‘CRAZY’ TERRIFIC
There’s no question what will bring most people to “Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood” — the gossip. And it’s prime-choice gossip. A threesome with Ava Gardner and Lana Turner? Check. Providing male lovers for Spencer Tracy and female lovers for Katharine Hepburn — neither of who ever actually slept together, evidently, instead putting up the ruse of an adulterous relationship? Check. A string of men — 15 in all — for Cole Porter, all at once? Check. Those claims are here, and more.
Consider the title of the book Scotty Bowers, the Scotty of the title, wrote: “Full Service: My Adventures and the
Secret Sex Lives of the Stars,” on which Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary is based. Bowers, a Marine in World War II who fought his way through
horrible battles, went to work in a gas station in Los Angeles afterwards and began providing sex for people — just about anything for $20. (And no, he doesn’t consider himself a pimp. He didn’t take any payment for his services from his “employees.”)
But there’s more to the film than lurid stories, though there are an awful lot of lurid stories. It’s also a story of closeted Hollywood, of a time when anything more than whispers about homosexuality could ruina career, or worse. The studios, with a desperate fear of losing audiences, fueled this with incredibly oppressive control over their talent.
Running underneath it all is the question of what makes Bowers, still alive and telling stories in his 90s, tick. He’s a hedonist in the extreme; at one point in the film Bowers talks about why William H. Masters, the gynecologist and sexuality researcher, liked him so much. It was because when he filled out the form asking which sexual experiences a subject has had, Bowers could check off all of them. of them (thankfully whatever his experiences with animals were — one of the items checked — aren’t examined).
Bowers is positively gleeful about all of it. His wife, who didn’t know about Bowers’ past when she married him, putters around mostly in the background. But Bowers talks about anything and everything with everyone.
Yet he also talks about what by any standards is extreme sexual abuse at the hands of a neighbor when he was a child. He doesn’t call it that. In fact he doesn’t think there was anything wrong with it. How must this have affected him?
Tyrnauer doesn’t answer that question, and neither does Bowers, who is far more interested in talking about the good times. Some of the stories have been talked about for years — were Cary Grant and Randolph Scott more than roommates? Others may not be as well known. All of them pose the question of whether Bowers should be dishing like he does when they’re not around to defend their version of the stories.
Bowers has a go-to response for that: Everyone in Hollywood knew. “Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood” is a fascinating and undeniably irresistible look into that world. You just feel a little dirty about enjoying it.