Rock: A Courageous Disclosure

By Gerald Clarke

There were better actors certainly, and a few were even handsomer. But to moviegoers of the 1950s and '60s, no star better represented the old-fashioned American virtues than Rock Hudson. "He's wholesome," said Look magazine in 1958. "He doesn't perspire. He has no pimples. He smells of milk. His whole appeal is cleanliness and respectability--this boy is pure." Last week as Hudson lay gravely ill with AIDS in a Paris hospital, it became clear that throughout those years the all-American boy had another life, kept secret from his public: he was almost certainly homosexual.

Many people on the inside knew, as they have known about the homosexuality of other stars, from Ramon Novarro, one of the great Latin lovers of the silentfilm era, to Montgomery Clift, Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, Sal Mineo and several of today's leading men. In one sense, the dilemma of gays is no different in show business than it is in any other business. Many are afraid, usually with justification, that acknowledgment of their private lives will damage and perhaps ruin their careers, whether they work at MGM or General Motors.

In another sense, their predicament is both more serious and more poignant. They must project a false image not only to their friends and co-workers but, in the case of a star like Hudson, to millions of fans who they fear cannot and will not accept the truth. For years they have played a cat-and-mouse game with a press that for the most part is sympathetic. Now many of them are being exposed in a manner crueler than any scandal sheet could ever have devised: by a frightening, incurable and invariably fatal disease.

Hudson is a sad symbol for many others. Tall (6 ft. 4 in.), square-jawed and handsome, he gravitated naturally to Hollywood when he left the Navy after World War II. Henry Willson, the agent who turned Marilyn Louis into Rhonda Fleming and Arthur Gelien into Tab Hunter, thought it was appropriate that Roy Fitzgerald should become Rock Hudson, as solid as Gibraltar and as steady as the river that flows past Manhattan's towers. A series of B movies followed, and through hard work Hudson learned the craft if not the art of acting. He gave a fine performance in Giant (1956), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, and showed a gift for comedy in a series of romances (like Pillow Talk) that he made with Doris Day in the late '50s and early '60s. As his movie career faded, he turned to TV, demonstrating his continuing appeal in McMillan and Wife as the crime-solving San Francisco police commissioner and later in Dynasty, in which he gamely but unsuccessfully pursued Krystle (Linda Evans).

In almost every role, he played the strong and obviously heterosexual male, and the deception apparently took a toll on his nerves. In Los Angeles he usually spent his evenings at home, in a house overlooking Beverly Hills. When he wanted to unwind, he would go to San Francisco, where according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, he did not mind being seen in gay restaurants and discos. A former columnist for the Chronicle, Writer Armistead Maupin, said that in 1976 he tried to persuade Hudson to make a public announcement that he was gay. "Rock seemed to take to the idea and said, 'One of these days I'm going to have a lot to tell.' I thought it would be a good idea because he was exactly the same in private life as on the screen, very masculine and natural." The actor was still bitter, said Maupin, that he had been forced into an unhappy marriage of convenience in the '50s. A gossip magazine had threatened to expose him, by Maupin's account, and to protect his image, Hudson's studio hastily arranged a marriage with his agent's secretary; it lasted less than three years.

Sentiments have changed since the '50s. Gays are openly active in a number of fields, and there have been many movies and plays about homosexuals, from The Boys in the Band and Making Love to the musical of La Cage aux Folles, and two successful plays about AIDS, William Hoffman's As Is and Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart. Tennessee Williams wrote and talked at length about his homosexuality, something that earlier theater greats, such as Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter and Noel Coward, never felt free to do. Yet no star of either stage or screen has said he is homosexual. And for a very good reason: they have thought that the public would turn against them. "In the long run, the dollar is what counts," says George Christy, a columnist for the Hollywood Reporter, a trade paper. "Homosexuality is still a stigma in our society."

AIDS, however, has added a new and even more sinister twist to this old story, and it may soon push other stars out of hiding. The disease has already severely shaken the theatrical and movie colonies on both coasts. "Within the past two or three years, at least 20 people who worked here have died," says Joseph Papp, head of New York City's Public Theater. "The first time, we were surprised that a person so young--he was 23--was stricken. We had a memorial for him, and then another and another for other victims. At one point we had a memorial every few months. It's horrible to see."

Hoffman, the author of As Is, is aware of the casualties when he thinks about casting a production. "I often daydream about projects," he says. "The other day I pulled myself back to reality. One of the actors I was contemplating was dead of AIDS, as was one of the producers. It was very sobering." The impact of Hudson's disclosure of his illness, Hoffman thinks, will be profound. "That's why it's a major event for one of Hudson's magnitude to say it. Many other people of his stature, I am sure, have AIDS but haven't come out with it."

Slowly, all too slowly in the opinion of some who work in the field, the show-business community has begun to help its own. Until a year ago many people in the arts, gay as well as straight, seemed to ignore what was happening around them. But when TV Producer Victoria Hamburg helped organize an AIDS Medical Foundation benefit in Manhattan, she quickly got help from Papp and the Shubert Organization, which lent a theater; Mike Nichols, who offered to direct; Saturday Night Live's Lorne Michaels, who volunteered to produce; and Phil Donahue, who came on as emcee. Performers filled the stage: Joan Rivers, Gregory Hines, Penny Marshall, Steve Martin, Randy Newman and the Weather Girls. The event, which took place May 19, raised more than $500,000.

Hudson's admission that he has AIDS may reverberate further than he could have predicted. "It's a shame that it takes something like that to make people pay attention," says Hamburg, "but it's terrific it's happening. We need to make people understand that AIDS doesn't have to be an incurable disease, that dollars for research can help us." Hudson, say others, has put a face on the illness and brought it home to many who could not have dealt with it two weeks ago.

Ruminating over his life and career several years ago, long before he had AIDS, Hudson sounded a little world weary. "I spent so much time trying to figure out what life was all about," he said. "I still don't know. But now I don't give a damn." Perhaps he does nonetheless. His announcement last week may have been the best and most dramatic gesture in his long career. --By Gerald Clarke. Reported by Elaine Dutka/New York and Barbara Kraft/Los Angeles

With reporting by Reported by Elaine Dutka/New York, Barbara Kraft/Los Angeles