Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood

My immediate reaction was to get wrapped up in the scandalous tell-all book Full Service authored by Scotty Bowers, the subject of this documentary. The reality is that not much screen time is devoted to the juicy details of his book, which I have not read; and quite honestly, I don't find much of it truly shocking. I'm 60 years old as I write this, and I promise you that I knew at 15 years old that Hollywood was never, ever what it wanted the world to think it was and that the people who it represented were getting it on with anyone and anything if only because they could.

About halfway through the film, I became interested in the complexity of other issues touched upon:

hoarding hypersexual/nymphomania psychological denial PTSD, especially associated with war Puritanical ideology distrust

The big topic in reviews is the question whether Scotty Bowers was entirely truthful. It's a legitimate point of view and one I won't bother debating. In the end, it truly doesn't matter because almost everyone he references in the film has been dead for some time now and therefore has no voice to explain and vehemently deny what's presented.

Regardless, I personally conclude that Scotty Bowers was obsessed with sex.

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.

I'm a huge fan of classic Hollywood. Watch movies, consume documentaries, listen to podcasts, and read books on the subject. I was looking forward to this documentary, having heard so much about it. Not particularly well made nor revealing. Really, more a portrait of this one man than it is about Hollywood - and since I didn't find Scotty particularly interesting or likable, I turned it off.

Watch The Celluloid Closet instead.

So apparently there was a steady line of randy Hollywoodsters taking advantage of a hedonistic drive-thru emporium at the local gas station. Wow. An effervescent and constantly smiling nonagenarian hustler Scotty Bowers says so. And the facts do too.

The sheer number of A-list stars and starlets named, and their varied sexual preferences sounds shocking even by today's unshockable standards. But when presented so matter-of-factly, and with such fondness by the charismatic Scotty Bowers, it all seems perfectly alright.

Seems there was more to the post war than just a baby boom. Waiting to protect their secrets, Scotty finally published his racy memoirs after his customers had passed, and now much of it is documented in this film. When asked if outing someone posthumously is kosher, Scotty asks, "what's wrong with being gay, baby?" Indeed.

Besides an endless stream of tabloid fodder tales, this documentary focuses on a very complex character. Someone whose free formed attitude towards sex is at both times bewildering and very refreshing, has a crackerjack memory and lust for life as he approaches the century mark, but also shows hints of hidden sadness. Scotty is a complicated man, who has lived a wild life, made many people very happy, but seems to be missing something. Baby.

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.