Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars

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Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars is a 2012 " tell-all" book about the sex lives of Hollywood stars from the late 1940s to the early 1980s by Scotty Bowers, with Lionel Friedberg as a contributing author. I also did not need to know that the designer of the original Barbie was into surprising young women while fondling himself in a casket. So one should dip into "Full Service" as not as if it was true or not (does that really matter) but the fact that one can go into Scotty Bowers world with a full appreciation of a life that was well-designed and in many ways beautiful. There are certain chapters in this gloriously naive autobiography that I would be happy never to read or think of again, such as the very long passages devoted to Charles Laughton's disinclination to good sexual hygiene, or to his fondness for a sandwich spread that resembles—yet definitely is not—Nutella.

Just finished FULL SERVICE: an autobiographical account of Scotty Bowers, US Marine Core, below; a Hollywood barman and Mr Fix It (but not pimp) when it came to discrete `no-strings` sexual fun in the film making mecca. The theme of the whole thing is, “well, that’s sex for ya…intense, a bit sad, but, y’gotta admit, it’s a real hoot!Scotty Bowers moved to LA after World War Two and spent years as a bartender, confidant and gigolo to a host of Hollywood icons. Still, I didn’t like to hear it, and I didn’t think my lesbian friends should be disrespected this way. It is "Scotty Bowers"– a name that had me thinking of the Bowers who perished with the great, gloomy Scott 100 years ago in the Antarctic; if only our author had been in that tent. This handsome ex-Marine and his friendly gas station have long been alluded to in Hollywood memoirs.

Again, I don't know that we get to label other people's experiences, but what I can say is that reading about the ones Bowers describes was uncomfortable in the worst imaginable ways. The documentary is still crass, of course, but maybe spending less time soaking in the filth makes it easier to wash off afterwards.

According to Full Service the studios would all but empty of their big-name talent whenever Scotty Bowers' evening shift began at a little gas station on Hollywood Boulevard. But then again the well oiled publicity machines that operated to maintain a stars light shinning in the eyes of the American public would never have allowed their cash machine actors and actresses from being exposed, unless they were really stupid or stubbornly hedonistic, or both? I suppose the bottom line is that the book was vetted before it was published - so what absolutely couldn't be said, hasn't been said. In so doing he exposes Hollywood's double standards: showbusiness relied on gay people and gay actors to make huge fortunes and create masterpieces and yet t it completely covered up and cancelled any hint of homosexuality, bisexuality and difference, instead portraying and propmoting the homogenisation of love and lust. On the other hand, Bowers is comfortable with his sexuality and probably doesn't even have the feeling that anything he has done is wrong.