The Romance Between Hepburn & Tracy Was... A Fairytale!

This post contains excerpts from a book entitled Full Service by Scotty Bowers.

The author’s name won’t be familiar to you, but if you were in 1950s Hollywood, working in the entertainment business, you’d be aware of his reputation.

Essentially, Bowers was ‘male madam’ to the stars.

His is an incredible story and he finally decided to tell all at the age of 89.

The book was written in 2012. Bowers has since passed on.

His account of that time in American film history is frankly, priceless.

Below is what Scotty Bowers says happened when he first met Katharine Hepburn.

Bowers later went on to have a life long friendship with her.

The pictures below are of Katharine Hepburn and George Cukor who had a great working relationship as actor and director and life long friendship.

Below the pictures is an account of the behind the scenes look at Hepburn.

The below text comes from Bowers book.

To get the FULL SCOOP on Hepburn and Tracy subscribe for about 16 cents a day…

It describes how Bowers first met Katharine Hepburn, as well as, George Cukor.

These two people would become good friends with Bowers and ultimately lead to another type of relationship with “Spence.”

“I can’t remember the exact details of our conversation but he told me his name was George Cukor. I also know that he was directing A Double Life at the time. The film starred Ronald Colman, Edmond O’Brien, and Shelley Winters.

Cukor was a legend in the motion picture industry. He had directed Camille, starring Greta Garbo, a movie I loved when I saw it as a teenager in Chicago. He also made Romeo and Juliet and one of my all-time favorites, The Philadelphia Story.

Another of his more recent films at that time was Gaslight, featuring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer in the starring roles.

I quickly warmed to the guy. He definitely seemed a bit odd, and nervous, but there was something fascinating about him (Cukor). There was a lot about him to like.

The feeling was obviously mutual because, even though I cannot remember exactly how or why it happened, he invited me over to his home in West Hollywood the following Sunday.

He gave me his address and drove off, saying, “See you on Sunday, about noon.”

…

(The dots indicated where I have cut out text for brevity and relevance)

“On Sunday I drove over to Cukor’s place on Cordell Drive in West Hollywood. The property consisted of a beautiful orange grove in the middle of which stood an ambling white house, surrounded by a high wall and gates. There was a large yet secluded pool at the side of the house.

The main house was a single-story structure but because the grounds sloped downward to accommodate the pool area, the guest suite beneath the main house was on the same level as the pool. It was all very well-planned and beautifully executed, in keeping with George’s tastes and personality.

When I arrived just before noon, lunch had already been laid out around the pool and Cukor was entertaining a small group of people. I didn’t recognize anyone and felt a little out of place as I walked up to the crowd.

As soon as he saw me Cukor broke away from his guests and welcomed me with a very friendly, “Hello, there, dear boy. So glad you could come.”

He insisted that I call him George, asked me to remind him what my name was, and then he paraded me around, introducing me to everyone. I cannot remember who they all were, just that they were all famous and influential people. I do recall that they did their best to politely welcome me into their fold.

I almost never touch alcohol, I just don’t enjoy the taste of the stuff. Ditto for tea and coffee. I was fascinated to learn that, like me, George was also a teetotaler, so there was no alcohol around except for a couple of bottles of champagne that one of his visitors must have brought along.

Although I didn’t recognize her until we were introduced, among the guests was Katharine Hepburn, who on-screen seemed so feminine. And yet here was a woman with a severe short hair cut, tightly cropped and combed with a boyish side part. She was wearing a suit with trousers and had no makeup on at all. She looked infinitely more masculine than feminine. I thought of her in The Philadelphia Story and could barely make the connection.

Because Hepburn was such an illustrious individual with a really sparkling personality I only recall talking to her that afternoon, though I’m sure I spoke to others.

She intrigued me. There was, no doubt, considerable intellect behind her stark yet fascinating facade. She strutted around, cocksure; she was clearly cognizant of the fact that she was a rapidly rising superstar.

By three o’clock the summer heat had become stifling. It was time for the party to break up. Everyone had adequately partaken of George’s hospitality, bid their good- byes, and was slowly starting to drift away.

Hepburn was one of the last to leave.

As I watched her go, George tapped me on the shoulder. He whispered that she didn’t know how to behave in public.

When I questioned him about that he replied, “It’s not that she’s a dyke. I have no trouble with that. But the studio does. They’ve been pleading with her not to advertise the fact in public but she ignores them.”

I waited for more.

He fussed around with plates and leftovers and then went on, telling me that Hepburn was very arrogant. He said that she thought she knew best about everything. I wasn’t going to comment.

What did I know of any of this?

It was the first time that I’d met her and I really didn’t know anything about her behavior, her personality, or her lesbianism until that day. My first impression was simply that George didn’t like her very much.

He went on to tell me that Hepburn had once been married to a guy named Ludlow Ogden Smith but the marriage had lasted just five years and they had divorced in 1934. He said he thought she ought to be more discreet about her sexual orientation.

In time I was to be proved wrong about George’s dislike of Hepburn.

During the years that followed I would remain close to both of them and throughout that period George and Hepburn would turn out to be the very best of friends.

They understood one another.

I would eventually also learn that Hepburn relied heavily on George’s opinions about her career. She hardly ever made a film without consulting him about her performance.”

That was Bowers introduction to Katharine Hepburn that turned into an over 50 year long friendship. Bowers would go on to set up Hepburn with over 150 ‘tricks’.

Bowers would also be introduced to Spencer Tracy. That event will probably be a surprise or even a shock to you. It was for me.

The below quote is from the book Full Service written by Scotty Bowers.

You’ve got to hear what Bowers says about the so called affair Hepburn and Tracy had.

I was as shocked as anyone else to hear that it was all just a fairytale!!

Read more below about the private life of Spencer Tracy…

“….. The other one, where George’s (Cukor) property fronted onto St. Ives Drive, was rented out to famed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer megastar Spencer Tracy.”

George and Tracy were the best of friends.

“They respected one another’s talents enormously. The two of them had first worked together at MGM in 1942 on the very successful romantic drama Keeper of the Flame, in which Tracy costarred with Katharine Hepburn.

Tracy was still a Hollywood phenomenon. During the forties there was a saying in the film industry that MGM had more stars in its firmament than there were in heaven. Tracy was one of the biggest and brightest.

In a career spanning more than four decades he would be nominated for nine Academy Awards. He won two, for Best Actor in Captains Courageous in 1937 and for Best Actor in Boys Town in 1938.

When George heard that I was no longer working at the 881 Club he invited me over for brunch one Sunday. And that was the first time I met Spencer Tracy.

By then I was used to being in the company of big names, but Tracy was different. He was an actor of almost mythical proportions. People felt humbled in his presence. When I arrived at George’s place and saw Tracy lounging at the pool my heart skipped a beat. How was I going to react? What could I possibly talk to him about? Would I be intimidated by him? All doubts and fears were cast asunder as soon as George introduced me to him. Tracy was the easiest guy in the world to get along with.

Because George didn’t drink, and typically didn’t have any wine or booze at home, Tracy had brought a large flask of scotch with him. The three of us sat around the pool as these two great talents of the cinema talked shop. George was never one for long, drawn out social gatherings, so by three o’clock Tracy excused himself and trotted up the driveway to the gate and then down the block to the house that he was renting on the west side of George’s property.

It was the maid’s day off, so I decided to linger for a while and help George clear up. As we busied ourselves in the kitchen George told me that Tracy had married his wife, actress Louise Treadwell, back in 1923, the very year I was born. They had a palatial place somewhere in Beverly Hills. But Tracy desperately needed his space and his privacy. He therefore often lived alone in the house he rented from George.

His marriage to Louise would last until his death in 1967. They had two children, a son John, born in 1924, and a daughter Susie, born in 1932. Sadly, John was born deaf and there was little doctors could do to help him. News of this unfortunate state of affairs never got into the press. Few people knew about it or about how much Tracy anguished over his son’s debilitation. Louise devoted the rest of her life to helping deaf children through the John Tracy Clinic, which she established in Los Angeles in the early forties. Tracy was very supportive of her charitable efforts and funded much of the operating costs of the clinic himself. He was a generous, good-hearted man.

As we stashed away dishes and glassware, George and I also discussed the phony romance between Tracy and Katharine Hepburn that the studio and the publicists had concocted for public consumption.

The invented story had been so well managed that the press and public alike accepted it without question. People across the United States and around the world gave it so much credence that both Tracy and Hepburn had little choice but to pretend that it was true. Whenever they worked on a movie together flashbulbs popped. They were hounded by the paparazzi if they were known to be dining out at a restaurant or seen with other members of a film’s cast, dancing at the Coconut Grove.

On movie productions they were always given trailers, dressing rooms, hotel suites, or bungalows alongside one another to keep the myth alive. And they both played the part. It was as though they were performing in a movie within a movie whenever they did a picture together. Such was the power of the studio publicity machine. It was like the Duke and Duchess of Windsor story all over again. Except in this case none of it was true. Hired Hollywood spin doctors even went so far as to say that the reason Tracy never divorced his wife Louise to marry Kate was because of his Catholic upbringing which, according to church decree, forbade divorce. It was all so farcical.

Tracy looked and behaved as masculine as they come. Think Sylvester Stallone, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Anthony Quinn. They don’t come manlier than that.

To the world—on-screen and off—Spencer Tracy was like them. Once I had started bartending more or less full time I saw Tracy a couple of times at small dinner parties, especially at George’s place, and progressively began to know him better. As our acquaintanceship developed I began calling him Spence, which he preferred over Spencer. Kate Hepburn called him Spence, too.

One day—I don’t remember exactly why—I got a call from Spence.

He knew that in addition to working at parties and private dinners I was also available for general handyman chores and, if memory serves me correctly, I think he wanted me to take a look at his hot water cylinder or something like that. When I arrived at about two o’clock in the afternoon he was sitting in his living room listening to classical music, thumbing through a screenplay, and drinking scotch. The rented house was perfect for his needs, especially when he was working. He could spend time alone there relaxing, learning his lines, and developing his characters. And boozing. Lots of boozing.

Other than Errol Flynn I seldom saw anyone put away as much alcohol as Spence did.

On that particular afternoon he seemed pretty low. Apparently he had been over to his house that morning to see his wife and something had obviously upset him. He didn’t want to talk about it. Perhaps it was something to do with his son John’s hearing affliction. Who knows? Anyway, I believe that I messed around with his hot water heater while he kept throwing back scotch after scotch. By sundown he must have finished an entire bottle. I offered to put together a light meal for him, which he agreed to. The next thing I knew another bottle of scotch came out and he was downing the stuff like orange juice.

As evening settled around us I laid out the meal I’d prepared and joined him in the living room. To distract him from his melancholic mood I asked him to talk about the script he had been paging through earlier that day. Flinging it across the table at me, with his words now slurring noticeably, he told me that it was for a picture called Pat and Mike that he was going to star in with Kate Hepburn later that year.

And that’s what pierced a hole in the hornet’s nest. The minute he started talking about Kate something deep inside him was unleashed. He launched into a tirade about her. This was not the cool, calm, collected Spencer Tracy we were all familiar with through the characters he played on-screen. This was an angry, bitter, bruised man. He had been hurt by her. Slurring and stumbling over his words he told me that she was always rude to him, that she treated him like dirt, that she was contemptuous of him. Nothing about their great tabloid romance matched up with what Spence was telling me that evening as night fell.

Before I knew it, it was past midnight. Finally, after another empty bottle of scotch stood on the coffee table he began to undress and begged me not to leave him. I did not have the heart to say no. It was clear to me that Spence desperately needed someone to be with him. He was hurting badly. I could only assume that his pseudo-romance with Kate Hepburn was causing him this distress.

I turned off the lights, undressed him, then got undressed myself, climbed into bed with him, and held him tightly like a baby. He continued to slobber and curse and complain. By then he had had so much to drink that I hardly understood a word he was saying. I tried to pacify him by saying that by morning all would be well and that we should try to get some sleep, but he wasn’t ready for that. Instead, he lay his head down at my groin, took hold of my penis and began nibbling on my foreskin. This was the last guy on earth that I expected an overture like that from, but I was more than happy to oblige him and despite his inebriated state we had an hour or so of pretty good sex.

At about four in the morning I woke up with a start. Spence had got out of bed and was stumbling around the bedroom trying to find the door to the bathroom to take an urgently needed pee. He fumbled for the light switch but couldn’t find it, so he just let loose. One moment he was urinating up against the drapes, the next into an open closet, then all over the carpet. Finally he fell back into bed and immediately lapsed into a deep sleep, snoring like an express train.

The next morning there wasn’t even the slightest hint of how drunk he’d been, that he’d pissed in the corner of the bedroom, or that we’d had sex together. He didn’t say a word about it. It was as though none of it ever happened.

That was the first of many sexual encounters I had with Spence. Sometimes I would go to his place at five in the afternoon and sit around the kitchen table with him until two in the morning as he drank himself into a stupor. Then he would be ready for a little sex. Despite everything, he was a damn good lover. The great Spencer Tracy was another bisexual man, a fact totally concealed by the studio publicity department.

That is, if they ever knew about it at all.”