The Secret Life of Legendary Composer Cole Porter…

Old Hollywood Newsletter - Body House Chronicles

9 min readJan 13, 2024

A Marriage of Convenience, Flaunted Proclivities and a Terrible Riding Accident

In this post, I’m sharing an excerpt from Full Service, published in 2012, where the author shares his experience with legendary composer Cole Porter (shown below), among many other escapades.

Full Service is written by a man, who’s name you won’t know, but was infamous within the movie business in Hollywood during the 1950s.

His name is Scotty Bowers.

Below is an excerpt from Bowers’ memoir and it’s unlike anything I’ve read or heard about.

The author, Scotty Bowers was a “trick” as they called it, and “male madame” to the stars.

As I read through this book (it’s a fairly quick read) it becomes clear that Bowers is one of those people that gets along with most anyone.

He was discreet, intelligent, could hold a conversation, was well endowed and enjoyed sleeping with pretty much anyone he found attractive, whether they were male or female… and he’d do it all for money… or not.

Although, during the entire time he performed his tricking duties, he was married. He and his wife had one child together; a daughter.

The scene is post WWII Hollywood….

And as sometimes happens in life; tricking chose Bowers and not the other way around.

The tale begins with Bowers, a young, good looking, recent ex-Marine who pays his rent working at a gas station. Being a social butterfly, his buddies spent the warm California nights hanging around and Bowers would chat with them in between pumping gas.

Day after day, some of the most famous and successful people in the entertainment business would roll in to have Scotty pump their gas.

The first time Bowers got paid to ‘play’ was with actor Walter Pidgeon.

Pidgeon had a long and successful career as an actor and is probably best known for playing Mr. Miniver in the movie Mrs. Miniver (1942).

Pidgeon invited Bowers over to the home of a friend who was a costume designer. The home was a gorgeous mansion with a swimming pool. The owner of the home had sent his staff home for the day which allowed the 3 men to proceed having fun in privacy.

Additionally, for his first romp with the stars, Scotty got paid handsomely for his willingness to accommodate.

And a trick was born.

Pidgeon returned regularly.

So did many others.

Over the many years that Bowers played ‘madam’ he helped entertain Hollywood heavyweights such as, Spencer Tracey, Bob Hope, Rock Hudson, Mae West and many, many more.

Soon, the famed ones, rolling in asked about the nice looking young men hanging out at the gas station. Bowers was happy to be the go-between.

Little did he know then, that many years later he would still be hooking up famous people with willing participants.

Although, strangely, Bowers says he never took a cut of any trick that he arranged. If he was the trick, he kept the money. If he hooked someone else up, whatever payment was given to them stayed with them entirely.

This went on for decades.

After he left the gas station, he began bartending. Besides a few gigs in nice restaurants, Bowers was in charge of keeping the attendees drinks filled at private parties in lovely Hollywood homes.

Below is an excerpt from his book (see cover below) that was published in 2012.

Bowers was 89 when he wrote his book.

It was a book he wasn’t going to write at all until he finally caved to the encouragement of friends, as well as, the fact that most everyone he dealt with during those years had passed on.

Not only that, he wrote it because so much about that time in American history has now changed.

Which is why I bring it to you. It’s why I dig into the internet archives and post silent movies and old radio programs.

Because so much has changed. And not in a good way.

As you read this post and if you so choose, read the book Full Service, you will see that rampant sexual promiscuity and alcohol and drug abuse have been part of the Hollywood underbelly since its inception.

Below is the FIRST installment of the Full Service excerpts. Bowers names so many names I can’t create posts on all of them.

So have a look at this first post and what Scotty Bowers (pictured center) has to say about…

the exceedingly talented composer and lyricist Cole Porter.

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Below is an excerpt from Bowers’ book;

“Another guy in town who had an absolute passion for Marines was the composer and lyricist Cole Porter, the man responsible for writing the hit musicals Anything Goes, Silk Stockings, Can-Can, and Kiss Me Kate, as well as some of America’s best loved songs such as “Night And Day,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “In the Still of the Night,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “Just One of Those Things,” “Easy To Love,” “What Is This Thing Called Love?,” and “De-Lovely.”
Cole was married to divorcée Linda Thomas from 1919 until her death in 1954 but it was a marriage of convenience, or what in those days was sometimes referred to as a “professional marriage.”
Cole was openly gay and undeniably promiscuous. He never made any attempt to hide it.
I don’t remember exactly when he called me out of the blue at the gas station one evening. He said he’d heard that I knew a lot of Marines and asked me if I could come over to his place with two or three of them at around midnight on the following Saturday night. He didn’t beat around the bush. He knew I had been a Marine myself and he wanted me to bring a few buddies around. Short and sweet. I knew exactly what he wanted and I was only too happy to oblige. I did have other plans for the upcoming Saturday evening, but I cancelled everything. I mean, after all, this was the legendary Cole Porter, for crying out loud.
Porter was renting a home with a large secluded pool just off Sunset Boulevard in Brentwood. It was owned by my old friend Bill Haines, whom I’d first met during my boot camp days back in 1942.
When I arrived at Porter’s place on that Saturday night with three ex-Marines a party was already in progress. There wasn’t a woman in sight. Porter was probably in his late forties or early fifties at the time. Most of his guests were younger men, one more strikingly handsome than the next. Linda, Porter’s wife, was not there (I later learned that the couple lived apart most of the time). The lower portion of Porter’s right leg had been amputated because of a horse riding accident on the East Coast. He was in constant pain and found it difficult to get around, relying mainly on crutches.
I soon learned that Cole’s passion was oral sex. He could easily suck off twenty guys, one after the other. And he always swallowed. There are many people, both male and female, who really enjoy the taste of semen. Porter was one of them. On one later occasion I took about nine of my best- looking young guys over to his place and he sucked off every single one of them in no time. Boom, boom, boom and it was all over.
Over the years I fixed him up with many tricks and he valued my friendship. In some odd sort of a way he eventually looked upon me as a sort of confidant. The ceaseless pain in his leg turned him into a bit of a recluse. Cole shared a lot of his innermost dreams, desires, and fears with me.
He was insecure and uncertain about a lot of his friends, often suspecting them of maintaining a friendship purely because of his fame. He wanted so much to be liked simply for who he was. He was especially introspective after he and I had indulged in a night of sex. Cole loved to suck me off and then have me fondle him until he reached his own orgasm.
One day he asked me to help him find out how his closest clique of so-called allies really felt about him. The plan was that he would throw a dinner party at his home, offering an ideal opportunity for him to find out what he wanted to know. He invited a group of twelve or fourteen people comprised of married couples and single men and women,
all of whom had known him for a long time. I was one of them.
Cole’s home was opulently furnished. He had a huge dining room table that could easily seat all the guests with room to spare. He asked me to come over in the afternoon and help with the preparations for the dinner and for his exercise in plumbing the true depths his friends’ love and loyalty.
To achieve this he intended to hide and eavesdrop on them. But how to do it? The plan we came up with was to cover the dining room table not with a conventional tablecloth but with three large white bed sheets. We laid out the sheets and then covered them up with flowers, place settings, tableware, glassware, and other accoutrements to conceal the pleats in the sheets.
The sheets were made to hang very low over the sides of the table, reaching right down to the floor. No one could see anything underneath the table, where there was room enough for someone to hide undetected. It was arranged that when the guests arrived that evening they would be welcomed by the butler, who would show them into the drawing room for drinks prior to dinner. Apologies would be made by the butler at the front door for Cole’s absence. Each guest was to be informed that Cole was a little overworked, that he was feeling tired, and would join us all at the table later for dinner.
While we chatted over cocktails the large doors to the dining room remained closed. Unseen by his guests, just prior to dinner, Cole secretly hobbled into the dining room through another door and crawled beneath the table. Squatting as comfortably as he could, he positioned himself so that he could overhear everything that would be said around the table. Then the butler threw open the doors between the dining room and the drawing room. He cleared his throat and announced that Cole was still not feeling well but that, as dinner was ready, we should take our seats around the table and that Cole would join us in time for dessert.
By then everyone was suitably loaded, happy, hungry, and more than ready to sit down and dine, despite the absence of the host. Nameplates indicated where everybody was to be seated. I was placed at the left center of the table and as soon as I sat down, Cole, unseen beneath the table, inched himself over by my feet. The food was brought in and we began to eat.
By prior arrangement Cole and I had figured out a complex system whereby he would pinch me or touch me on the ankle or calf if anyone spoke about him. Depending on how and where he touched me I would enter the conversation and try to elicit more details from the person speaking. If he wanted me to encourage someone to expand on what was being said about him he would only have to touch me on my knee and I would try to throw the discussion open to all those present. From his invisible place on the floor Cole was directing nothing less than an inquisition into the loyalty of his friends. As the wine flowed inhibitions and discretions were cast aside and everybody talked quite a lot about their host.
Most of the remarks were complimentary. There was much praise for him. But every now and then a critical or bitchy remark would be made. Needless to say, Cole remained under the table, taking it all in. By the time dessert was served he had still not made an appearance, but by then nobody cared.
For Cole it turned out to be a most revealing evening.
His only complaint as I woke up in bed beside him the following morning was that he was suffering from excruciating pain in the stump of his leg from crouching beneath that table for almost two hours. I no longer remember what judgments or opinions he made about his guests that night. The fact that I cannot recall the details is not only because so much time has passed since that evening, but because secrets and seclusion were typical of Cole.
But despite his insecurities and doubts I always found him to be an easygoing kind of guy. However, even though he confided in me, I don’t think I ever really fully understood him. I don’t think anyone did.”