Rock Hudson

Today's subject, Rock Hudson, was my mother's star-crush well into her adulthood. Earlier star-crushes of hers included Tyrone Power and Alan Ladd. I guess me being gay was an inevitability from the minute that I was conceived...

On a totally related subject, my mother's current star-crush is George Clooney. Could it be???

Rock Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. in November of 1925 in Winnetka, Illinois. He was of German, Swiss-German, English, and Irish descent. Roy and his mother were abandoned by his father during the great depression, but his mother eventually remarried.  Roy was legally adopted by his new father and became Roy Fitzgerald. When meeting John F. Kennedy, the American president remarked: "They say all Fitzgeralds are related", to which Hudson replied, "I guess that would make Ella happy".

Enamored of movies as a teenager, he worked as an usher. He failed to obtain parts in school plays, however, because he couldn't remember lines. After high school he was a postal employee and during WW II served as a Navy airplane mechanic.

In 1946, after the war, Roy went to work in the gift wrapping department of Marshall Field Department store in Chicago.  According to Justin Spring’s book “Secret Historian” the legendary Samuel Steward, professor, tattoo artist and sexual renegade was also working there at the same time. Steward spotted the extraordinarily handsome Roy. After some brief flirtation, these two attractive men stopped a freight elevator between floors and had sex.

Realizing that his good looks were a major commodity, Roy decided to pursue a career as an actor and he and moved to Los Angeles before the end of 1946. The handsome young Roy soon caught the eye of Hollywood Talent agent, Henry Willson. Willson was responsible for the “Beefcake” craze of the 1950’s and 60’s, he was notorious for “scouting talent” at gay bars all over Los Angeles.

His stable of hot young male actors included Guy Madison,Troy Donahue, Tab Hunter, Chad Everett, Robert Wagner, Rory Calhoun and Doug McClure. Roy was quickly renamed Rock Hudson and he would become Henry Willson’s most successful creation.

Willson knew that Rock was something special and so he spent a lot of time “grooming” him. There were etiquette lessons, which Willson gave to Rock while showing him off at Hollywood’s hottest restaurants. He taught him how to speak, had his teeth capped and supported him while he got his career up and running. When Willson wasn't around, Rock enjoyed hanging (even tricking with) the most handsome gay men in Hollywood.

Hudson made his acting debut with a small part in the 1948 film Fighter Squadron, and took 38 takes to successfully deliver his only line in the film. In the early 50s he appeared in small parts in a number of films, including Winchester '73 (1950), Bright Victory (1951), a well-reviewed part in Bend Of The River (1952), and his first starring role in a Douglas Sirk move with Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952). In this film, James Dean appears in an uncredited small part.

He would make many movies with Douglas Sirk during the 50s: Magnificent Obsession (1954), which cemented his leading man reputation, All That Heaven Allows (1955), Written on the Wind  (1956), and The Tarnished Angels (1957), being the best among them.

Rock Hudson said of the director:

"He was like ol' Dad to me, and I was like a son to him, I think. When you're scared and new and you're trying to figure out this thing, and suddenly an older man will reach out and say, 'There, there, it's okay,' that was Douglas Sirk."

The more popular Rock became, the more attention the gossip magazines began paying to his personal life. Willson set Rock up dates with attractive young actresses, then tipped off the press where to find them. 

Even with Willson's heterosexual smoke screen, word got around about the handsome "bachelors" that Rock was seen with around town. Many were wondering, was Rock Hudson gay? The magazines started doing stories which asked why Rock wasn't married yet. At one point Confidential Magazine threatened to expose Rock Hudson as a homosexual. The rumor is that one of Rock’s tricks managed to take a few incriminating photos of Rock and sold them to the magazine. Willson had a sizable investment in Rock and the studio was panicked about the potential scandal.

In order to save their hottest new star, Willson and the studio made a deal with the magazine; leave Rock alone and they would give them the dirt on Rory Calhoun and one other young star. (Rory was a juvenile delinquent as a teen, which was a big deal at that time.) The other star that was sacrificed for Rock’s career was Tab Hunter: we elaborated on the subject while discussing Hunter last week.

In order to avoid any suspicions about the handsome young bachelor, Willson arranged for Rock to marry his secretary, Phyllis Gates.  They "dated" publicly for several months; Willson making sure that the gossip rags were there to document Rock’s “heterosexuality” for his fans.  They were married in 1955, in a wedding ceremony planned entirely by Willson. The sham marriage worked and no one knew Rock's secret except for Hollywood insiders and members of LA’s gay scene. Gates divorced Hudson in 1958 charging mental cruelty.

She received $250 a month alimony for ten years, which was a bargain for Hudson. Years later she continued to deny that the marriage was a fraud, but she never remarried and there are rumors that the marriage helped to hide the fact that she was lesbian.

Now that Rock was a certified Heterosexual, in the public's eye, he was free to make more movies, and continue with his closeted gay affairs. Scotty Bowers mentions Rock Hudson in his biography, “Full Service, My adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars.” According to Scotty, who hooked up his military buddies with closeted celebrities, Rock was a regular customer.

Rock would pull up to Scotty's Gas Station in his shiny new car and request what type of guy he wanted and Scotty would arrange the whole thing. Obviously a handsome man like Rock didn’t need to pay for sex, but Scotty’s operation had a great reputation for being discreet, something that Rock was willing to pay for after the tabloid situation.

With his career back on track, Rock went on to make "Giant" with Liz Taylor and James Dean in 1956. According to one of their co-stars, Liz and Rock had a bet which of them could get James Dean into bed first... of course, Rock won the bet! Hudson and Dean both earned Oscar nominations for their performances in Giant.

Rock’s career took a bit of a drop in 1958. That all changed in 1959, when he was paired up with Doris Day and Tony Randall for the comedy hit Pillow Talk. This and several other comedies that the two made together were very successful and allowed Rock to remain a leading man.

Early in his career he had surgery on his vocal chords to make his voice deeper. The surgery had the unfortunate side effect of making it impossible for Hudson to learn to sing. That didn't stop him from having a go at a Pop career. Pillow Talk was an opportunity for him: he released the film's song as a single:

Here's another song from 1959. It's called You Are My Inspiration:

During that same year, Roly Poly was lighter fare:

All three of the above songs were from Pillow Talk. This film was followed by Lover Come Back, Come September, Send Me No Flowers, Man's Favorite Sport?, The Spiral Road, and Strange Bedfellows. Along with Cary Grant, Hudson was regarded as one of the best-dressed male stars in Hollywood, and received a place in the Top 5 of the Top 10 Stars of the Year a record-setting eight times from 1957 to 1964.

At the height of his fame in the early ’60s, few people were closer to Rock Hudson than Lee Garlington, who dated the actor from 1962 to 1965.

“He was a sweetheart,” says Garlington, 77, a retired stockbroker. “I adored him.”

Garlington was a young film extra when he first met Hudson in 1962.

“He was the biggest movie star in the world, and the rumors were that he was gay,” he says. “So I thought, ‘Let me get an eye on him.’ I stood outside his cottage on the Universal lot, pretending to read Variety, which was probably upside down at the time. He walked out and down the street. He looked back once. That was it.”

A year later, after Garlington had broken up with his boyfriend, he got a call from one of Hudson’s friends, asking if he’d like to meet the actor. “I think he had me checked out,” he says.

“I was scared to death,” Garlington says of their first meeting at Hudson’s mansion on Beverly Crest Drive in Beverly Hills. “Of course, he was 6-foot-4, a monster. He offered me a beer, but nothing happened. Literally. I was too scared. He said, ‘Well, let’s get together,’ and we did.”

“I’d come over after work, spend the night and leave the next morning,” Garlington says. “I’d sneak out at 6 a.m. in my Chevy Nova and coast down the street without turning on the engine so the neighbors wouldn’t hear. We thought we were being so clever.”

“Rock had no pretense,” he says. “He was always casual. He liked to wear chinos and moccasins around the house and hang around and watch television. We’d go on road trips and sometimes he wouldn t tell the studio where he was going.”

The two broke up in 1965.

“One of the reasons we went our own way was because in a way I wanted a father figure and he was not strong enough,” he says. “Rock wasn’t a real strong personality. He was a gentle giant.”

Garlington read in Hudson’s biography, published after his death, that the actor had called him his “true love.”

“I broke down and cried,” he recalls. “I just lost it. He said his mother and I were the only people he ever loved. I had no idea I meant that much to him.”

Unfortunately, just as Rock Hudson was hitting his stride in the mid 60s, the handsome beefcake actors of the 1950s were beginning to seem corny to a public that now clamored to actors like Duston Hoffman and Al Pacino. Hudson hated them and referred to them as “Little Uglies.” Gritty realism was in, Hollywood glamor was out.

He eventually began appearing in TV movies; his leading man looks and loyal following insured high ratings for just about anything.

In 1970 he released an album called Rock, Gently: Rock Hudson Sings The Songs Of Rod McKuen. Rod McKuen was a very influential gay singer-songwriter, who will have his own day in GayCultureLand in a couple of weeks from now. The opening track of the album was Open The Window & See All The Clowns:

Another song from the album was I've Been To Town:

Gone With The Cowboys was released as a single:

He also sang the beautiful Love's Been Good To Me:

Another beautiful song was Jean:

To be honest, I prefer these songs in their original version, sung by Rod McKuen himself.

In 1971 he got his own TV show called McMillan & Wife with Susan Saint James.   The show was a big hit and stayed on the air for 7 years and kept Rock in the spotlight.  Besides his show, Rock also made several memorable appearances on the The Carol Burnett Show. Rock and Carol were good friends and that closeness shines through in their work together.

Jim Nabors had been good friends with Rock Hudson for years when suddenly a rumor began spreading that they were lovers. It all started with a joke invitation to an annual gay party in Huntington Beach. The queens printed invitations to “witness the marriage of Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors” with the punch line being that Hudson would be taking on the last name of Jim Nabor’s famous character, Gomer Pyle, thus becoming "Rock Pyle."  The joke went over the heads of a few guests and the story entered the rumor mill and became part of pop culture history. Sadly, it ended the friendship between Rock and Nabors.

Rock’s sexuality was an open secret in Hollywood and even his mother knew. When interviewed about her book, “Rock Hudson, His Story” author Sara Davidson told a great story about Hudsons’ mother chatting with her friend in Newport Beach, “… she was playing bridge, and one of her partners had something on her mind, and finally blurted out, ‘ I heard that Rock was gay!’ His mother answered, ‘I know. And the hardest thing is, I can’t remember his boyfriends’ names. Three no trump.' "

From December 1984 to April 1985, Hudson appeared in a recurring role on the ABC prime time soap opera Dynasty as Daniel Reece, the love interest for Krystle Carrington (played by Linda Evans) and biological father of the character Sammy Jo Carrington (Heather Locklear). While he had long been known to have difficulty memorizing lines, which resulted in his use of cue cards, it was Hudson's speech itself that began to visibly deteriorate on Dynasty. He was originally slated to appear for the duration of the show's fifth season; however, because of his progressing ill health, his character was abruptly written out of the show and died off screen.

Unknown to the public, Hudson was diagnosed with HIV on 5 June 1984, just three years after the existence of HIV and AIDS had been discovered by scientists. Hudson kept his illness a secret and continued to work while, at the same time, traveling to France and other countries seeking a cure - or at least treatment to slow the progress of the disease. On 16 July 1985, Hudson joined his old friend Doris Day for a press conference announcing the launch of her new TV cable show Doris Day's Best Friends in which Hudson was videotaped visiting Day's ranch in Carmel, California, a few days earlier. His gaunt appearance and almost incoherent speech were so shocking, that the reunion was broadcast repeatedly over national news shows that night and for days to come. Media outlets speculated on Hudson's health.

Two days later, Hudson traveled to Paris, France, for another round of treatment. After Hudson collapsed in his room at the Ritz Hotel in Paris on July 21, his publicist, Dale Olson, released a statement claiming that Hudson had inoperable liver cancer. Olson denied reports that Hudson had AIDS and would say only that he was undergoing tests for "everything" at the American Hospital of Paris. But, four days later, July 25, 1985, Hudson's publicist confirmed that Hudson did in fact have AIDS. He was among the first notable individuals to have been diagnosed with the disease. In another press release a month later, Hudson speculated he might have contracted HIV through transfused blood from an infected donor during the multiple blood transfusions he received during his heart bypass procedure in November 1981.

On the morning of October 2, 1985, Hudson died in his sleep from AIDS-related complications at his home in Beverly Hills at age 59, less than two months before what would have been his 60th birthday. Hudson requested that no funeral be held. His body was cremated hours after his death and a cenotaph was later established at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Cathedral City, California.

Hudson's revelation had an immediate impact on the visibility of AIDS, and on the funding of medical research related to the disease. Among activists who were seeking to de-stigmatize AIDS and its victims, Hudson's revelation of his own infection with the disease was viewed as an event that could transform the public's perception of AIDS.

Shortly after Hudson's press release disclosing his infection, William M. Hoffman, the author of As Is, a play about AIDS that appeared on Broadway in 1985, stated: "If Rock Hudson can have it, nice people can have it. It's just a disease, not a moral affliction." At the same time, Joan Rivers was quoted as saying: "Two years ago, when I hosted a benefit for AIDS, I couldn't get one major star to turn out. ... Rock's admission is a horrendous way to bring AIDS to the attention of the American public, but by doing so, Rock, in his life, has helped millions in the process. What Rock has done takes true courage." Morgan Fairchild said that "Rock Hudson's death gave AIDS a face." In a telegram Hudson sent to a September 1985 Hollywood AIDS benefit, Commitment to Life, which he was too ill to attend in person, Hudson said: "I am not happy that I am sick. I am not happy that I have AIDS. But if that is helping others, I can at least know that my own misfortune has had some positive worth."

Following Hudson's death, Marc Christian, Hudson's former lover, sued his estate on grounds of "intentional infliction of emotional distress". Christian claimed that Hudson continued having sex with him until February 1985, more than eight months after Hudson knew that he had HIV. Although he repeatedly tested negative for HIV, Christian claimed that he suffered from "severe emotional distress" after learning from a newscast that Hudson had died of AIDS. Christian also sued Hudson's personal secretary, Mark Miller, for $10 million because Miller allegedly lied to him about Hudson's illness. In 1989, a jury awarded Christian $21.75 million in damages, later reduced to $5.5 million. Christian later defended Hudson's reputation in not telling him he was infected: "You can't dismiss a man's whole life with a single act. This thing about AIDS was totally out of character for him," he said in an interview.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Hudson has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6116 Hollywood Blvd. Following his death, Elizabeth Taylor, his close friend and co-star in the film Giant, purchased a bronze plaque for Hudson on the West Hollywood Memorial Walk. In 2002, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars was dedicated to him. A true superstar who, as fate would have it, became the face of AIDS in the dark years of the 80s.