Description
Product Description
Newly discharged from the Marines after World War II, Scotty Bowers arrived in Hollywood in 1946. Young, charismatic, and strikingly handsome, he quickly caught the eye of many of the towns 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, Noø«l 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 Hollywoods 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 th
Review
I have known Scotty Bowers for the better part of a century. I’m so pleased that he has finally decided to tell his story to the world. His startling memoir includes great figures like Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. Scotty doesn't liethe stars sometimes doand he knows
everybody.”Gore Vidal
Mr. Bowers, 88, recalls his highly unorthodox life in a ribald memoir . . . [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. . . . [A] lot of what Mr. Bowers has to say is pretty shocking. . . .
Full Service at the very least highlights how sharply the rules of engagement for reporting celebrity gossip have changed. . . . [I]t’s much harder to keep details as salacious as the ones Mr. Bowers outlines under wraps.”
Brooks Barnes, New York Times
"A jaw-dropping firsthand account of closeted life in Hollywood during the '40s and '50s. The wholesome image of the postwar American family was acted, written, directed, and designed by people for whom such a life was never possible and Bowers writes about their pain and brilliance with the childlike wonder of Chauncey Gardiner. Turner Classic Movies will never quite look the same."Griffin Dunne, Actor/Director
[Scotty Bowers] made his reputation by sleeping with everyone in Hollywood who wasn’t actually Lassie, and now he tells all. If you ever suspected that Spencer Tracy was bisexual and Tyrone Power a coprophiliac, and if you happen to believe everything you read, here is all the testimony you require.”Anthony Lane,
The New Yorker
[Q]uel scandale!”
Vanity Fair
This handsome ex-Marine and his friendly gas station have long been alluded to in Hollywood memoirs. And now, at last, they go public.”Janet Maslin,
The New York Times
The book is like a 286-page gossip column from Hollywood’s golden ageit names all the names and spills all the secrets. Bowers was a . . . free-love advocate far ahead of his time who claimed Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Edith Piaf and the Duke of Windsor (to mention just a few) as lovers.”
W Magazine, February’s Most Wanted”
[A] tell-all book . . . .Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, George Cukor, Katharine Hepburn and Vivien Leigh are among those named by Bowers, now 88. . . . Younger readersat least those raised in the Internet and TMZ agemay find nearly as shocking the fact that the stories were squelched by studio publicists and remained largely under wraps back in the day.”
Chicago Tribune
Connoisseurs of lurid tell-alls and the golden age of Hollywood will almost certainly be entranced by
Full Service.”
The Atlantic Wire
The Scotty I knew was a guy who always seemed to be enjoying his life working morning, noon and night, with never a gripe; always with a smile to greet you, and never with an axe to grind. After a lifetime in Hollywood, that’s a remarkable feat and its own kind of Zen.”David Patrick Columbia,
New York Social Diary
"They said
Features
- sex scandals and escapades in hidden Hollywood