(WBBM NEWSRADIO) – Scotty Bowers, the Illinois native who claimed to have been pimp to gay and lesbian stars in the Golden Age of Hollywood, has died at the age of 96, published reports say.
Bowers, who was born in Ottawa and raised in Chicago, wrote a tell-all autobiography in 2013 in which he claimed to have run an escort service for some of the biggest screen giants, beginning in the mid-1940s.
For a while, a gas station served as the World War II veteran's cover, according to "Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars."
His book served as the basis of an acclaimed 2017 documentary "Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood." In the film, Bowers is unabashed as he details his sexual encounters and transactions with screen luminaries.
Critics either doubted the veracity of Bowers' Hollywood tales – told after most everyone in them had died – or questioned why he would "out" celebrities after keeping quiet for decades.
News of Bowers' passing was reported in The Hollywood Reporter, which said "Scotty" director Matt Tyrnauer confirmed the death. Bowers died of natural causes in Laurel Canyon over the weekend, Tyrnauer said.
"His story, which he waited to tell until he was in his late 80s — and for years refused to tell at all — forms an astonishing counter-narrative of Hollywood and exposes the mores of the movie capital in a time when gay men and women were forced to be sexual outlaws and were publicly shunned and often persecuted, or at least forced to live double lives," the director said.
