Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood

Scotty Bowers provided sexual partners for Hollywood's rich and famous he claims included Cary Grant, Randolph Scott, Ava Gardner, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Katharine Hepburn, and Spencer Tracy for years. The Matt Tyrnauer-directed documentary, 'Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood,' is a fascinating and undeniably irresistible look into that world. Entertaining as it is, the movie leaves its its documentary subject's surface mostly unscratched - not fully written.

"Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood" (2017 release; 98 min,) is a documentary about Scotty Bowers. As the movie opens, there is a celebration of Scotty's 90th birthday at the Chateau Marmont. We learn that Scotty just recently has written a memoir called "Full Service" (which is the basis for this film), in which he retells of the days right after WWII when he by happenstance became the "pimp" of gay and lesbian Hollywood, the "center of an alternative world", in which famous movie stars like Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn lived lives that were very different from their public personae, and calling on the services provided by Scotty. "Everything cost $20", Scotty laughs. Along the way we alo learn how today's Scotty has become a compulsive obsessive hoarder... At this point we're not even 15 min. into the movie, but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is the latest from up-and-coming documentarian Matt Tymauer, whose previous film was the excellent "Citizen Jane: Battle For the City". Here he picks up on a long unknown fact, namely how one guy became the Hollywood king-pimp starting in the late 40s. Tymauer tries to take that fait divers to build a documentary about "gays and lesbians in Hollywood" over the years. Yes, there are glimpses here and there (in particular as we get to the AIDS era), but overall it feels like this film is a missed opportunity to do an in-depth look at that topic. Instead, we get a close look on someone who seems like a nice enough guy, but it is as if he stands in the way of a far more important documentary. The fact that we get sidetracked by the compulsive hoarding behavior only reinforces that feeling...

"Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood" premiered at last year;s Toronto International Film Festival (yes, almost a year ago) to positive acclaim. The movie finally made it to my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati this weekend. The Sunday early evening screening where I saw this at was attended so-so (about 10 people). If you are in the mood for a documentary that is brought mostly with a light touch about how gays and lesbians got by in the Hollywood era of the 40 and 50s, I'd suggest you check this out, be it in the theater, on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray and draw your own conclusion.

Since I enjoyed the juicy, can't-put-it down book, I was disappointed in the film. Instead of focusing more on Bowers' rollicking sexual adventures in the '40s and '50s, the filmmaker spends much of the time focusing on the now 95 year old Bowers, and his wife, puttering around his multiple hoarder-cluttered homes.

The real story is about Bowers' star-studded sexual past, not his relatively downbeat present. The film should have been racy, fun and juicy, but it ends up being primarily glum.

Gossips about the film people in Los Angeles and their erotic delusions have always occupied the headlines. The sexual activities of people from all social levels at the end reveal: one, that bizarre appetites are everywhere; two, that we are victims of our own puritanism and debauchery; and three, that such news only arouses curiosity and little contributes to our lives. If not, consider what have you learned from the ignoble aspects of the lives of Marilyn, O.J. or Polanski.

The story of Scotty Bowers is film and literature material, without a doubt, and «Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood» proves it. It has become a documentary inspired by his biography «Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Life of the Stars.» All the surviving interviewees who personally knew Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, the Dukes of Windsor or Rock Hudson, confirm the revelations and affirm that Scotty does not lie. No salacious gossip in the style of Kenneth Anger in «Hollywood Babylon», which for a long time was the best-selling gossip book about film people.

At age 90, with most of his clientele already dead, Scotty published his account of sexual services offered to personalities of the L.A. movie industry (and other industries) and left the half-population of the city speechless. For being silly, if you ask me, for still believing in the Oscar, in Walt Disney and E.T. Before the camera, Scotty does not hide anything from his contemporary life, which he shared with singer Lois Bowers, who died in October 2018.

At the beginning of the movie, Scotty seemed an unpleasant person, simply because he calls a spade a spade. Then, I put aside my hypocritical self and let myself be guided by his humor, his strength to move on in 21st century L.A., for his love for Lois and his sincerity. Scotty does not hide anything about himself! From the abuse of his father in the country and the group of priests who used him as a child prostitute when he was growing up in Chicago, going through the interviews he gave to Dr. Alfred Kinsey about the sexual behavior of the average American male (and the orgies that he took him to see "the action" in the front row), until he got his job at a gas station in L.A. where he started connecting his friends with the stars, and he kept his first wife and daughter with his own body. The Hollywood anecdotes do not stop: all the girls he took to Hepburn, the nights spent with an undecided Spencer Tracy, George Cukor's gay parties, the threesomes with Lana Turner, Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra, his anecdotes of J. Edgar Hoover, Laurence Olivier, Walter Pidgeon, the secrets of the Duchess of Windsor, who held the reins of sexual mischief in their marriage...

The documentary follows the traditional structure of interviews, archival material, music, without forcing the viewer into a judgment about Scotty Bowers. There is no moralism here or pharisee positions. It is a dramatic portrait, perhaps sordid for some, of a man who forgives abuse, but who does not grasp it in all its dimensions. In spite of the humor, the vintage music and the images of the famous, it is a very moving portrait: the memories of family, the evidence of all the pain that he still does not recognize; the exaggerated and unhealthy accumulation of his memorabilia in different houses, the deterioration of his home, Lois's reluctance to know her husband's past, her nights singing in nightclubs while he lovingly watches her...

This is a revealing film, a humane, compassionate and open portrait that, as expected, was ignored by the Oscars, Globes, associations of critics, film-clubs and independent filmmakers.

Scotty Bauers' book about his business as a Hollywood procurer in his book, Full Service, is a prelude to this not-quite-salacious documentary about his life servicing the sexual needs of mid-century Hollywood elite, especially the gay ones. Although Scotty's personal life is disorganized and cluttered, his procuring activity as Hollywood's "pimp to the stars" was universally acclaimed by those who used his services.

Getting dates, or providing " an introduction service" as Scotty calls it, for the likes of Walter Pidgeon and George Cukor was all in a day's work for the Hollywood Blvd. Richfield Gas Station attendant he was while he arranged liaisons there and around town. This brief explanation of the documentary might make it seem juicy, but I assure you it is not quite that. Despite the cast of characters in need of same sex dates like Kate Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, most of Scotty's revelations are not new and hardly in depth.

Randolph Scott, Tyrone Power, Cole Porter, and Charles Laughton are among the others who used Scotty's services, including his own. His three-way adventure with sex goddesses Lana Turner and Ava Gardner is one of the more alluring bits of gossip, but again only a fleeting mention. Those limited details are what make this a superficial if not charming doc.

Most of the doc centers on Scotty, now 94, an impish gossip whose obvious aging seems the opposite of the well-kept elderly like Cary Grant, who appears several times as a young gay star guarding his orientation better than Rock Hudson. As Scotty shows us the dumpy houses where he stores his personal junk, this inveterate collector is just not that interesting; you'd think he must have some stars' memorabilia-not.

Although director Matt Trynauer jazzes it up with male frontal nudity and vintage Hollywood footage, Scotty's shuffling senescence lends the dusty mood of an old album full of his photos and too few of Hollywood stars. Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood guards those secrets too well for my adolescent-like curiosity.