Scotty Bowers, an octogenarian who personally “prefers the sexual company of women,†was a twentysomething former Marine in the late forties pumping gas near Hollywood Boulevard when Walter Pidgeon, a Canadian actor and future president of the Screen Actors Guild, drove up in a Lincoln coupe and propositioned him. Bowers accepted (for $20, it’s implied) and so started a several-decades-long career as the go-to guy for any of old Hollywood’s closeted stars (along with some of their heterosexual peers) in need of “matchmaking†services, if you get the drift. Bowers’s memoir, Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars, comes out in two weeks and is, per the Times, “a lurid, no-detail-too-excruciating account of a sexual Zelig who (if you believe him) trawled an X-rated underworld for over three decades without getting caught.†Read on for some of the names and sordid details strategically dropped into the paper’s review.
Why Bowers Agreed to the Book: “I finally said yes because I’m not getting any younger and all of my famous tricks are dead by now. The truth can’t hurt them anymore.â€
How Many Female Lovers He Set Katharine Hepburn Up With: Over 150.
Publisher Implicated in Bowers’s Old Hollywood Sexcapades: Alfred P. Knopf
One of Several Publishers Who Turned Down Full Service: Knopf
Which Actress Would Disagree That Bowers Wasn’t a Pimp, According to the Book: Lucille Ball
Why: One of the people Bowers was connecting with (other) bedmates was Ball’s then-husband, Desi Arnaz.
Why Browers Asked Tennessee Williams Not to Publish an Article on Him: “He made me sound like a mad queen flying over Hollywood Boulevard on a broomstick directing all the queens in town.â€
Other Famous Stars’ Names Mentioned: Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, Vivien Leigh, Spencer Tracy, and Cole Porter