While that line may sound like one hell of a B-story, in Hollywood, the "Golden Tip" gas station is actually kind of essential.
The series follows the starry-eyed pursuit of fame and industry change during Hollywood's "Golden Age," the cinematic period wedged roughly between 1920 and 1960 and characterized by film studio monopolizationof directors and actors and writerswhere talent was contracted and filmed and reared and whored by only a handful of studios. Which is all a real thing.
And one underbelly route through this studio pipeline: a very sexy gas station (which is a string of words with seemingly no real-world referent) that is, in fact, also a (kind of) real thingconnected with the studio system and the discrimination, but mainly with creator Ryan Murphy's desire for Hollywood's outcasts to be "who they wanted to be," while still shooting their shot at big screen fame.
It all begins with $20 and a man named Scotty Bowers .... *cue fuzzy, old Hollywood transition sequence*
Is Golden Tip Real?
Kind of. While not existent in name (Netflix's moniker seems to combine the industry's "golden" age with either something indiscreetly sexual or something cheekily monetary and transactional), there was a gas station. And that gas station was the site for some Hollywood Star Sexy Time. The gas station, however, was the "Richfield" on Hollywood Boulevard. And most of the sexy time allegedly took place in a trailer parked behind the Richfield. The man in charge of the operation was Scotty Bowers.
Who is Scotty Bowers?
Bowers pumped gas at the Richfield in the 1940s. He was in his 20s, a discharged Marine, and the conduit, he claimed, between famous folksCary Grant, Spencer Tracy, and Rock Hudsonand the gratification of sexual practices likely stigmatized by fans. In other words, Bowers provided a space for actors to keep their homosexuality on the DL. The price for many of these liaisons: $20.
Bowers told the New York Post that he "fixed Rock Hudson with several $20 tricks out of the gas station." It all started, Bowers said, after he was invited home by actor Walter Pidgeon after buying gas. Bowers and Pidgeon had sex, and then Bowers' services spread through Hollywood. Soon, Bowers was hiring other former Marines to provide services. Bowers claimed he serviced or provided service for actors such as Cary Grant, Laurence Olivier, and Audrey Hepburn.
Bowers disappeared during the 1980s, working as a bartender instead of a hustler. He then began working as a writer. He was profiled for the 2017 documentary Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood.
Bowers died in October of last year at the age of 96.
Is Scotty Bowers in Hollywood?
Bowers exists more in spirit than name in Hollywood. In fact, the mustached, washed-up actor/gas station managerclearly standing in for Bowersis given the name "Ernie," not "Scotty." (He's played by Murphy regular Dylan McDermott.)
While other characters share names with real-life Hollywood stars, Ernie stands apart, even deeper into the fiction/fantasy of Hollywood than characters like Rock Hudson (real, but semi-fictitious). The reason is probably one of creative freedom. Ernie acts as the conduit to many of the characters' dreams of stardom, himself an older, less successful version of those young pups. Straying from "Bowers" also lets Hollywood play out what, as far as we can tell, is still only one man's uncorroborated tale of salacious stardom.
Sure, gas-station-adjacent prostitution was probably a real thing, but how just how real, Hollywood isn't pretending to know. It's more fun this way.
