Rock Hudson doco insightful
Below the surface of Rock Hudson’s Hollywood life
All That Heaven Allowed (M, 114 mins) Streaming for rent on Apple and Neon Directed by Stephen Kijak Reviewed by Jen Shieff
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The McCarthy era saw to it that Hollywood was no place for an openly gay actor and as a result, Rock Hudson felt he needed to keep his personal life under wraps.
Audiences wanted heterosexual glamour in the 50s and 60s and his textbook chiselled look easily became part of the illusion.
Stephen Kijack’s insightful documentary of Rock Hudson takes us below the surface, through hundreds of clips beautifully edited by Claire Didier, with interviews that give a clear picture of Hudson choosing to stay in the closet, while seemingly relaxed about how his secret wasn’t really a secret.
According to newspaper headlines marking his death from Aids in 1985, he was “a hunk who was living a lie”, and “the star who fooled the world”.
Intriguingly, he’d always been a construct of the studios, particularly his power-broker agent Henry Willson, and he’d played along.
Elizabeth Taylor, long-time friend and co-star in George Stevens’ Giant, became an HIV and Aids activist, Hollywood rallying after she referred to Hudson having Aids, but in this documentary, perhaps always, there’s been little if anything said about him as a person by his other co-stars.
Not a word from Jane Wyman, his co-star in Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows, both directed by Douglas Sirk, nothing from other stars who outlived him, including Leslie Caron his co-star in A Very Special Favor and Doris Day, his co-star in Pillow Talk, both directed by Michael Gordon.
Gordon, Sirk and their screenwriters were experts in showing things that looked perfect on the surface while suggesting there was something quite different underneath.
A scorned woman says, “Hanging about in closets isn’t going to cure you”, another accuses him of sneaking around back alleys, but hearing harsh stuff like that, he’s impervious, slightly righteous.
His face says, “So what.”
One of the documentary’s main commentators is writer Armistead Maupin, an out friend who frequented Hudson’s all-male, clothing-optional pool parties, and who encouraged him to come out too, but he refused.
His ambition got in the way and although the documentary doesn’t examine his politics in detail, being a Republican may have influenced his decision.
The film covers the sad, ignorant early days of Aids.
Preparing to play Daniel Reece opposite Linda Evans as Krystal Carrington in the soap Dynasty, which would become his final role, Hudson told long-term co-partner Mark Miller, “I’ve got to kiss Linda. What the hell am I going to do?”
In Paris for medical help, a few months before he died aged 59, he asked his friend Nancy Reagan to help him get into an American military hospital there, but her hands were tied.
President Ronald Reagan, at that time, was an Aids-denier.
When no commercial airline would fly him home, he chartered a 747.
Hudson finally came out, admitting to the world that his gaunt appearance wasn’t due to cancer or anorexia, but to Aids.
What an act, all his life.