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. Scotty doesn't lie - the stars sometimes do - and he knows everybody' - Gore Vidal '[A] juicy, filthy memoir.' - Guardian 'Full Service is a scandal fest, oozing salacious gossip in which Bowers... recalls where who did what to whom and how.' - Sunday Telegraph 'This handsome ex-Marine and his friendly gas station have long been alluded to in Hollywood memoirs. And now, at last, they go public.' - The New York Times 'Scotty Bowers is the most honest person I've known, with the best memory for names and places I've ever seen. If he tells you that something happened to somebody, that's the way it was.' - Bob Benevides - one of the subjects of Full Service, L.A. Weekly
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 town’s 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, Noël 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 Hollywood’s 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 their stars’ personal lives differed dramatically from this family-friendly mold. As revelation-filled as Hollywood Babylon, Full Service provides a lost chapter in the history of the sexual revolution and is a testament to a man who provided sex, support, and affection to countless people.
Full Service is not only a fascinating chronicle of Hollywood’s 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 their stars’ personal lives differed dramatically from this family-friendly mold. As revelation-filled as Hollywood Babylon, Full Service provides a lost chapter in the history of the sexual revolution and is a testament to a man who provided sex, support, and affection to countless people.
