James Dean

by Darwin Porter

  ***

  Otash told Rosenstiel of Jimmy’s shoplifting, and he no doubt relayed the information to Hoover. The F.B.I. director, ever ready to seize an opportunity, had Rosenstiel reach Jimmy to tell him that the F.B.I., in exchange for his cooperation, was willing to intervene to quash news of his shoplifting and potentially save his career from scandal and ruin.

  Since Hoover already possessed scandalous material Jimmy, the news of his arrest for shoplifting “was another sword to hang over the kid’s head,” as Hoover told Rosenstiel. “Unless he’s a fool, he’ll cooperate. If he doesn’t, he’ll live to regret it.”

  Three days after his night with Hoover and Tolson, at La Jolla, Jimmy visited Stanley Haggart’s home in Laurel Canyon, which had a private cottage and a swimming pool. Jimmy often liked to drop in to use the cottage and swim, nude, with a male companion.

  Over drinks that afternoon, as the sun went down, Jimmy told Haggart of his rendezvous with Hoover and Tolson and how he had been driven in a limousine to La Jolla, where the two F.B.I. men were staying.

  He revealed to Haggart what happened after he was introduced to Hoover and Tolson: “Within the hour, they made it clear that if I’d spend the weekend with them, and let them play with me, all the shoplifting charges would be dropped, but only if I promised to never shoplift again, and to pay like a normal everyday working slob after that. I agreed to everything, even though both of them were real turn-offs to me, especially that bulldog, Hoover.”

  “They sure got their money’s worth out of me,” Jimmy claimed. “I think before the end of that loooooong weekend, I must have shot off at least seven times. I didn’t get my clothes back until Monday morning. They liked to see me lounging or swimming nude by the pool, and certainly in their bedroom.”

  “I was told that Hoover was a cross-dresser, but he didn’t put on a gown that weekend. Thank god. And, as I said, I didn’t wear anything at all. The worst part came when Hoover insisted I pose for some nudes. He told me that he already had a collection of nudes of me, plus a porno clip I’d made once when I was starving.”

  “Tolson told me, ‘It’s just our insurance that you’ll keep your trap shut.’”

  “I did my duty and was driven back to Hollywood,” Jimmy said. “These guys kept their word. Any police charges against me were wiped clean. I understand that Hoover can even blackmail a president, much less a country boy like me.”

  Haggart shared the details of Jimmy’s encounter with Hoover and Tolson with three other friends, one of whom was the gossipy Rogers Brackett, who spread the story around. “It was a hot topic of gossip for a while,” Haggart said. “But many people were skeptical. Hoover and Jimmy Dean?—it was too incredible. But, given Hoover’s track record, and his other involvements, it is entirely possible.”

  Jimmy’s claim was given far greater credence when Scotty Bowers, a well-built, curly-haired blonde from southern Illinois, finally published his scandalous memoirs, some of which detailed time spent having sex with Hoover.

  Issued by Grove Press in 2012, Bowers’ biography was entitled Full Service, and it received the endorsement of Gore Vidal, who wrote that he had “known Scotty for the better part of a century and he doesn’t lie.”

  The New York Times featured it in two different reviews.

  In some respects, Bowers’ testimonial about his sexual involvement with Hoover paralleled Jimmy’s, except that Bowers was treated to a firsthand view of the F.B.I. director’s cross-dressing too.

  A slightly more detailed version of Bower’s encounter with Hoover appeared in his original manuscript before it was slightly reduced in the published version.

  “I Had Sex With J. Edgar Five Times that Weekend”

  —Scotty Bowers

  In 1945, at the end of World War II, Scotty Bowers moved to Los Angeles. Shortly thereafter, he opened Scott’s Gas Station at the corner of Fairfax and Hollywood Boulevard. Within eight months, it had become the most popular gas station among gays in Hollywood.

  Getting a lube job at Scotty’s came to mean something else. He hired as many as a dozen young men to pump gas and to escort certain gentlemen callers into the back rooms. There, the car owners could perform fellatio on these handsome, strapping former servicemen, or else become passive recipients of sodomy. Scotty hired only “tops.”

  Among the many patrons of the gas station were director George Cukor and the very closeted Spencer Tracy. Robert Taylor often stopped by to get “filled up,” and Tyrone Power took some of the young men home with him to “perform the down and dirties,” in the words of one gas jockey hustler.

  “Most of Scotty’s men were gorgeous,” or so claimed Vivien Leigh, who visited the gas station accompanied by her friend Cukor. Most of Scotty’s men were bisexuals and could accommodate either gender. Sometimes one of the gas jockeys was hired for private sessions at the homes of a married couple. Stars seeking lesbian encounters could also find Scotty’s services fulfilling.

  Scotty Bowers, a former Hollywood hustler and pimp, managed to reconfigure himself, late in his life, into a bestselling raconteur.

  In his investigation, author Paul Young quotes a source who claimed that “Scotty was smarter than some of his competitors. He refused to accept money from his boys or his clients. He’d only accept gifts: gold watches, silver trinkets, stocks, bonds, you name it. Some of his regular clients, who greatly appreciated his services, even went so far as to give him pieces of property.”

  The subject of many newspaper and magazine articles, Scotty, in his late 80s as of this writing, is a Hollywood legend. When not running his gas station, he moonlighted as a bartender at star-studded Hollywood parties where he met many of his admirers.

  Over the years, various stars had need for his services including Katharine Hepburn (“no women with skin blemishes”), Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, Tennessee Williams, even the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. (She was a closeted lesbian, the former king a closeted homosexual.)

  Late in life, Scotty wrote his long-overdue memoirs, called Full Service, a reference, of course, to the dual “services” provided by his filling station. The subtitle to his book is “Secrets, Sex, and High Society in Hollywood’s Golden Age.”

  Arguably, the most shocking revelation in Full Service is the weekend Scotty spent in the company of J. Edgar Hoover. He recalled meeting a rich young doctor from La Jolla at a lavish party off Doheney Drive in Beverly Hills. In the book, the physician is referred to only as “Ted” (with the last name withheld).

  Scotty bonded with this doctor, who invited him to take care of food and beverage arrangements at a party at his home in La Jolla two weeks hence.

  Right on schedule, Scotty arrived in just fourteen days at an elegant, modern beachfront home where Ted, clad in a bathing suit, welcomed him. Scotty found his kitchen fully stocked with everything from caviar to lobster, so he soon realized that he was the choice hunk of meat on the menu that weekend.

  After Scotty had showered and “slipped into something more comfortable,” he noticed from his bedroom window a large black sedan pulling into the driveway, its windows dark tinted. A young chauffeur, around twenty-eight years old, emerged from behind the wheel to open the door for his passenger. Out emerged a stocky man in his mid-60s with thinning black hair. He wore dark glasses.

  A few minutes later Scotty was introduced to the distinguished guest as “John.” At the time, the face of J. Edgar Hoover was one of the most recognizable in the world. The FBI director and the handsome young driver disappeared for two hours behind the closed door of an upstairs bedroom, which contained a king-sized bed.

  When J. Edgar and the driver, who was called “Rick,” emerged from upstairs, Scotty noticed that he wore a shoulder holster with a revolver strapped to his well-muscled body. Apparently “Rick” was J. Edgar’s bodyguard, perhaps a young agent at the FBI.

  In his memoirs, Scotty wrote, “So the rumors were true.” According to his account, sex began after an elegant dinner, Ted pairing off with Scotty,
and J. Edgar disappearing inside the Blue Room upstairs with the young bodyguard.

  “The evening didn’t end there,” Scotty said. “We swapped around a bit—no group sex, no gangbanging, no foursomes, no orgies. Everyone was one-on-one, with two couples going their separate ways” and having their separate sexual encounters.

  He claimed that he had sex with J. Edgar five times that weekend and just as often with Ted. Both Ted and J. Edgar tried out Rick, but Scotty was not asked to sample his charms. In bed, Scotty claimed, J. Edgar was “a very pleasant and gentle man,” unlike his public image, but he gave no more tantalizing details. Did they kiss? Was J. Edgar a top or bottom? How was the penis? Cut or uncut? Large? Average? Small?

  During the weekend, Ted opened the locked door to a spare bedroom filled with a large wardrobe of women’s clothing. Scotty claimed he was asked to serve Saturday night dinner in drag. He also said that J. Edgar appeared that evening in costly gowns, changing his selection of wardrobe two or three times that night.

  On Monday morning, Scotty said goodbye to Ted, J. Edgar, and his young driver, as he headed back to Los Angeles. He wrote that Ted remained a client for years “but I never saw Hoover ever again.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  JAMES DEAN AND THE WOOLWORTH HEIRESS

  The “Five-and-Dime’s Poor Little Rich Girl”

  BARBARA HUTTON

  LOVERS AND RACECAR DRIVERS JIMMY & BARBARA’S SON,

  LANCE REVENTLOW

  Together on the Fast Lane to Early Deaths

  After a visit to New York, Jimmy returned to Hollywood in January of 1955. On his first night back, he headed for Googie’s, his regular hangout. He didn’t know who he would meet there: Vampira? Tony Perkins? Paul Newman?

  What he did not expect was an encounter with one of the most famous—and richest—women in the world, as well known at the time as Hitler or Ernest Hemingway.

  In another part of town, the Woolworth heiress, Barbara Hutton, had dined with her son, Lance Reventlow, and his date at the Brown Derby. After she bid Lance goodbye, her driver drove her back to the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she had rented Bungalow 6. On this particular night, she felt alone and abandoned. She envied the burgeoning romance of her son, despite her realization that the flame would flicker before dawn, when he would be off to his next conquest.

  [Descended from robber barons, Barbara Hutton was called both “The Poor Little Rich Girl,” because of her troubled life, or “The Million Dollar Baby.” Author Truman Capote labeled her “the most incredible phenomenon of the century.”

  Her former companion, Philip Von Rensselaer, said, “She lived a gold-plated life. Her extravagance was fabled. She spent today’s equivalent of $250 million in a decade. Her parties, clothes, jewelry, and furs—all flaunted during the Depression years—made her the envy of women around the world. Her romances with royalty and celebrities were widely publicized, as she went from tabloid headline to tabloid headline, most often with disastrous results.”]

  In Bungalow 6, Hutton found that the management of the Beverly Hills Hotel had left complimentary bottles of Pouilly-Fuissé and Château Lafite-Rothschild, along with a basket of lush tropical fruit. But she didn’t want to drink alone. She had heard of a nearby hangout, Googie’s, which was popular with young actors, a gathering place for what was called “The Hollywood Stars of Tomorrow.”

  A catch-all rendezvous for jobs, lovers, pharmaceuticals, or trouble, Googie’s sat adjacent to its equally famous counterpart, Schwabs, the most famous drugstore in Hollywood.

  Both establishments were hangouts for Jimmy, but it was at Googie’s that the second-richest woman in the world “discovered” Jimmy one night when she went slumming.

  In many ways, she felt she belonged to the past. Seized with an impulse, she called her driver, instructing him to take her there, a location adjacent to the famous Schwabs Drugstore. She wanted to take a look, perhaps to encounter the Errol Flynn or Cary Grant of tomorrow.

  She wore a mink coat, a diamond necklace, and a silvery gown she’d purchased from Chanel in Paris. As she entered the crowded, boisterous establishment, she was tempted to leave at once. It was not her kind of place, making her feel that at the age of forty-three, she was old enough to be the mother of every patron in the room.

  The notorious life of Barbara Hutton has been the subject of many novels, films, and biographies. She led a lonely life in spite of the fact that she was surrounded by the rich and famous. She was a woman who enjoyed vast wealth and seven husbands (all of them disastrous). She lamented, “I never found lasting love.”

  The jukebox in the corner was playing a song by Jo Stafford. There was also a cigarette vending machine. The place had the aura of a bistro, with red-and-white checkered tablecloths resting on the too small tables.

  She spotted only one empty table and headed there. On the way, she almost tripped on the outstretched legs of a rather sullen but handsome young man. He wore blue jeans and a black turtleneck, with dusty boots blocking access to the only available table. He stared at her through steel-rimmed glasses.

  “Sorry,” he said, rising to his feet, just as a young man and a woman sat down at that lone table. “Please join me?” he said. “I’m Jimmy Dean.”

  He eased her into a chair opposite him. “And I’m Barbara Hutton.”

  “Barbara Hutton!” he exclaimed. “In a place like this? So you’re the lady who gets richer every time a register rings at Woolworth’s.”

  “Well, not that directly,” she said, looking up at the waiter who took her order for a glass of white wine.

  “You don’t know this,” he said, “but I used to work for you. For a very brief time, I was employed at one of your five-and-dimes in L.A., demonstrating these new can openers. I wasn’t very good at it, and I was fired.”

  “My dear boy, had I seen you, I would have immediately promoted you to general manager. Actually you don’t look like a boy who should be forced to work at all. I’m amazed some eagle-eyed collector of pretty young boys hasn’t kidnapped you and put you in a boudoir where you’d be permanently dressed in red silk pajamas, lying on the world’s most expensive linen.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “You could be the poster boy for the clean-cut all-American boy,” she said.

  “I’m not that clean-cut,” he told her.

  “I certainly am not either,” she said. “If you read the newspapers, you know I’ve led a notorious life. Tallulah Bankhead once told me, ‘Babe, you ended up with Lucrezia Borgia’s poisonous heart, and you inherited Cleopatra’s unsatisfied lust. Imagine taking on forty of her palace guards in just one night.”

  “That Tallulah,” he said. “I know her.

  Von Reventlow, sadist and opportunist, with Barbara.

  “Is that know as in ‘David knew Bathsheba?’” she asked.

  “Something like that,” he said. “But I’m not a kiss-and-tell guy.”

  “If you went for Tallulah, does that mean that I, too, have a chance?”

  “The odds are in your favor, lady,” he said.

  “And what might you be doing now?” she asked.

  Rich, chic, decadent, and rancorously envied by virtually everyone during the Depression, Barbara Hutton is depicted above, in costume, at a party with the Duke of Buckingham in drag.

  “I’m an actor,” he said. “I studied at U.C.L.A. I’ve already had my first break. I just completed a picture at Warners. I’m not famous now. But when the movie is released, I’ll be a big deal in Hollywood.”

  “Who directed it?” she asked.

  “Elia Kazan.”

  “Oh, the commie Jew,” she said. “I never mess with people like that.”

  “I’ve heard of your son, Lance Reventlow,” he said. “He’s about five years younger than me, and he’s very well known in car-racing circles. I share his enthusiasm for the sport.”

  “Then you must meet him sometime,” she said. “You’ll be discreet and not tell him where you met his mother.” />
  “Of course,” he answered. “You can count on that. Frankly, I didn’t think Googie’s was your kind of place,”

  “Tonight I’m slumming, which I’ve been known to do on occasions. I have a sense of adventure.”

  “I thought a famous lady like you would get all sorts of invitations in Hollywood,” he said.

  “I did tonight, but most of them were boring. I looked at them on my coffee table. I had my choice: a guest of Jack Warner, Joan Crawford, George Cukor, Jimmy Stewart, or Merle Oberon.”

  “Of the people named, I’ve had two of them,” Jimmy said.

  “My, for a little boy in blue jeans, you do make the rounds,” she said. “I’m impressed…and not many things impress me anymore.”

  An entire two hours passed before Jimmy and Hutton left Googie’s together. Out on the street, he told her to dismiss her chauffeur and hop onto the rear seat of his motorcycle.

  “I’m up for that,” she said. “A first for me.”

  “By the way, I hope you have a passkey if we go by a Woolworth’s along the way,” he said. “I need some razors and shaving cream. Maybe some after shave lotion.”

  “Tomorrow, if you give me your address, I’ll ship you a year’s supply.”

  They headed into the night on a hair-raising ride through the streets of Los Angeles, with her hair billowing in the wind. “If you pass this test, you can pass any test,” he yelled back at her. She held tightly to his body.

  After they returned to her hotel, he walked her to her bungalow. She didn’t exactly invite him in, but he entered anyway, sitting down on her sofa and placing his booted feet on her coffee table. There, he spotted the two bottles of wine. “Let’s knock off some of this grape juice. It doesn’t look like the rotgut stuff I’m used to.”