Airlines refused to let Rock Hudson fly home after he was diagnosed with Aids
AIRLINES would not allow Rock Hudson fly home to America after his Aids diagnosis became public.
The movie star was told he would have to pay £160,000 – or £650,000 in today’s money – if he wanted to charter a plane from Paris to Los Angeles in 1984.
The huge sum reflected the deep unease and prejudice towards sufferers of the disease in the 1980s.
Hudson’s former manager Wallace Sheft revealed that the airline – which he did not name – was so concerned about getting its money, staff called him from the runway to check if it had been wired.
Hudson died in 1985 at the age of 59, having kept his homosexuality a secret from the public for decades. One of Hollywood’s most desirable screen stars, he finally came out in 1984 and revealed his Aids diagnosis, shocking a generation of female fans.
His condition became public when he collapsed on July 21 of that year at the Paris Ritz, where he had gone for secret treatments of the antiviral drug HPA-23, then unavailable in the US.
But according to Sheft, getting Hudson back to America proved to be a nightmare. He told People magazine: ‘The airlines wouldn’t take him because they were told he had a contagious disease.’ Once Hudson was in the US, HIV specialist Dr Michael Gottlieb was asked to examine him and hold a press conference to tell the public what was happening.
Sheft says Hudson was ‘ well aware of the publicity’, and saw it as a good thing.
He added: ‘It was beginning to dawn on his fan base that he was gay. He had Aids and was dying. People related to him on a human level.’ A week before he died, Hudson told Sheft to set up the Rock Hudson Memorial Fund for Aids research.
The first donation was from Hudson himself and was £160,000 – the same amount the airline had charged him.