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But what you get is deeper, sadder, and more mysterious.
(Number 5777, where theres now a fire station.)
He just wanted to make people happy.
But there were female celebrities, too.
Even men with women and women with men.
Theyre all dead now and so will Bowers be, soon.
We have the choice of taking him at his word, but Tyrnauer doesnt settle quite so easily.
The movies structure is loose.
The big names come slowly, starting with ones we know.
Charles Laughton, who just liked sucking cock.
Rock Hudson, whom Bowers said he fixed up at a very young age with Cary Grant.
Tom Ewell (insatiable).
Cole Porter, who once sucked 15 guys off, one after the other.
J. Edgar Hoover, in drag.
(The late Liz Smith points out that Hepburn slept with many women.)
A three-way with Ava Gardner and Lana Turner?
The duke and duchess of Windsor?
When theyd come to Beverly Hills, Bowers would have a guy for him and a girl for her.
Footage of them in their public personas looks different i.e, phony as hell when you know the backstory.
Ah, but are we sure that the backstory is true?
Witness after witness from those tricks still alive toVarietys gray eminence Peter Bart say yes.
Moral turpitude could not just end your career.
It could get you thrown in prison.
Thats why Hudson had a quickie, damage-control marriage to his managers (gay) secretary.
No one knew anything.
Slowly, Tyrnauer spills the beans about Bowers.
At age 11, Bowers was sexually abused by an adult neighbor.
Except that Bowers vigorously refuses to call it abuse.
He would jack me off …
I went along with everything and I never told anybody.
Sucking cock could ruin your life.
Does Bowers think, Tyrnauer asks, that the experience damaged him?
People should be with who they want to be!
When a priest took a shine to him, he made some real money off the exchange.
Then he set up 25 or 30 of the priests friends.
Then came the war.
Bowers lost a brother in 45 and survived Iwo Jima.
Others came back with few illusions.
The first tricks Bowers recruited were fellow marines hard bodies.
Once he did, he recalls.
Thats the one thing he feels bad about Betty.
Her and the beautiful daughter they had, who bled to death at 23 after an illegal abortion.
The power ofScotty and the Secret History of Hollywoodis cumulative.
After a while, those piles in Scottys house look like more than an anxiety disorder.
They look like the determined attempt of a man who made everyone happy to keep the emptiness at bay.
You dont have to be a moralist to see the tragedy of Scotty Bowerss life.
You only have to have an eye for things that dont fit comfortably.
Tyrnauer has that, as well as the compassion not to probe too deeply.
Whats onscreen is enough to make you conclude that you cant make people truly happy without fixing the world.
