Full Service (28 page)

The door to the bedroom led to a small entry hall. We silently inched our way into it and stopped. Sure enough, the music was coming from within the bedroom itself. We continued into the room and there, at the foot of the bed, was a very ornate burial casket with the lid wide open. It was perched on top of a metal gurney. This was surrounded by an array of bouquets of roses and a burning candelabra. It was a magnificent, eerie sight. The music was coming from a speaker in the ceiling. Heavy drapes shielded the room from the last light of day outside. My companion seemed to have shed her fear and was intrigued. She had never seen a coffin before. Gingerly she made her way over to the casket and peered inside. Stretched out on the soft silk padding lay John, completely nude and sporting a very healthy looking hard-on.

As soon as the girl bent over to take in this apparition John’s eyes flashed wide open, he roared with laughter, and then quickly jerked himself off. That’s what John was into . . . surprising women and then jerking off while in a casket. He was so hot and ready when the girl walked into the room that he came right away.

Of course, this odd little performance was always followed by John placating the lady, then fixing her a drink. As the shock of her experience wore off John got dressed and then took her out to a fancy restaurant for dinner. The night always ended with John bringing her back home and screwing the daylights out of her.

The day after I had taken Faye or Felicité or whatever the young damsel’s name was up there she reported back and told me that, as far as she was concerned, it was one of the most thrilling evenings she had ever experienced. Apparently they had had wild sex in bed, on the floor, and even in the open casket. She begged me to arrange another date for her with John, but for some odd reason he didn’t request her again. I never found out why. Over the years he asked me for many more women and he always greeted them in the same devilishly surprising way. But he never saw the same woman more than two or three times. John liked variety almost as much as he liked scare tactics.

I
N THE MIDFIFTIES
I began to do gigs at parties at the home of one of Hollywood’s hottest male stars, Rock Hudson. I had first met him in 1946 or 1947 at the gas station where he became a regular customer. He was an incredibly handsome actor who came from a humble background. Under the protective guidance and tutelage of his gay agent Henry Willson, he became the quintessential Hollywood superstar. After leaving school Rock had no idea what he was going to do with his life. He started out working for the postal service and then served as an airplane mechanic during the war. After moving to Hollywood from his native Illinois he was discovered by Henry, who I knew from my days bartending at the 881 Club. Henry got the young unknown Roy Harold Scherer to get his teeth capped, take acting lessons, and change his name to Rock Hudson.

In 1955, at about the time I began to do parties for him, Rock starred in George Stevens’s epic
Giant,
playing opposite Elizabeth Taylor and the youngest golden boy of Hollywood, James Dean. Rock’s tall height, dark good looks, and refined deep voice allowed him to play not only romantic leads but also characters who represented the very essence of strong, virile masculinity. Yet Rock was one hundred percent gay, a fact that Henry Willson, aided by sophisticated studio publicity machinery and an army of gatekeepers, managed to conceal from the media and from his adoring fans right up until the time he died from AIDS in 1985. Rock’s homosexuality was one of the longest and most closely guarded secrets in Hollywood, helped along by his three-year marriage, starting in 1955, to Phyllis Gates. Phyllis was a very nice person and one hundred percent lesbian. I knew her well. Over the years I arranged many tricks for her. She liked her female sex partners slim, dark-haired, and young.

Phyllis had been Henry Willson’s secretary and her marriage to Rock was conjured up to create the illusion of a happy heterosexual marriage. When they went away on “honeymoon” the media was fed an endless supply of photographs of the young couple holding hands, dining in restaurants, cuddling on the dance floor, swimming in pools, and appearing head over heels in love with one another, whereas in actual fact nothing was further from the truth. They slept in separate beds in separate rooms and never had anything remotely close to a physical relationship. They couldn’t help being who they were, of course. The phony marriage must have been hell for them both. Rock had a voracious, almost uncontrollable sexual appetite. Over the years he engaged in extremely promiscuous behavior, and at a certain point he started becoming a little reckless. As time went by, he drank more and more. Depending on who his lover was at the time, Rock and his partner could each polish off a bottle of scotch in an evening. He once asked me, “Scotty, how do you do it? How do you manage to resist booze the way you do? What the hell’s wrong with you?”

I would always answer by saying that I valued my life too much to take unnecessary risks with it. Rock would simply pooh-pooh my remarks and laughingly dismiss them.

He also began to smoke heavily, finishing a couple of packs of cigarettes in a day. In later years he cruised the streets every night, picking up vagabonds, strangers, and young men all over town at two or three o’clock in the morning and taking them home for sex. What’s more, he tried everything, engaging in potentially dangerous activities without adequate protection long after AIDS broke out. It was heartbreaking to see him literally destroy himself the way he did.

Rock had a beautiful home on Beverly Crest, just off Coldwater Canyon in Beverly Hills. After he wrapped production on
Giant
with director George Stevens back in 1955 he threw a big party, attended by both cast and crew. I was bartending. Everyone from the movie was there with the exception of James Dean, who had been killed in an automobile accident just before production was completed.

“Pity Jimmy Dean’s not here,” I said to Rock.

“Fuck him!” Rock replied. “I wouldn’t have wanted that little prick near my house.”

And then it all came out. Rock and James Dean became bitter enemies on the set of
Giant
. They didn’t care for one another at all.

I had already learned that Dean was a difficult young man, not at all pleasant to be around. Granted, he was a very pretty boy and he had a lot of sex appeal. There was also an air of mystery about him and when he walked into a room conversation instantly ceased and all heads turned. People were mesmerized by him. However, beneath the facade he was a prissy little queen, moody and unpredictable. Although he had a few romantic flings with women he was essentially gay. On one occasion he was at a party where I was bartending at the home of businessman Ozz Francesca in Larchmont, near Hancock Park. Ozzie was a terrific guy, originally from Brazil. Though gay he had a wife and daughter. His parties were always opulent, expensive affairs. Through his gay connections Ozzie knew Jimmy Dean well. I saw Jimmy saunter into the party that evening, mope around the room puffing on a cigarette, looking decidedly bored and gloomy. Then, for no apparent reason, he dropped his cigarette on the floor and stubbed it out on a very fancy carpet. I immediately dashed out of the room, grabbed a brush, pan, and vacuum cleaner and made a big fuss of cleaning up the damage. I had no idea why he did that and he just glared at me. Later that same evening he snapped his fingers and demanded some champagne. Ozzie always served only the best and so I opened a bottle of Dom Perignon, poured out a glass, and brought it over to Jimmy. He snatched the glass from me without saying a word, took one sip, pulled a face, and poured it out on the floor.

“Ugh! Don’t like it,” he sneered. “Bring me something else.”

As you can tell, he was a very unpleasant young man and he didn’t do much to hide that fact. His devil-may-care recklessness, his attitude of defiance, and his antisocial behavior were well known. He was notorious among his peers, friends, and female and male lovers. Frankly, I wasn’t surprised when he slammed into an oncoming vehicle while speeding in his Porsche on a quiet regional Californian road in September 1955. He was only twenty-four years old and we were all deeply saddened by his death but, frankly speaking, it was only a matter of time before Jimmy did himself in. He was his own worst enemy.

Someone else who was in many ways like Jimmy Dean was the actor Montgomery Clift. Monty was a temperamental, moody queen with a surprisingly vicious tongue. He wouldn’t hesitate to hurt or offend anyone. He was hard to please and was very dismissive of people. Like Jimmy, Monty always acted a little superior—“grand” is a better word—and hard to get. He was unbearably snobbish. Both he and Jimmy looked down their noses at people, no matter who they were. To them I’m sure I was nothing more than a simpleton bartender and, therefore, worthy of scorn. The difference between the two of them was that Monty relied on me for many of his tricks, whereas Jimmy always had a bevy of boys and girls chasing after him. I guess it would be accurate to say that Jimmy was bisexual whereas Monty was completely gay. Monty was painfully fussy about his lovers. He was extremely fastidious about who he took to bed with him, often for the strangest reason.

“His prick was an inch too long,” he once said to me after I had gone out of my way to find the perfect trick for him.

On other occasions if it wasn’t that a prick was too long then it was an inch too short, or the guy’s hair was not parted properly, or his feet were too small, or his toes too bony. There was always something wrong. Monty was never satisfied. I continued to provide him with tricks until he finished filming
Judgment at Nuremberg
with director Stanley Kramer, in 1961, after which he left L.A. to settle in New York. I cannot say that I regretted seeing him leave town.

After my days at the gas station were over I fixed up a lot of tricks for Anthony Perkins. Tony was an intense, sensitive, complex man. I was extremely fond of him. He projected an air of nervous vulnerability and was extremely popular as an actor. Although Tony was married with two kids he was gay. His longest gay relationship was with Tab Hunter but he saw many men. I tricked him myself on numerous occasions. Like Monty, Tony was very fussy about who he saw. He always wanted “someone different.”

“Who’ve you got who’s
different,
Scotty?” he would ask. “Who do you have for me for tomorrow night that will surprise me? Anything really
new
?”

Tony lived up in Laurel Canyon and always insisted that his wife of nineteen years, Berry Berenson, a photographer and the actress Marisa Berenson’s sister, never knew about his philandering and his double life.

Roddy McDowall was another guy I came to know well and who, like Jimmy and Monty, usually went around with his nose up in the air. He often used to stay at the Chateau Marmont Hotel simply because it was one of the places to be seen in those days. Roddy was born in Britain in 1928 and became a child star at the age of ten. He became known to American audiences as the tender young boy in the classic 1941 film
How Green Was My Valley,
playing opposite Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara, Anna Lee, and Donald Crisp. I often fixed up tricks for Roddy. Like Montgomery Clift he always wanted someone new, someone different, someone he hadn’t had sex with before. And, like Monty, he was excessively fussy and hard to please.

Whenever I arranged what I believed was a perfect trick for him he would always come back and say, “You know, Scotty, he was fine but . . .”

And then he would recite a long list of what he didn’t like about the guy.

“Too thin, too fat, too young, too old, too tanned, too smooth, too hairy.”

Roddy was addicted to amyl nitrate, a concoction better known as “poppers.” Back in the fifties and sixties amyl nitrate came in little glass ampoules, packaged in a box with a yellow wrapping. It was available at any pharmacy because it was originally developed as a vasodilator to treat angina by lowering blood pressure. A user broke open the ampoule and snorted the contents. Roddy used to sniff the contents to get high in order to increase neural—or sexual—sensation. I tricked Roddy regularly and before we had sex he always wanted to snort his beloved popper. But he never wanted to be seen buying the stuff, so he often sent me over to the drugstore to purchase it for him. I had many great nights of intense sex with him at the Chateau Marmont.

Eventually Roddy left town, spending time in New York City and England, working as an actor in movies and onstage. I didn’t see or hear from him for about a year or two, until, one night, I was bartending at a boisterous gay party in Hollywood. Roddy walked in and the host immediately went over to him, welcomed him, and walked him around the room, introducing him to all the guests.

Eventually they came over to me at the bar and the host said, “And of course you
must
know Scotty Bowers, don’t you?”

Although there was an unmistakable sign that he recognized me right away Roddy thrust his hand out and, in the most pretentious and obnoxious way, said, “No, I don’t believe I do. How do you do? My name’s Roddy.”

And then he sauntered off. I couldn’t believe it. After I’d bedded him at least a couple of dozen times and spent long nights with him, he pretended that he didn’t know me!

B
y the late fifties and early sixties, I had friends all over town. Four of them were the administrative heads of one of the top hotels in Hollywood, the famous Roosevelt, located directly across the street from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Tommy Hull was the owner of the hotel, Deb Nelson was the manager, John Kirsch was the assistant manager, and a guy whose name I can only recall as Pat was the house detective. Those four men were essential to my activities in organizing tricks for the rich and famous. The Roosevelt was a great venue for a weekend of tricking. It was chic, exclusive, and very private. The fact that Deb and John were gay made it all the easier for me to bring gays and dykes there. Even though Tommy and Pat were straight they, too, happily cooperated. They were very discrete and respected their guests without question or hesitation. All I had to do was pick up the phone and tell them that I had a special guest coming. This was the coded term we used for any VIP I was going to be checking into the hotel. One of my regulars, who I always put up at the Roosevelt whenever he came into town, was the sixty-something heir to the famous banking empire, Albert Rothschild. He had homes in New York City, Sicily, and in Ojai, California. Whenever he came to L.A. he would call me up ahead of time and I’d have Deb, Tommy, and John arrange a large secluded suite on the top floor of the hotel for him. Pat, the house detective, would be alerted and it was his job to ensure that adequate security arrangements were in place. Everything was done very quickly, very efficiently, and very hush-hush. Once Albert had been brought into the hotel through a side door and ensconced in his suite I would pay him a visit and he would give me his list of requirements.