Rock Hudson’s closeted love life

Had Rock Hudson not died of AIDS in 1985, he might be best remembered as the most successful of the postwar male stars who got into the movies solely on their looks. He remained on the screen for decades because of a likability that can’t be learned or manufactured.

Instead, Hudson became the first celebrity to acknowledge that he suffered from the mysterious disease that seemed to target gay men. The potentially career-ending sexual secret he had protected was all but confirmed in the last months of his life.

Mark Griffin’s perceptive and sympathetic biography All That Heaven Allows gives Hudson, both the movie star and the man, the kind of reassessment only time can allow. He improved as an actor yet never lost the fear that moviegoers would discover that their ideal leading man was only playing a role.

While he needed time and experience to hone his craft, pretending for the cameras came easy to Illinois-born Roy Fitzgerald. Escaping reality at the Winnetka movie theatre was a must for the boy with an overprotective mother, a father who walked out on the family and a stepfather who beat him.

Living a closeted life and trying to make it as an actor only added to his insecurities. With his new name, Hudson appeared in more than two dozen films under contract to Universal between 1948 and 1954. Eager to learn, he blossomed under the direction of Douglas Sir k, whose romantic tearjerkers Magnificent Obsession (1954) and All That Heaven Allows (1955) turned Hudson into a heartthrob at 30.

With the hugely successful epic Giant (1956), Hudson was an Oscar-nominated actor and soon Hollywood’s most popular star. Routine dramas followed until 1959’s Pillow Talk with Doris Day revealed Hudson’s knack for light comedy. He remained an audience favourite for several more years. Imagine what might have been had Universal followed through on its original plan to cast Hudson as lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.

All the while Hudson lived and loved on the down-low. A sham marriage around the time of Giant quelled the gossip for a time. Publicly, he played along with the fan magazine image of the happy if lonely bachelor trying to find the right woman when he was actually trying to find the right man.

Griffin suggests that Hudson’s better performances — the paranoia classic Seconds (1966) being one example — came with roles in which he could identify with a character’s internal turmoil. Wisely, the writer explores Hudson’s films and TV shows without trying to make them more than what they were — generally average entertainment punctuated by occasional hits and many, many misses. Like most other aging stars, Hudson struggled to find good roles as the wrinkles appeared. Alcohol and cigarettes took a toll on his health long before the AIDS diagnosis.

Given his generation’s intense homophobia and the 1950s communist witch hunt that ruined so many careers, it’s understandable that Hudson didn’t want to risk everything as a gay-rights pioneer. But he was indiscreet enough that his secret was widely known or assumed in Hollywood and elsewhere.

Griffin’s interviews and correspondence with many of Hudson’s co-stars and many of his lovers show how protective they were of their warm, loyal friend. Had he lived into the next century, the abandoned and abused boy from Winnetka might have discovered a public ready to root for him to be who he really was.