The freaky fetishes of Golden Age Hollywood: a tolerant new tell-all from Tinseltown's sexual fixer.

• Author: Gillespie, Nick
• Position: Full Service - Book review

IN THE GRAND, effluvia-soaked tradition of Hollywood Babylon, a new memoir from sexual networker Scotty Bowers lets it all hang out when it comes to exposing screen giants' erotic excesses. Like MGM in its heyday, Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars (Grove) has more stars than there are in heaven. From silent-screen royalty such as Gloria Swanson and Ramon Novarro to classy Brits such as Cary Grant and Elsa Lanchester to American legends such as Mae West and Rock Hudson, Bowers dishes long and hard on just who preferred what kind of sex, how often, and with what sort of partner(s).

What elevates Full Service from a simple, if riveting, catalog of the ultra-decadent lifestyles of the rich and famous to something more interesting is Bowers' bracingly nonjudgmental view of human sexuality. As long as sex is consensual, he says, let it rip. As he told The New York Times in December, "So they like sex how they liked it. Who cares?"

A World War II vet who fought with distinction in the Pacific (his memories of Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima are terrifying), Bowers was born on a Midwestern farm and ended up pumping gas in Hollywood in 1946. Working at a service station on Van Ness Boulevard, he was picked up one day by Canadian actor Walter Pidgeon, an Oscar nominee known for star turns in films such as How Green Was My Valley and Mrs. Miniver. Bowers reports that they drove back to Pidgeon's house, and the two of them, joined by a male friend of the actor, engaged in "some really hot sex."

Thus began Bowers' decades-long ole as Hollywood's leading boy toy and procurer of sexual favors for the stars. Although he accepted "tips" for his amorous romps, he never engaged in prostitution per se. And as he became the go-to guy to set up all manner of trysts for publicity-shy celebrities (many of whom were closeted gays and lesbians), he never became a pimp either. Rather, he was a fixer who delighted in bringing together stars and people who wanted to sleep with them.

Bowers lived with a woman and his daughter at the time and, while he freely admits to a full slate of homosexual experiences, doesn't consider himself gay, saying he "prefers" the company of women. Here's his take on a love that back in the '40s dared not speak its name: "The only thing that made them a little different than straight men is the fact that they enjoyed having sex with other men as well as with women. And, quite frankly, I saw absolutely...