Full Service

by Bowers,Friedberg, Lionel,Scotty

  Unbeknownst to his family Albert was a closeted gay man. His visits to Hollywood were rare opportunities for him to engage in the kind of sexual behavior that he had to avoid in so many other parts of the world. His favorite indulgence was to have me arrange for anywhere from ten to twelve young men to show up at his door. He would then invite them into his suite and tell them to engage in casual conversation with one another. Albert would sit and watch them, observing their mannerisms, body language, and demeanor. One by one, Albert would eliminate the guys until he was left with only three or four of them. Those were the ones he would choose for sex. One of them would be taken to bed by him personally while the rest were told to engage in group activities in the same room where he could watch them.

  Another guy I regularly put up at the Roosevelt Hotel was Malcolm Forbes, the publisher of Forbes magazine. Because he was so well known and so wealthy I would never reveal his real name to anyone so, when he was visiting L.A., I made sure that most people knew him only as “Mike Ford.” After serving in World War II and being given a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart for bravery, Malcolm had entered his father’s publishing business and turned it into one of the most lucrative enterprises in the world. His lifestyle was beyond extravagant. It was of mythic proportions. In addition to his New York home, Mike owned three châteaus in France and a palace in Morocco. He had his own private jets, yachts, an extensive art collection, jewelry, and collectibles that included Fabergé eggs, fleets of expensive custom-built cars, a collection of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, hot air balloons, historical documents, and other priceless artifacts. Although he married Roberta Remsen Laidlaw in 1946 and had five children with her Mike lived what I suppose you could call a very limited and totally closeted gay life. He was bisexual and only occasionally indulged in gay sexual activities. Whenever he came into town he would stay at the Roosevelt Hotel for one night and have sex with six or seven different guys, one after the other. Months or even a year would go by before he came back to L.A. again to have another sexual encounter with men. However, through my extensive list of contacts, now and again I also fixed him up with young male tricks in New York.

  Another major name in the world of publishing whom I got to know very well was Alfred A. Knopf. He and his wife Blanche had set up the distinguished Alfred A. Knopf publishing house in 1915, bringing many outstanding foreign and local authors to the American reading public. I was introduced to him by my old friend Clifford Mortimer Crist who used to teach English at Princeton and who subsequently went on to sell college text books under the Knopf imprint for Alfred.

  Cliff made his home in New York—where the Knopf publishing house was based—and sometime during the sixties when he was out here on business he asked me to do him a favor. As he didn’t drive he wanted me to take him out to the airport to meet his boss Alfred Knopf who was due in from New York for a series of important meetings. So, in my trusty old Chrysler, I drove Cliff to LAX where we met Alfred and then took him over to the Beverly Hills Hotel where he had reserved accommodation. I don’t remember the exact details of how and why it came about but just before Alfred followed the bellhop with his bags up to his suite it was arranged that I send up a nice young lady to keep him company.

  Alfred was in his early to midsixties and clearly a very cultured and successful businessman so I went to special lengths to ensure that the woman I sent to him that evening was imbued with the kind of maturity and personality more or less commensurate with his own interests and outlook. I knew he wouldn’t be satisfied—if you’ll pardon the expression—with a dumb blonde who wouldn’t have much to say after the sex was over. The long and the short of it is that whoever I sent pleased Alfred very much. Over the ensuing years, every time he was in town he would contact me and I would arrange suitable female company for him. On one of his trips he spent over a week in town and I fixed him up with three or four different women.

  On one occasion he was out here with his wife Blanche and so I met her, too, never letting on that I was fixing up tricks for her husband, of course. She and I also struck up a nice friendship and a few months later, when she flew out alone to attend a party at the home of an old school friend of hers in Brentwood, we discovered that we were sexually attracted to one another. She was a pleasant enough looking woman and the chemistry between us was good. So much so, in fact, that she occasionally made special trips out here from New York under the pretext that she was seeing friends, but it was really only to spend time with me.

  A CAVALCADE OF COLORFUL and interesting personalities were perpetually passing through my life. I got to know the actor Clifton Webb when he was already in his late sixties or early seventies. Nevertheless, he led an amazingly active though extremely shielded homosexual life. He made his name in movies quite late in his career. He was already fifty-five years old when he played the role of Waldo Lydecker in Laura in 1944, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Clifton was an obsessively proper, correct, and well-mannered man. He was polite to the point of being irritating, and he used his extensive and witty vocabulary to ruthlessly cut down an opponent in an argument. I was at many dinner parties where he would sail through a verbal exchange, choosing precisely the right phrase at the right time. He’d learned a lot from his good friend and confidant, Noël Coward. Cliff—as I sometimes called him—was always impeccably dressed. Nothing was ever out of place. He sported a neatly trimmed little moustache a lot of the time and he never had a hair out of place.

  Cliff lived with his mother his entire life. She was a pleasant but rather overbearing woman by the name of Maybelle. She looked after, guarded, shielded, and protected her son with an intensity I have seldom seen. Even though she knew he was gay she would never discuss the fact with anyone. If someone mentioned it she would lash out at them unmercifully. Cliff took his mother everywhere: to motion picture sets where he was working, to dinner parties, and even on vacation. They were inseparable. He often had me bring young men over to his house but he was always careful that Maybelle should not see or hear them, even though his homosexuality was no secret between him and his mother. Cliff was especially cautious of being seen with me. Naturally, he knew of my reputation as a hustler and a trickster, so he never wanted our friendship to be on view in public.

  “Just keep your distance from me, Scotty,” he often whispered to me at cocktail parties and dinners. “I don’t want people to think that I’m gay.”

  That was a good one: Cliff was so outlandishly camp that he advertised his sexuality to all and sundry merely by walking into a room! Despite his phobia of being labeled gay I occasionally arranged tricks for him at parties. These liaisons took place in the open, with Cliff and his trick for the evening strolling from the party area hand in hand, headed for the nearest bedroom.

  Whenever this happened his mother would start behaving like a brooding, clucking hen and say, “Now, now, boys, don’t misbehave, you hear?”

  Then she would call me over and have me serve her another cocktail while “the boys” spent their fifteen or twenty minutes in private.

  Maybelle liked me. She often scurried over to me and whispered in my ear, “Oh, Scotty, thank heavens for you, darling. You make my Clifton so happy, you know.”

  Then she would plant a quick wet kiss on my cheek and chuckle into her glass.

  ONE OF MY CLOSE FRIENDS during the early sixties was a fun-loving queen by the name of Dave Damon, a very talented ceramics artist who had a gallery and store on Santa Monica Boulevard. His thriving business also sold garden fountains and statues. Dave was about thirty-five or thereabouts and liked nothing better than to cruise the boulevards at night and pick up young guys. If he liked them he would always refer them to me and they would become part of my on-call cast of male tricksters. One day Dave got me a gig working as a bartender at a well-known doctor’s home. I can’t recall his name but if memory serves me correctly he was a general practitioner with a large medical group in town. I distinctly remember that he was
straight, had a beautiful girlfriend, and knew many influential people. His house was just behind a tall building known as the Sierra Towers, close to Sunset Boulevard and Doheny Drive in Beverly Hills. He subsequently called me back for more dinner parties and social events and on one of those occasions I met a very wealthy doctor from La Jolla who was among his guests. As I can no longer remember his name either; I’ll just refer to him as Fred.

  Fred was obviously gay and had come to the party alone. However, many of the guests knew him and he seemed to be very popular. He took a shining to me and at the end of the evening he took me aside and invited me to come to his La Jolla home down the coast near San Diego, where he was going to be giving a party for some friends. The pretense was that he wanted me to take care of the food and bar arrangements. The date was two weeks away and he suggested that I should drive down on the Friday and stay over until Monday morning. I was flattered at the offer and took him up on it.

  On the appointed Friday I drove down the coast from L.A., getting to his place at about four o’clock in the afternoon. He had told me that the party would take place on the Saturday night, so I was expecting to discuss the dinner menu and bar requirements with him on Friday evening. Instead, I found that his modern, beachfront home was already well stocked with everything, from alcohol to all sorts of exotic food. There was virtually nothing for me to do, and it quickly became obvious that my role was going to be more of a guest than a bartender. Which was fine by me.

  Fred suggested that I take a shower, relax, and then change into something smart yet casual for dinner, as he was expecting another couple of guests that evening. A few hours later, from my bedroom window, I saw a sedan pull up outside the house. The driver was a good-looking young guy, probably in his late twenties or early thirties. He rushed out of the car, opened the front passenger door, and a stocky man in his midsixties with thinning black hair stepped out. I thought I recognized him from either the newspapers or the TV news but I wasn’t sure. He wasn’t a movie actor, that much I knew. Minutes later the doorbell rang. I heard Fred welcome the two men. Obviously the three of them were close friends. I decided it was time for me to join the party so I went downstairs. Fred was in his den, hovering around the bar.

  The minute he saw me he beamed and called out, “Oh, Scotty, there you are. Come and join us.”

  I went into the room and Fred introduced me to the middle-aged guy.

  “Meet John,” he said. “He’s out here from Washington for the weekend.”

  “John” grabbed my hand and pumped it firmly.

  “Good to meet you,” he said.

  I could swear that I knew him but I just couldn’t place him. It was most frustrating but, of course, I didn’t let it show.

  I was then introduced to the younger man, whose name I no longer remember. Their bags were still in the hallway and the young guy said that he would take them upstairs, so I offered to help. He was a very pleasant fellow and together we carried the luggage upstairs. I was surprised to hear Fred say that the two of them would be staying in one of the extra bedrooms upstairs. It seemed a bit odd to me that they were going to be sharing a room, especially as there was only one bed in it. As I put down the bag that I was carrying I glanced at the name tag attached to the handle. It listed only a name but no street address and no telephone number. But the name alone was enough to give me the biggest surprise of the evening. In bold face it read JOHN EDGAR HOOVER. Then it hit me. Of course! Now I recognized the face. The older man was none other than J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, in Washington D.C.

  As soon the young guy put his bag down on the other side of the bed he removed his jacket and tossed it on the bed, revealing a shoulder holster and revolver strapped to his body. Jesus, I thought. This guy isn’t only Hoover’s chauffeur and bodyguard, he’s also his lover! They were going to share the bed. So the rumors were true. I had often heard that Hoover might be gay. He was an extremely powerful figure in Washington, as well as on the broad political and law enforcement landscape of the United States. He had founded the FBI in 1935, molding it into the largest and most efficient crime-fighting agency in the nation. It was also the most feared. The FBI investigated not only criminals but political dissenters, activists in many fields, those suspected of being communists and spies, and, yes, even those involved in the burgeoning civil rights and gay rights movements. Yet, here he was, under the same roof where I was staying, for a weekend with his young gay lover. I could hardly believe it. Nevertheless, it was time to go back downstairs and get acquainted with this iconic figure.

  It was an interesting weekend, to say the least. The sex began immediately after dinner that night. Fred and I paired off while Hoover and his young bodyguard made out together.

  Hoover was a very pleasant and polite man. He was also not shy. He certainly did not behave like the imposing and nasty power monger he was reputed to be. But then a lot of people can be like that. They are very different in a sexual context than a professional one. Sex definitely changes people’s behavior—even their identity.

  Adding spice to the weekend, Fred kept a very extensive wardrobe of women’s clothing locked up in one of the spare bedrooms. On Saturday and Sunday evening he and Hoover got dressed up in drag. A lot of fun was had by all, I can tell you.

  On Monday morning I bid everyone good-bye and drove off toward the main road north to Los Angeles. In my rearview mirror I watched Hoover, Fred, and the tall, lanky young guy waving good-bye to me. Though Fred and I remained friends for years, I never saw J. Edgar Hoover again.

  24

  Drag Queens and Music

  Another fascinating person I met in the sixties was a guy by the name of Sascha Brastoff. When we were first introduced he was probably in his midforties. He had originally come out to Hollywood from the East Coast. Not long after his arrival Darryl Zanuck signed him to a seven-year contract as a costume designer at Twentieth Century Fox. Sascha was an ambitious, highly energetic, and talented individual. He had an eclectic background as a ballet dancer in Cleveland, Ohio, a window dresser for Macy’s department store in New York, and a very gifted ceramicist. In his spare time Sascha was often throwing clay, firing up kilns, and designing plates, pots, ashtrays, vases, platters, jars, and other ceramic ware. The hobby rapidly became a passion and soon movie stars and studio executives were enthusiastically buying up his beautifully crafted wares. As a result, two years after starting work on the sprawling Twentieth Century Fox lot in Beverly Hills he wangled his way out of his contract with the studio and set up shop as an independent ceramics artist.

  Millionaire industrialist Winthrop Rockefeller discovered Sascha’s work, took an interest in it, fell head over heels in love with Sascha, and joined his fledgling enterprise as a financial backer. With that kind of support Sascha moved into larger premises, surrounded himself with a large staff, and was soon regarded as one of the top ceramic artists in the country. Each piece that came out of his workshops carried his name and signature, commanded a very high market price, and became a valuable collector’s item. He threw a party at his premises whenever he launched a new product line and it was something of an honor to be on his guest list. Apart from his beloved ceramics, Sascha revered two other things above all else: he enjoyed dressing up as a drag queen and he relished giving blow jobs to his many boyfriends. With his witty sense of humor he was the life of any party as he whirled and twirled around the room bedecked in exotic gowns, high-heeled shoes, and Carmen Miranda–style fruity headgear. Dressed in drag Sascha frequently went to parties where there were a lot of straight young single men. He would go around and grab each one of them individually, take them into a closet, a bedroom, a storeroom, a restroom, or anywhere suitable, and suck them off. Nobody ever cottoned on to the fact that the shapely, leggy, big-bosomed bombshell with the velvet tongue and soft, silky lips was a man and not a woman. When Sascha was in drag he looked, walked, talked, and behaved exactly like a woman. You simply could not tell that
he was a man. He was so good at cock sucking that every straight guy he ever serviced swore that it was a woman who had just given him a blow job. He was gentle, he took his time, and, with his artificial long fingernails there was no way you could guess that he was a man in drag.

  One Saturday night Sascha was invited to a big fund-raising party for the Santa Monica Police Department. It was a gala black tie affair. The event was sponsored by the mayor’s office of the City of Santa Monica. The venue was a large hall on the second floor above a swanky store at the corner of Broadway and Fourth Street. I had been invited to the function and turned up at the appointed hour with my date, a pretty hooker friend by the name of Betsy. An hour later I noticed that Sascha had still not arrived and I began to wonder whether he was going to make it to the party.

  Just after nine o’clock—fashionably late—a big black limousine pulled up downstairs and out stepped a dazzling woman, swathed in furs, feathers, and pearls. Oddly enough she was unaccompanied and so she was escorted upstairs to the party by two security guards and a bouncer. As she floated into the main room everybody stared at her. She was bewitchingly beautiful and she moved so sexily that every red-blooded male in the room could not take his eyes off her. Half a dozen men, a mix of young and middle-aged, broke away from little groups around the room and surrounded her like vultures descending upon a kill. Each of them nervously shuffled around her, vying for the honor of fetching her a drink or offering her a cigarette or accompanying her onto the dance floor. One of them finally edged out the others and the lady threw back her head, pursed her lips, accepted his hand, and they casually minced their way toward the hors d’oeuvres table on the far side of the room. As they glided past Betsy and me the gorgeous damsel turned and winked. Oh, my God! Why hadn’t I realized it earlier? Despite the heavy makeup, lipstick, eyeliner, and unbelievably long, artificial, felinelike lashes it was unmistakable. I knew that wink anywhere. The “lady” was none other than Sascha Brastoff, playing the part better than I had ever seen him do it before. He and his chaperone sailed past us and disappeared into the throngs of people.