn't it? Larry Harnisch of The Daily Mirror blog thinks nothing of the book, here is the 26th part of his fact checking, and I don't think he's even ten pages into the book. You might want to check out the others. Fiction through and through.
http://ladailymirror.com/2012/04/20/ful ... g-part-26/" target="_blank

[drednm]

Yeah I read this one, or rather, I skimmed it. The real star seems to have been the gas station that served as a trysting spot and where the (mostly male) Hollywood elite would go to get hooked up. He's got all the usual suspects, but I disliked most about the book was his self-aggrandizement when all he was was a pimp. He might have procured for Hollywood stars, but he was still a pimp.

The oddest story is probably the one about Edward Duke of Windsor.

[antoniod]

Let me see.....problems I had with that book. 1: MGM did not publicize the Tracy-Hepburn relationship(from what I've read in other books).2: Cary Grant and Randolph Scott were no longer living together by 40s.

[mndean]

It's very convenient that he's picked stars that are all dead and can't respond to his allegations, isn't it? Larry Harnisch of The Daily Mirror blog thinks nothing of the book, here is the 26th part of his fact checking, and I don't think he's even ten pages into the book. You might want to check out the others. Fiction through and through.
http://ladailymirror.com/2012/04/20/ful ... g-part-26/" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank

I don't think much of the way Larry presents his fact checking, or the way he does some of it. What he shows is as tedious as research can be (and usually is!). The "Lincoln with air conditioning" crack is particularly silly from him, as he never bothered to check if aftermarket car a/c units existed, just factory installed. That is a research fail, right there. Just look up when car air conditioners were first installed on Wikipedia and you can verify from there. Sheesh.

[missdupont]

Wikipedia as research trust, epic fail! I would have a full time job correcting all the mistakes there, there's something in everything, some are just gigantic farces.

[mndean]

Wikipedia as research trust, epic fail! I would have a full time job correcting all the mistakes there, there's something in everything, some are just gigantic farces.

No, you don't get it. There are references in the Wiki. Wiki you don't trust, but references there can be checked. I said it's a place to start. Also, too, it's the one place in the country which had consistently high enough temperatures and enough affluent clientele to have supported installing these a/c units. Factories would likely wait until critical mass was achieved before offering this as an option, first in luxury cars, later in humbler ones.

[JFK]

[didi-5]

This book makes Kenneth Anger's Babylon ramblings look credible. Total and utter b-locks from beginning to end. Like most of these 'memoirs' are, sadly. At least you could laugh at Darwin Porter's Hollywood Closet thing.

[Lamar]

Maybe not "total":
http://blogs.laweekly.com/arts/2012/03/ ... d_burr.php" target="_blank

[Brooksie]

According to various news sources, Mr Bowers has left us, aged 96. Quite amazing to see august publications such as The Guardian taking his claims with anything other than a sack of salt: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/o ... stars-dies.

[missdupont]

Larry Harnisch's take on the "liar to the stars." He includes his links to 26 posts detailing mistakes in the book, not making it even 20 pages in.
https://ladailymirror.com/2019/10/14/sc ... the-stars/

[William D. Ferry]

Even worse is the film documentary SCOTTY AND THE SECRET HISTORY OF HOLLYWOOD. Aside from coming across as a real creep (he was pimping even as a young boy), he also had signs of being a real hoarder. Much of the film shows him going through piles of junk he's collected at several houses he owns (which he has to keep moving when he sells or leases them). This is a real DAY OF THE LOCUST-type profile. All in all, someone definitely not worth knowing.

[sepiatone]

well, I read his Full Service a year or so ago. Some things were surprising such as Walter Pidgeon was homosexual and hunted for men or even more unbelievable that Charles Laughton liked a certain thing on his sandwich, --- something pranksters imitate on Youtube with Nutella, 'butt' the real thing, not wanting to gross those not in the know out.

But it was Scotty's memoirs, who be it for us to tell him what was or wasn't. RIP.

[drednm]

He published a book in 2018?

[missdupont]

A "book" is a laugh, a novel more like it. James Curtis was given access to everything Spencer Tracy had ever written or collected, which included doodles, scraps of papers, notes, lists. How many do you think supposedly included his world famous pimp? Zero.

[Scott Eckhardt]

I skimmed through that book some years ago. This twaddle is an affront to all the stars he mentions. He must have listened to Esther Williams when she described the embellishments in Million Dollar Mermaid she included, supposedly at the behest of her publisher. Then he must have swallowed some LSD and began to write.