According to David Niven, debonair star of films including Wuthering Heights, Around the World in 80 Days, and Bonjour Tristesse, not all full-service brothels in the golden age of movies were run out of gas stations, as in Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series Hollywood. One was housed in a stately colonial-style mansion right under his window in the North Hollywood hills, run by a “Baroness” and filled with whips, kinky costumes, and two beautiful failed actresses deeply in love.

This tale and many more are recorded in Niven’s 1975 memoir, Bring on the Empty Horses, which has long been considered by those in the know—including (strangely enough) conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr.—one of the best books ever written about Hollywood in its studio-system heyday.

The memoir is a follow-up to his equally delightful 1971 autobiography, The Moon’s a Balloon. In Horses, the British-born Niven reveals a generous but clear-eyed view of Hollywood from the 1930s to the early ’60s. “[It] was hardly a nursery for intellectuals, it was a hotbed of false values, it harbored an unattractive percentage of small-time crooks and con artists, and the chances of being successful there were minimal,” he writes. “But it was fascinating, and if you were lucky, it was fun.”

Fun yes, but also freaky. Through a series of thematic vignettes, Niven spills the tea on the passions and pretentions of stars like Humphrey Bogart (a real softie), Mary Astor (at her best in bed), Fred Astaire (a terrible dancer in public), Greta Garbo ( a big fan of skinny-dipping), and Charlie Chaplin (a pompous bore). He does so with such grace and panache that one is almost unaware secrets are being revealed—but revealed they are, much to every Hollywood fan’s gossipy delight. Ahead, six of the juiciest tidbits from Niven’s pen.

Errol Flynn Was a Big Fan of Hollywood High School

For Niven, perhaps no star in Hollywood was as tragic and troubled as his former roommate (and frequent costar) Errol Flynn. “The great thing about Errol was you always knew exactly where you stood with him because he always let you down,” he writes.

On one particularly troubling occasion, Niven claims that Flynn (who was tried and acquitted of statutory rape by two women in the early 1940s) invited him to go view “the best-looking girls in L.A.” Allegedly, Flynn then drove them down Sunset Boulevard, parking directly across from Hollywood High just as school was letting out. “Jailbait,” he told Niven. “San Quentin Quail. What a waste!” When a policeman approached the car to ask what exactly they were doing, Flynn retorted, “We are just admiring the scenery.”

The policeman, not impressed, told him to beat it.

Shirley MacLaine Warmed Up the Cold War

According to Niven, when USSR premier Nikita Khrushchev and his family visited Hollywood in September of 1959, they were treated to the filming of a dance scene for the upcoming Shirley MacLaine musical Can-Can—which evidently left the Soviet leader decidedly unimpressed. Khrushchev and his cronies gazed with “undisguised horror,” writes Niven, as MacLaine and her scantily-clad dancer comrades “kicked their legs, swirled their petticoats, waggled their knees, and ended up with their skirts over their heads and their bottoms pointing directly at the guest of honor and his family.” Krushchev wound up giving a one-word summation of the performance to the publicity flacks who then asked for his comment: “DISGUSTING!”

Carole Lombard Came for Norma Shearer

Screwball comedian Carole Lombard, who was known for being particularly outspoken, was apparently incensed when 1930s MGM queen Norma Shearer showed up at her own all-white party at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in a bright red dress. The whole ballroom gasped when Lombard dared to come for Shearer, who was married to the all-powerful boy-wonder producer Irving Thalberg. According to Niven, in a voice loud enough for all of Hollywood to hear, Lombard proclaimed, “Who the fuck does Norma think she is? The house madam?”

Tyrone Power Was the Original Bad Santa

Matinee idol Tyrone Power might have been blessed with “flashing good looks, graceful carriage, and easy laughter,” writes Niven, but his confidence was shattered playing Santa at a Christmas party for a host of Hollywood kids (including a young Candice Bergen). Terrified of performing for children, Power leaned heavily on a bottle of scotch, and was soused when he turned up dressed as Father Christmas. As he swayed up to Niven’s house, Niven accidentally turned on the sprinkler to his lawn, drenching the drunk star. Power’s performer’s instinct somewhat saved the party as he let the children of Gary Cooper and Rosalind Russell sit on his knee. But Niven claimed that as “Santa” staggered off, “some children cried…and one complained about his breath.”

Joseph Cotten Kicked Hedda Hopper’s Derriere

The terror that Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper inspired in movieland’s elite was palpable. Niven claims that Hopper, with her “brisk staccato way of demanding replies rather than asking questions,” was fond of summoning stars to her Beverly Hills home (which she called “the house that fear built”). There, terrified actors were plied with alcohol, spilling secrets—often their friends’—while Hopper “shrewdly sipped tonic water.”

But not every movie star took Hopper’s abuse lying down. In the 1940s, Hopper insinuated in her column that Citizen Kane star Joseph Cotten, whom Niven calls “the epitome of the Southern gentleman,” had been caught by Malibu cops in the backseat of his car with teenage star Deanna Durbin. The very married Cotten vowed that if Hopper slandered him again, he would “kick her up the ass!” According to Niven:

“Sure enough, Hedda went into action again a few days later, and the next time Cotten saw Hedda’s behind entering a smart Hollywood party, he lined up on the target and let her have it.”

The Mystery of Missie

Since Bring on the Empty Horses’ publication, Hollywood biographers have been attempting to unravel the real identity of the drug addicted, industry-abused sex-symbol Niven writes about in a two-part chapter titled “Our Little Girl.” Referred to only as “Missie,” this studio-created star possessed the “most beautiful body in Hollywood” and was referred to as “the boy’s erector set.”

According to Niven, as her looks faded and her career hit the skids, Missie became addicted to pills supplied by doctor nicknamed “Needle Ned.” In his harrowing second chapter about Missie, Niven recalls caring for her alone for three days when she was in the midst of a major mental health crisis. He describes a hellish experience, with a naked, manic Missie taunting him, asking for his reassurance of her beauty, refusing to eat anything but cottage cheese, and never sleeping.

So just who was “Missie”? Some point to Niven’s friend Lana Turner. The physical description is spot on, as is the biography. But others believe the second chapter is based on an experience Niven had with the troubled Vivien Leigh. According to actor Stewart Granger, he and Niven spent a torturous time caring for Leigh—who had bipolar disorder and substance abuse problems—until her husband Laurence Olivier could commit her to a hospital. Whoever she was, Niven seems haunted by Missie—and perhaps his own complicity in Hollywood’s sexist and abusive system.

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