Full Service: Elsa Lanchester & Scotty Bowers’ Overlapping Memoirs
by Tom Blunt
Wouldn’t ya know it, that project filmed at the muffler shop near my home turned out to be Ryan Murphy’s HOLLYWOOD! I had biked past and taken pictures during filming, but never thought to ask what the project was; only after I happened to see the trailer did all become clear.
Some of you may already know this series includes fictionalized details from Scotty Bowers’ scandalous memoir FULL SERVICE, a book that became the talk of the publishing world even when it was just a manuscript being nervously passed around by blushing editors in 2011. That’s how I first read it: as a smuggled manuscript. It eventually found a home at Grove Press.
In a nutshell, Bowers waited until the end of his very long life to write an account of all the Hollywood stars he’d “serviced” over decades as a hooker and pimp, a career that began just after his WWII days, when he re-entered civilian life as a Hollywood gas station attendant. The cheerfully bisexual Bowers gained the trust of various stars and studio bigwigs who came through, and impressed by the caliber of his companionship after a few no-fuss, no-muss hookups, referrals began coming to the station with needs Bowers himself couldn’t personally fulfill. So he recruited his various friends for odd jobs, and the rest is (largely unverifiable) history.
Naturally, many of the surviving relatives of those cited in his book (which includes dirt on Vivien Leigh, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift, Desi Arnaz, Vincent Price, and innumerable others) spoke out to insist that none of it ever happened. But they would, wouldn’t they? And while Scotty’s colorful style of storytelling makes the book easy to dismiss, a lot of it is impossible to discredit… because it’s likely true.
And wouldn’t you know it, I got to speak to Scotty on the phone once, not long after the book was released! You see, FULL SERVICE contains anecdotes about famed actor Charles Laughton and his wife Elsa Lanchester (the Bride of Frankenstein herself), both of whom Bowers claimed to know well. According to his book, Elsa was obsessed with trying to “turn” men that she knew were gay. Who can say? That would be a cruel thing to make up about someone with her particular marital problems… but it could also help explain how she ended up with said marital problems. And his story about Charles is so revoltingly scatological that I don’t even know what to believe; I won’t repeat or comment on it here. Go read the book, you cowards!
Anyhow, at the time when Bowers’ memoir was released, I was working to get Elsa’s own 1983 autobiography, ELSA LANCHESTER, HERSELF, back into print. [Now available from Chicago Review Press, featuring a foreword by Mara Wilson!] And I couldn’t help noticing that Elsa had written at length about a particular young male companion of her husband’s, and looking at her account side by side with FULL SERVICE, I became convinced she was talking about Scotty. So in 2012 I reached out through his publisher, who gamely arranged a chat with him about it.
Scotty was marvelous on the phone, very friendly. Even from a distance, it’s amazing to talk to someone whose mouth has traveled to so many historic places! He had not read Elsa’s book, and (like most people) was unaware she’d ever written one. When I shared these passages with him, he was very hesitant to confirm whether he might the young man Elsa referred to as “Clyde” in her book. “It could be… it could be,” was all he would say about it. As we spoke, I sensed he’d been telling the same stories exactly the same way for so long, he wasn’t terribly interested in the way other people might recall them, and might even felt a bit threatened by the intrusion of memories that were not his own.
I knew better than to press the matter; we had a congenial chat, I thanked him for his SERVICE, and then I released him to his own privately-tended recollections. He passed away just last year, never getting to see Ryan Murphy’s mythologized version of his exploits.
But while you’re here, would you like to read Elsa’s version for yourself, and draw your own conclusions about what she may have inadvertently confirmed in Bowers’ account of their time together?
Excerpt from ELSA LANCHESTER, HERSELF (1983):
The matter that brought on their final split involved a young fellow Paul [Gregory] had introduced to Charles — whom we’ll call Clyde — a short and stubby man, honest and simple, who became very devoted to Charles. He had no trade and very little education. He had tried being a gas station attendant and then sold enameled watches and bracelets. The initial relationship between Charles and Clyde was close, but in a short time it became more of a friendship. Charles trusted him and poured out his heart to him about our marriage. Clyde was put on the payroll at Gregory Associates as Charles’ driver and handyman. He would drive Charles down to Palos Verdes or up to Yosemite to study words, and to Northern California to see flowers. Sometimes Clyde would introduce Charles to other young men, and on rare occasions, I have been told, even supply Charles with marijuana. I can’t believe it.
Charles, in turn, was kind and generous with Clyde, exposing the young man to museums and art and literature. They would sit under the great Yosemite tree, I was told, and Charles would read him Shakespeare. I was later to learn, also, through this young man that that Paul “was robbing poor Charles blind.” They had made perhaps millions at the box office on The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, but much of the money was mismanaged. Charles was always careful not to rock the boat. Perhaps he was afraid of Paul. Anyway, Clyde eventually told Charles that Paul had come to him, asking questions about Charles and actually suggesting to Clyde that Charles would forgive anything, that he could “get anything out of Charles while the going was good.” In other words, since Charles had done it for others, why not him? He could even get a car out of Charles, Paul said. This, at last, was the final breaking point between Charles and Paul Gregory.
Clyde told Charles what Paul had said because he was sincerely loyal. Knowing this honest young fellow slightly at the time, I had the feeling that he thought that Paul’s remark, after so many years with Charles, was a betrayal. The young man felt a wave of goodness and decency — a tiny St. George to the rescue.
Some years later, Clyde wrote down his feelings about Charles:
“Charles just enjoyed talking with me. He could be particularly relaxed and say whatever he wanted. He knew I didn’t judge him and that I was very fond of him. But he had this terrible guilt about his feelings toward men, and he had an unnatural fear of any kind of scandal… His guilts and his drives caused him great pain.
Sometimes when Charles would become especially irritated with his wife, he would call me up to complain. ‘I’m leaving her,’ he would say. ‘I just can’t take any more, and I’m through, I’m definitely leaving her.’ But I knew Charles’ mood was only temporary, and that he would never leave Elsa. He needed her, for flowers and scenic beauties, and it was a powerful bond that held them together.”
I quite understood this young man. He was never unfair or unkind to Charles, which I appreciated, and afterward he came to dinner now and then.
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