Just read "Full Service" by Scotty Bowers

98% of it is lies. And the other 2% is half truths.

OP, please don't leave us hanging. What, pray tell, is the "swizzle stick trick"?

Many of Bowers' claims have been verified by people who were in Hollywood at the time.

I read Scotty's book a couple of years ago. Somehow I find it difficult to believe that Errol Flynn, among others, would be phoning up Scotty at the gas station where he worked and asking him to set him up with some hot guys.

An interesting look at Old Hollywood and probably some truths in it, but exaggerated.

[quote]Somehow I find it difficult to believe that Errol Flynn, among others, would be phoning up Scotty at the gas station where he worked and asking him to set him up with some hot guys.

Exactly. All the stars he names wouldn't have risked going to him to find homosexual liaisons. They had more discreet avenues.

Thanks grampa OP. Your interest in the Hollywood of yesteryears intrigues me.

Every few months, someone (the same person) posts about this piece of trash. Enough.

And the swizzle stick trick is...?

I mean really, do you see Katharine Hepburn driving up and saying, "Good morning, Scotty. This evening I'll need a carpet muncher. [wink, wink]"

Here's the swizzle stick trick with Wolfgang Riebe.

Anti climatic

It's an interesting read and there've been plenty of older folks who verified that that's the way things were back then. I don't find any of it especially unbelievable.

From Entertainment Weekly interview when the book came out in 2012-

Later you became a bartender known for the ”Swizzle Stick Trick,” in which you stirred cocktails with your penis. Don’t take this the wrong way, but it makes me glad I’m a beer man.

[Laughs] Well, this was for people at gay parties, who wanted me to do that: ”Here, stir my drink.”

If he hadn't named a few big stars the first readers would have killed the book sales. Look at how many on here bought the book. Best sellers need big names, facts be damned.

R5 No, they didn't. Certainly not celebrities. Private parties in people's homes were raided, with the attendees arrested. This is what happens when folks don't know our history.

I think whomever Errol Flynn called could have ended up calling a Scotty Bowers type to fulfill the request.

What's the swizzle stick trick?

[quote]What's the swizzle stick trick?

Read r13.

I found the book disturbing. He was servicing men even when he was a little boy. That made me understand why he couldn't fall in love, lacked empathy and was distant from his family. The guy was a victim, and he didn't even realize it.

OP here. Ok, ok, The Swizzle Stick Trick. From the book:

"I became well-known for a special little trick that I started performing. I can't remember when I first did it, but people began demanding that I do it, especially at gay parties. This was my "Swizzle Stick Trick.' Since nature endowed me with a cock of which I have always been proud, I would often whip it out and stir drinks with it. Folks loved that. At mixed parties where the women knew me well enough I would also do it. People loved to order cocktails and watch me stir them with my flaccid penis. Needless to say, I would always add ice to the drink only after I'd stirred it!"

I've read most of the book and it was hard to believe that he encountered basically no opposition or problems turning all these tricks or pimping for decades. Just happy go lucky, good old time. And everyone he encountered was up for gay sex. I want to live in that world. And I've lived in Hollywood for 28 years now.

This thing was considered "hot" back in the day???

There’s video on YT shot at one of his book signings and in the audience was one of Walter Pidgeon’s grandchildren, Scotty’s reported first Hollywood conquest.

[quote]This thing was considered "hot" back in the day???

It wasn't so much about the face but about the rumor of the dick size.

There was definitely a gay underground in Hollywood back in the day, but I do believe Scotty has embellished his part in it, despite Gore Vidal’s vouching for him.

I see nothing unattractive about that face.

That former trick didn't actually leave the house to him free and clear. He only made a provision in his will that Bowers would be allowed to live there until he died or had to go into assisted living. The house is actually owned by the guy's son.

Some of you live such sheltered lives and find it hard to believe anything that doesn't fit into the little molds your minds have concocted for what's possible and what's not possible.

Damn right he was hot R22. Anyone who can't see that was a fine looking man is either blind or a damn fool.

The guy in that picture is very handsome. Anyone who cannot see that is mentally challenged or blind. Seriously. What the hell is your idea of "handsome" or "hot," then? And please don't answer.

I think it is funny that there are so many people on DL who appear to have such a vested interest in alleging (rather emphatically) that the book is full of lies.

There is something odd about gay men who think claiming their idols sucked dick is "besmirching" them.

What does Betty think of her relative's indiscretion?

As you can see the old boy's still hauling something rather hefty around in those slacks.

I agree Babe~ Kids these days have no idea how wild the world was pre AIDS... as long as you were discrete

He had movie star good looks when he was young.

Scotty & his wife Lois.

My favorite remembrance in the book was when he told about Charles Laughton enjoying the occasional "shit sandwich". Literally, he would smear some gay trick's feces on 2 slices of bread and eat it.

R37 "More sandwich, Daddy! More sandwich!"

[quote]There is something odd about gay men who think claiming their idols sucked dick is "besmirching" them.

I have no problem believing that old Hollywood had gay trysts. I have a problem believing that all those high powered stars relied on Scotty Bowers to provide them. If you were an A level star in 1950 and you knew your career would be permanently damaged by a gay liaison, would you leave it up to a gas station attendant to find your lovers?

R30 Not THAT asshole.

In his biography of kate Hepburn William Mann seems to believe Bowers claims. While I think much of it is embellished, I have no problem believing a lot of it. I think Hepburn was at least bi and closeted. She would have to be discreet so call girls could have been an option. The idea that Erroll Flynn being good looking so not needing to by whores is naive. Peoplease pay for sex for many reasons u don't have to be ugly.

That book was horrible. So poorly written and boring. I agree with what others have said: it was all,

"then this hot movie star showed up and we had sex in his car, then he dropped me off at the gas station and another hot movie star was there and we had sex in his car. And my penis is big."

You're paying for them to leave afterward.

How come Scotty Bowers could write a book but none of the people who were supplied by him did? If you're some old lesbian and you hooked up with Katharine Hepburn, after she died why not write about it? Or if you were a guy who hooked up with Errol Flynn, why not write about it? People like Shelley Winters had no problem telling about every single dick she had in her old cooter.

R22, yes, hot back then, hot now.

You know, back then studio heads and the mafia didn't supply for gay men. Just what type of people do you think did?

I read the book too, and while I'm certain he embellished his tales and made some stuff up (especially that he never took money for his pimping or sexual services -- puhleeze!), there is definitely a good bit of truth amid the stuff.

For example, I read somewhere else -- can't remember where now, but it was before Bowers's book came out -- the mention of "a gas station that wasn't really a gas station" for hookups in LA.

Some of it rings very true, like the part about James Dean being nasty and unhappy. And the stories about Spencer Tracy and Hepburn both being gay, and Laughton being off-the-scale perverse, have always been around.

It's probably like Ken Anger's books -- truth and exaggeration mixed into a salacious salad.

But I'm pretty sure that at the time his daughter is supposed to have died from a botched abortion, it was post-Roe vs. Wade, and abortions were legal everywhere. So that struck me as bizarre.

R44 Oddly enough, "I used to be a WHORE WHO SUCKED COCK FOR CASH!" books are not a hugely attractive idea to very old people who have children, grandchildren, and friends.

[quote]made some stuff up (especially that he never took money for his pimping or sexual services -- puhleeze!)

I think that was done on the advice of lawyers, as it would be admitting a crime.

[quote] I have a problem believing that all those high powered stars relied on Scotty Bowers to provide them.

But they did. Scotty was THE biggest pimp in Hollywood. He didn't take cash. He took real estate. I read the book and even I have to admit that some of it seemed far-fetched but I believe Scotty. He just never seems to have had a care about whom he had sex with, and he started real young.

He was well-known in the movie colony. There's that great story about Lucille Ball slapping him at a party because he was setting Desi up with girls.

There has always been someone like Scotty in Hollywood. His name pops up in a lot of books about La La Land.

Anyone who makes sex the focal point of their entire life has to be a sexual compulsive- and a compulsive liar.

A liar because it takes a lot of trickery to get the sex you need. Just like any addict.

And here it is:

One night at a Hollywood party Bowers was working as a bartender, Ball showed up in an evening gown. ”Lucille came striding over to me…stopped in front of the bar, glared at me for a second or two, and then…Wham!

She slapped me in the face and yelled ‘You! You stop pimping for my husband, y’hear!’ “

Turns out that Lucy — not a small woman, and one who could deliver quite a wallop — had apparently been monitoring Desi’s phone calls to Bowers, and knew all about her husband’s extra curricular sexual escapades.

“I know exactly who you are, mister!, she shouted. You’re the infamous Scotty Bowers. Get out and stay out of my husband’s life.”

Desi, who had witnessed the confrontation along with other stunned guests, is described as being in shock. No one said a word as Lucille stood there glaring at me, her chin thrust out, her eyes on fire.

Lucille Ball’s 20-year-marriage to Desi Arnaz ended in divorce three years after I Love Lucy concluded its initial CBS run in 1957, and six years after Eleanor Harris’ book was published.

What a dope Lucy was. Did she really think that all she had to do was threaten Desi's pimp and he would stop cheating on her? Men always find a way if that's what they want. And all kinds of woman were probably throwing themselves at Desi 24/7 anyway. He hardly needed a pimp.

Maybe so, r49, but the statute of limitations has to have run out on his activities sometime in the 80s. And saying he pimped out of the goodness of his heart just undermines his plausibility.

[quote]he pimped out of the goodness of his heart

He was paid handsomely.

Saying he "never took money" is not the same thing as saying he didn't get paid.

I think I read a few months ago someone from that time said it was true but I can't remember who it was.

Wasn't it Walter Pidgeon who was his first Hollywood Star? Then George Cukor found out about him and the whole thing just took off and went into overdrive.

One would expect such a book to be a salacious page turner; instead it was a dreary snooze.

Yeah, from what I read about it, it sounded dumb and gross. Probably a bit of truth with a lot of exaggeration and lies

I bet the DLers would love for Scotty to do the 'swizzle stick trick' now.

Only the first part of his pimping career was based at the gas station. After that, to think that all of this pimping/coordinating took place not from his house, without his wife's knowledge, and at a time way before there were cell phones? What did he do, borrow people's land lines all the time? Use payphones?

The part I found hard to believe was Kate Hepburn's allegedly ravenous need for tricks. He said she had hired something like 400 girls from him over the years. He said she had a type but i can't remember what it was.

Nothing worse than gay gossip on a gay gossip site.

Hepburn was asexual. The whole Spencer Tracy thing was concocted to hide that.

Wish he had been more forthcoming and spilled more tea in the book.

Everyone he tricked with was basically described as a wonderful person. Also, I was annoyed how he insisted he tricked and set up all these people with escorts for free. He acts like he was doing charity work out of the goodness of his heart.

The part about his childhood molestation by the neighbor and servicing all the priests, and then says he is forver greatful to them for showing him about sex. So creepy.

Also, he treated his family and wife like trash so he could whore around.

[quote] "Anti climatic"

Oh, dear, R11.

I think the Hepburn stuff sounds like utter bullshit, too. In the William Mann book, try as he might he couldn't really connect her closely with women, and when he did in some way they were intelligent people. I do not think she would talk to Scotty, let alone hire hundreds of girls for sex.

Ditto R68. I never believe stories like that involving hundreds...... because someone would have come forward by now with a tell all.

People who automatically doubt Scotty's stories simply because they sound implausible clearly know nothing about the movie and TV industry in L.A.. The bigger the star the more fantastical desires and experiences are offered to them, by those who want to make money off them, and those who simply want to know they had some involvement in some big star's personal life. Movie and TV stars are magnets for people who want some little taste of that world, if even on the fringes of it.

Don't be such doubting Thomases. Trust me, some people lead very different lives than you and some stars do things in private most people would be shocked to know they do.

R70, For example? Can you enlighten us?

r70 Yes, and they don't hire gas station attendants. Okay, maybe he fucked a star or two, but the rest of his story is pure bullshit.

The people who actually provide these services do not 'kiss and tell.' I knew a NY male escort agency owner who said he sooner jump off a high rise rather than reveal his client list. The fakers like Bowers are the ones who lie and make money at it.

The last thing Scotty saw at the bar before Lucy walloped him.

Nowadays he looks like a lesbian poet Provincetown year-rounder.

It'll happen to you too toots.

[quote]The part about his childhood molestation by the neighbor and servicing all the priests, and then says he is forver greatful to them for showing him about sex. So creepy.

I thought it was creepy, too. Like reading Michael Jackson's mind.

But all that molestation as a young child would also explain his sexual obsession as an adult.

Fine R72, you be happy in your little insular non eventful life where you don't believe anything unless you can see it for yourself. Stupid is as stupid does.

R77, you are a loon.

Pardon me, but do you have any of that Gray Poop-On?

Hepburn was not a socialite. She was a curmudgeon hermit. She famously shunned going to the Oscar ceremonies and she stuck a sign on her house that told people to go away. She was a very shrewd woman and I don't see her getting her sex mates from a gas station attendant. If George Cukor wrote that he procured women for Hepburn, I would believe it. If one of her costume assistants or hair and makeup people said it, I might believe it. But I just don't believe that Bowers procured any women for Hepburn. She was too private of a person to use someone like him.

Agree @ R80. He was too low brow for haughty Kate. And going to a gas station to get laid? Nevah!

The question I have is why did they trust Bowers? How could they be sure he wasn't feeding information to Hedda Hopper? Many of them were fiercely protective about their reputations. What if the general public knew Rock Hudson was gay in the early 1960s? His career would have been over. If RH was getting men from Bowers, what was his guarantee that Bowers wouldn't leak damaging information?

God you people really are incredibly naive.

Still a loon.

[quote]“Old Hollywood people who have, shall we say, known him would tell me stories,” said Matt Tyrnauer, a writer for Vanity Fair and the director of the 2008 documentary “Valentino: The Last Emperor.” “But whenever I followed up on what would obviously be a great story, I was told, ‘Oh, he’ll never talk.’ ”

R44, the main reason the ho's aren't writing books is because most of them only fucked one or two stars. And that's not enough material for a book. Somebody like Bowers, on the other hand, had a variety of experiences with multitudes. That's a book's worth of material.

I dont disbelieve what he says, Also the gas station thing was only in the early years and the sex took place I think he said in a mobile home parked behind the station or offsite. You have to remember it was the late 40 s and gay sex particularly in the film industry had to be kept strictly under wraps. And the escorts werent gas station attendants really, they were people Bowers knew from the service or had met in los angeles. He had a good body, great face, and was very well endowed apparently, a cannot beat combination. Still, his personal life sounded kind of sterile and awful to me. I think he said in the book the hollywood hills house is his in life tenancy and then is deeded after his death to the actor Corbin Benson, oddly enuf.

Read the book when it came out. Many of the people he talks about have already been runoured gay, lesbian, bi, promiscuous or whatever over the years anyway - so not a lot of big surprises.

And although some of the tales seem unlikely - many ring true as well. But after so many years - who is to say Bower’s memory isn’t a little fuzzy on the details as well? I fucked some slightly famous (in their respective profession type guys) over the years - and i’m hard pressed to remember much of the detail twenty or thirty years up the line. As for the less well known fucks - it’s all just bit of a blur really. I wasn’t bad looking when young - and almost as promiscuous as Bowers ;)

One thing though - disagree with the poster who said the book was boring! If you like Old Hollywood and know anything about it and enjoy hearing stories about that era - it’s fascinating stuff!

I passed my copy onto my 94yo father who saw it lying around - he thought it was a hoot! - and promptly passed it into a half a dozen of the old guys he plays bridge with - who were equally enthralled. They didn’t lend it to any of the women at the bridge club though as it was deemed far too rude and salacious for the “ladies” there. I think Charles Laughton was the dealbreaker. Lol!

Pity tho - I reckon some of those old biddies would have loved it ;)

SCOTTY .... IS HE STILL ALIVE? ... and yes the corbin benson connection is also related to them having been neighbors for years up laural canyon. beekman drive?

Watch the documentary, it's riveting.

Among all the "Old Hollywood" Sex revelations you also get a glimpse of Scotty in action from some clips of a stag film he shot privately also, Jennifer Aniston was one of his tenants at that house in Laurel Canyon. And Corbin Bernsen.

That's about as interesting as it gets

According to Debbie Reynolds in one of her last books, Milton Berle hired Scotty to be a special waiter to liven up his parties. Scotty would walk around carrying a covered serving dish, and when a guest lifted the lid they would find his cock dressed as a log of pate surrounded by parsley and crackers.

Debbie, who hated Uncle Miltie, wrote she thought it was crude. But I bet she laughed like a hyena the first time she saw it.

He was hot snatch in his heyday.

Dear God, thank you for letting him live.

scotty is 94yrs old now. whats with the morons on this site who say he is lying about stuff? idiots . ... just read his wiki pedia. both gore vidal and raymond burrs long time lover say scotty is very truthful. all factual. that gas station at 5777 santa monica blvd but have been hot. and alot of fun

I love all this Millennial hanky-waving and handwringing about his lack of "empathy" and how sorry they feel for him....Grow up, you little fuckwads! He was hot and loved sex and provided lots of people with guilt-free sex at a time when gay sex was a crime....Why WOULDN'T even snooty Katharine Hepburn have turned to him for tricks????

Yeah, yeah, yeah, who cares what that OLD slut has to say. It's all ancient history.

R94

Someone's bio of either Hepburn or Cukor alluded to or touched upon Spencer Tracy's bi- or homo-sexuality and that Tracy's type was gas-station attendants and rough trade. Tracy's wife was a drunk but he wouldn't leave her (the Catholicism) and he lived in Cukor's guesthouse so he had a trick pad on the grounds of one of old 1940's Homo Hollywood's gayest places. I think Tracy and Hepburn's affection for each other was real enough but not that it was sexual. More like "cuddles" because he had a drinking problem, too.

I saw the documentary, "Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood" that came out last year and found him credible. Just as I believed the stories about Cukor's wartime Sunday afternoon parties where much dick was sucked. There's a lot of secret history that had to be kept secret back then. Dominick Dunne wrote (in code) about it in "The Way We Lived Then" and later, shortly before he died, more openly. I can totally see getting rent boys at a gas station right after the war through someone like Scotty who was not going to run to Hedda or Louella and that someone was Scotty. Just as I can see boys just back from WWII in LA who might not have had too many marketable skills but who also weren't going back to Kansas when they saw how much getting their dicks sucked paid. Twenty five or fifty dollars from the likes of Walter Pidgeon was a week's pay in 1945-46.

We judge things from the perspective of our own time and place and think if it isn't happening now, it wasn't happening then. It was. It was just on the DL to a degree that's unimaginable today.

I loved his book....it was a little unfair to tarnish the deceased stars reputations perhaps, but it certainly seemed like an amazing life. And Gore vidal backed him up on it. And it seemed to be info that was out there if you searched hard enough anyways. Great book...I'd love to meet him.

R37 I will never use Nutella again now ! The association has been planted in my mind!!

Need to read

I think much of it is true and much of it is the foggy memories of a very old man who believes a lot of the fabricated legends he's been telling for decades. I've read the book and it is just too sunshiney to swallow completely.

If it helps, r98, according to the book Charles Laughton put lettuce and tomato on his shit sandwiches.

Your Nutella is safe again.

to the person that said they didnt believe the book because the daughter had an illegal abortion after abortion was legalized...............sweetheart, your knowledge of history is off. She died from the abortion in 1969 and roe versus wade was 1973, Capisce? Additionally a lot of non believers on the Katherine Hepburn story? I think they are getting her image in movies of being rather east coast classy mixed up with real life? To me she seems very lesbiany.................I will say tho, Scotty s life seems a little bit sad and creepy to me, but just my gut reaction............too one dimensional regarding sex I guess I would say. But I will give him credit for having no real marketable skills after his military service and capitalizing on what he was good at............kudos for that

OP is a Grade A Pearl Clutcher

A couple of the bars near my apartment serve martinis with bits of Roquefort cheese crumbled inside, the fraus love it. So I guess his swizzle stick trick was a precursor to the cheese martini.

Jesus R104, that is REALLY disgusting.

That said, maybe he could call the drink a Smegmartini.