HUDSON: ACTING AS IF HE BELONGED
Long, hard road of a gay farm boy who became a movie idol
The hardest role Rock Hudson ever played was Rock Hudson. And he played it brilliantly. Although he won an Oscar nomination for “Giant,” Hudson’s acting rarely impressed critics. They snickered at his wide-screen romances, looked down on his romcoms. All he ever did, they insisted, was play himself.
Actually, he never had that chance.
Mark Griffin’s “All that Heaven Allows: A Biography of Rock Hudson” goes behind the scripted characters to tell the real story. It’s about a lonely farm boy who ended up in Hollywood, an untutored actor who became a star solely because of his good looks.
And it’s about a gay man who lived a lie for most of his life, leaving broken relationships and ruined careers in his wake; the world didn’t want the real him.
They wanted the movie idol version of Rock Hudson.
Born Roy Scherer Jr. in 1925 in Winnetka, Ill., he was the only son of a garage mechanic and a housewife. Scherer Sr. deserted the family when his son was 6; three years later his mother remarried an angry Marine who beat her and taunted his effeminate stepson.
Scherer escaped to the movies. After a brief stint in the Navy — where the only action he saw was with a couple of willing sailors – he moved to Los Angeles.
People always told him he looked like a movie star. So, he decided to become one. Because he had never acted, he knew he would need to be discovered. He parked his truck outside of various studios, leaned his 6-foot-4 frame against it, and waited for someone to notice. No one did. Then a boyfriend introduced him to an agent, Henry Willson, who promised not only to make him a star, but also to make him into someone else.
That would soon become Willson’s specialty. Find a handsome hunk of beefcake. Give him a stage name — Rory Calhoun, Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue. And, if he were lucky, launch him as a teen idol.
But for most guys, it took more than luck. It meant convincing Willson of just how grateful you could be.
And Scherer could be very grateful.
Now named Rock, after Gibraltar, and Hudson, after the river, he was Willson’s greatest creation. The hit melodramas “Magnificent Obsession” and “All That Heaven Allows” made him a star. In 1956, the epic “Giant” even brought him a best-actor nomination.
Except Hollywood’s new leading man was also chasing men, usually macho blonds. And a sex scandal wouldn’t only land Hudson in jail; it would cost important people money.
So, things were fixed. When a gossip rag claimed to have a compromising photo, it was bought off with stories about Calhoun’s prison record and Hunter’s boysonly pajama parties. When the rumors continued, Hudson abruptly wed his agent’s secretary.
She would later claim that she hadn’t known Hudson was gay. Others would later claim she was a lesbian, and that the marriage was a convenient sham. It only lasted three years, but the confessions she tricked Hudson into making, on tape, resulted in a nice settlement.
Still the brief union gave Hudson cover, and time to emphasize his heterosexuality with a series of flirty rom-coms, starting with “Pillow Talk” in 1959.
It turned out Hudson had a real gift for light comedy. And if the plots were often awkward inside jokes — in both “Pillow Talk” and “A Very Special Favor,” he plays a straight man pretending to be gay — Hollywood ignored the irony.
People protected Hudson, even those who didn’t own 10 percent of him. Elizabeth Taylor and Doris Day remained lifelong friends. Even the young men he picked up — often rewarding them afterward with bit parts — refused to kiss and tell.
Still, rumors persisted. When “Ice Station Zebra” opened in 1968, people chanted “Fa---t!” as Hudson walked the red carpet. He never went to another premiere. Later, a silly story circulated that Hudson and the equally closeted Jim Nabors had married. A terrified Hudson immediately dropped his friend.
Most fans, though, still bought the old image. When his movie career started to
fade, Hudson switched to TV, and had a hit with “McMillan & Wife.” And while he remained closeted, he cautiously enjoyed the era’s new freedoms, sneaking into gay bars and sex clubs — astonishing one man at San Francisco’s The Glory Hole by quietly joining him, unannounced, for some no-strings fun.
Yet while the younger gay generation was out and proud, the middle-aged Hudson mostly preferred to stay safely home and drink. Relationships proved hard to maintain, often ending when lovers tired of the secrecy. Hudson broke up with one long-term partner in 1982. Soon a new, blonder model took his place.
But Marc Christian turned out to be more avaricious than amorous, hitting up the aging movie star for acting lessons, a new wardrobe, a Mercedes. That relationship began to flounder, too.
Meanwhile, Hudson’s health was failing. When he attended a White House gala, First Lady Nancy Reagan noticed he had some sort of cyst on his neck. She told him to get it looked at. When he finally did, his doctor identified it as Kaposi’s sarcoma. The star had AIDS.
In 1984, that wasn’t just a diagnosis. It was a death sentence.
Hudson kept the secret as long as he could. He even took on a high profile, guest-star role on “Dynasty,” where everyone wondered why his big love scene with Linda Evans was so tepid. Then, people still thought you could catch AIDS from a kiss. Regardless of how much the director pushed Hudson to infuse the kiss with more passion, he stubbornly refused. Later, Evans realized why. Hudson’s condition rapidly worsened. When he appeared with old pal Doris Day to promote her new cable show, he looked skeletal. He flew to Paris for experimental treatments. They didn’t help and finally his publicist confirmed the actor’s diagnosis. Soon it was international news.
“God,” Hudson muttered to a friend, “what a way to end a life.”
Still, Hudson found a new sense of purpose. His fame forced former Hollywood actor and then President Ronald Reagan to finally acknowledge the health crisis he had previously ignored. New charities were formed too, with Hudson kicking in a quarter-of-a-million dollars to jump-start amfAR, the American Foundation for AIDS Research.
With no further hope to be found in the hospital, the star returned home. His opportunistic beau, Christian, who remained AIDS-free, started consulting lawyers. He eventually received a $5.5 million settlement for emotional distress.
Meanwhile, Hudson continued to weaken. Some former protégées, such as Lee Majors, deserted him. Other pals came, but refused to get too close. “Oh, for goodness sake!” Elizabeth Taylor said one day and. pushing past the squeamish visitors, climbed into Hudson’s bed, and held him, rocked him.
She was lying next to him again the day he died. He was 59.
By now, more than 30 years after his death, Hudson’s few surviving co-stars are in their 80s and 90s. The beautiful boys he chased are middleaged – or long-gone casualties of that tragic plague. Christian died in 2009, after years of heavy smoking.
No one remembers Roy Scherer Jr.
But Rock Hudson lives — forever young, forever handsome, forever a movie star.