HOLLY-RUDE
Real scandals behind Netflix’s Hollywood from ‘Mr Sex’ who fixed A-list orgies to Bond star fighting off mafia gangster
HE was known as 'Mr Sex', and in the golden age of Hollywood Scotty Bowers provided A-list stars with their own form of entertainment - through a gay prostitution racket run from a trailer in a petrol station.
The handsome ex-marine - who started his business after a liaison with actor Walter Pidgeon in 1946 - boasted legendary clients including Rock Hudson, Laurence Olivier and Katherine Hepburn, whom he claimed to have set up with 150 women.
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He arranged orgies for songwriter Cole Porter and had hundreds of sexual liaisons himself, including threesomes with legendary beauties Lana Turner and Ava Gardner, and separately with Cary Grant and his roommate Randolph Scott.
Bowers’ sex ring is just one of the real life scandals behind the new Netflix series Hollywood, based on the golden era of Tinseltown, in the wake of the Second World War.
The drama, released today, is written by Glee creator Ryan Murphy and unveils the many affairs and sexual liaisons of an era when ‘morality clauses’ were written into studio contracts and the casting couch was king.
Centred on fictional characters trying to make their way in the film industry, the show also includes real characters, including Pillow Talk star Rock Hudson and his agent Henry Willson, played by Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons.
From movie moguls who preyed on teenage ingenues to the scandal of Lana Turner’s gangster lover, stabbed to death by her teenage daughter, we take a look behind the glitz and glamour of Hollywood’s golden days.
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'Glory holes' in petrol station trailer
When Bowers first started “turning tricks” in Hollywood, in 1946, he had survived the depression and fought in World War II, but was struggling to make ends meet.
At 23, while working as a pump attendant at a petrol station on Hollywood Boulevard, he was approached by Oscar-winning actor Walter Pidgeon and the pair became lovers.
Finding sex with a star could earn him £12 a time – equivalent to £450 today – he soon set up a lucrative sideline, operating from his trailer at the petrol station where he first met Pidgeon.
Wannabe actors and prostitutes, both men and women, would be fixed up with the biggest names in the business in his specially adapted caravan, with two king-sized beds and a ‘glory hole’ in the bathroom – so that big stars didn't have to reveal their identity.
A movie takes a couple hours. I was busy every minute
Scotty Bowers
In his autobiography, Full Service, he claimed he had slept with so many screen stars he didn’t have time to see all their movies.
“A movie takes a couple hours. I was busy every minute,” he said.
When police started taking an interest in activity at the trailer, Bowers became a party 'bartender for rent', frequenting A-list Hollywood parties and using the job title as a cover to bring men and women to stars' homes for sex.
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Royal couple 'enjoyed variety and threesomes'
The movie industry of the 1940s and 50s relied on the romantic ‘ideal’ of a handsome leading man and glamorous leading lady.
Real-life heterosexual romances proved a goldmine at the box office but gay relationships were completely taboo, making Bowers’ discrete services sought after.
Bowers claims he arranged a hook up between North by Northwest star Cary Grant and Rock Hudson – who hid his homosexuality throughout his career, marrying his lesbian secretary Phyllis Gates, and died from AIDS in 1985.
He also claimed to have had sex with Grant and his roommate Randolph Scott - saying “the three of us got into a lot of sexual mischief together” - and Spencer Tracy, as well as setting up Oscar-winning star Katharine Hepburn with 150 different women.
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At the time, married Tracy was rumoured to be having an affair with Hepburn and, while an extramarital fling was deemed scandalous, studio publicists thought it better to link the long-time friends than reveal the real reason Tracy didn’t live with his wife Louise.
The list of Bowers' alleged clients was a Who's Who of Hollywood - including Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams, Vincent Price, Rita Hayworth, Noel Coward, Mae West, James Dean, Rock Hudson and Edith Piaf.
But perhaps the most shocking of his claims involve the former King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson.
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, as they were known after the King’s 1936 abdication, spent time at the Beverly Hills Hotel where Bowers says they engaged his services.
Bowers wrote that the couple “enjoyed variety,” adding,“Eddy liked a three-way with a girl, now and again… but his preference was definitely for the boys.”
Of “Wally”, he wrote: “Like her husband, she definitely preferred homosexual sex.”
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An ‘overcrowded brothel’
Marilyn Monroe once described Hollywood as an ‘overcrowded brothel’ and bed-hopping certainly seems to have been the favourite pastime of many of its stars.
Legendary star Joan Crawford had four husbands including matinee idol Douglas Fairbanks Jr, and numerous affairs including Clark Gable and a one night stand with Marilyn Monroe.
She was also an enthusiastic believer in sleeping her way to the top, targeting numerous directors and seducing them to land plum roles.
Vincent Sherman, the married director of her film The Damned Don't Lie, recalled how he slept with her after she made a beeline for him.
“Never had I encountered such female boldness," he said. "I was confronted with a woman who went after what she wanted with a masculine approach to sex.”
Bitter rival Bette Davis – who maintained a lifelong feud with Crawford – also had four husbands and powerful lovers including movie magnate Howard Hughes and director William Wyler.
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“I liked sex in a way that was considered unbecoming for a woman of my time,” Davis told biographer Charlotte Chandler. “The way I felt was only considered appropriate for a man.
“It was both a physical and emotional need. It had advantages in the pleasure it brought me, but it also made me a victim—dependent.”
Bizarrely both Crawford and Davis were accused of cruelty by their children and also saw husbands die after “falling down the stairs”, with both being accused of having a hand in their death.
I liked sex in a way that was considered unbecoming for a woman of my time
Bette Davis
Davis’ third husband Alfred Farnsworth died in 1943 from a skull fracture and the All About Eve star told authorities that he had "fallen down the stairs two months earlier at their New Hampshire home while running to answer the phone.”
Crawford’s fourth husband, Pepsi magnate Alfred Steele, apparently suffered a heart attack but was found at the bottom of the stairs at their LA home.
Daughter Christina – who also accused the star of beating her with hairbrushes and tying her brother Christopher to the bed at night – later said: “I didn’t believe it was an accident. I know what Mommie was capable of in a state of rage . . . There was no autopsy. He was cremated.”
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Violent mafia lover stabbed to death by 14-year-old
One of the most celebrated beauties of the era was Lana Turner, who boasted seven husbands including bandleader Artie Shaw and Tarzan star Lex Barker, and a list of lovers that included Frank Sinatra, Ronald Reagan, Mickey Rooney and Howard Hughes.
But it was her affair with mobster Johnny Stompanato that was to end in tragedy – when 14-year-old daughter Cheryl Crane stabbed him to death in her bedroom.
Stompanato stormed on to the set in jealous rage and pointed a loaded gun at her co-star, Sean Connery, who leapt into action James Bond-style
In 1958, Turner had been having an affair with the married mafia henchman for a year, but he had become obsessed and violent towards her.
On one occasion, when she was filming Another Time, Another Place in the UK, Stompanato stormed on to the set in a jealous rage and pointed a loaded gun at her co-star, Sean Connery.
Connery leapt into action and managed to disarm him, in true James Bond style, and Stompanato was arrested and deported.
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But the couple continued to see each other and some months later, on April 4 1958, a violent argument erupted in her bedroom.
Fearing for her mother’s life Cheryl Crane – Turner’s daughter from a previous marriage – took a knife from the kitchen and stabbed the 32-year-old mobster in the stomach. He died at the scene.
The death was later ruled as justified homicide and the teenager was exonerated of all charges.
Rumours that Turner was the real killer, and her daughter was trying to protect her name, swirled around Tinseltown but Crane has always denied this.
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Groped, forced to have abortions and fed pills
While some may have welcomed the attention of powerful players in Hollywood, many women were subjected to unwanted advances from a very young age.
Child star Shirley Temple revealed that, on one visit to a film producer's office, he unzipped his trousers and exposed his manhood to her.
Wizard of Oz star Judy Garland was targeted by MGM executives from 16 with studio chief Louis Mayer frequently putting his hand on her left breast to demonstrate she was singing “from the heart”.
Garland was also among the stars pressured by the studios to have abortions and she was also put on pills and encouraged to smoke heavily to suppress her weight, after execs labelled her a “fat little pig.”
She was left with a lifelong drug addiction that led to her early death at 47.
Debbie Reynolds has also said MGM tried to foist similar pills on her, but was saved from a “life on stimulants” after her doctor intervened.
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