Rock Hudson Documentary

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after the war Roli spent a few months delivering mail and Winnetka then he moved to California with his mother some say to find his father a man he barely knew others say he came to get into the movies whatever reason brought him to Hollywood Roy Fitzgerald was about to be made over into Rock Hudson after World War two Roy Fitzgerald was a drifter he went to Long Beach California where he moved in with his father Roy sure his new wife and the daughter they had adopted he also took a job and his father's vacuum store rock vacuumed for six months and never sold one bag to Peter because his last line to the lady would be you didn't want to buy this he hated the vacuum and his father would all of a sudden fired him the shearers kicked him out of the house so Roy took an apartment in the area and found a job driving a truck for Birdseye frozen foods he would barely ever see his father again the 22 year old delivery man had developed striking good looks so he began to pursue a half-hearted childhood ambition becoming a movie star in his off hours Roy stood outside studio gates naively thinking he would be discovered a male lover introduced him to agent Henry Wilson who already had launched the careers of Tab Hunter Rory Calhoun and guy Madison all with invented ultra masculine names for his newest client Wilson picked rock for the mythical bird of prey later adding the K and Hudson for the Hudson River his wife seemed to start when he came here he never dwelled on it very much you know I mean being Roy Fitzgerald was not a very important part of his life Wilson introduced his latest creation to director Raoul Walsh who dazzled by the truckdrivers good looks hired him on the spot the only problem Rock Hudson couldn't act they're all wash was far from as subtle as a director and he put him in this particular scene and he says all right you silly black haired goof don't stand there like a tree move that was a kind of direction subtle direction he got and he was just absolutely petrified I mean he'd stumble he'd go he'd forget the lines he wouldn't come in it was a believable situation and finally they got something but then the scene was cut out of the film in the final film Rock Hudson only had one line which had to be changed because he couldn't say it right he was just a nifty looking guy and nobody had any idea we're gonna become an actor who was not an auspicious beginning in a business where Studios made stars out of pretty faces Rock found steady work Walsh sold his contract to Universal who gave Hudson the seven-year deal and his first acting lessons he studied alongside newcomer Tony Curtis he was also introduced to actor George nadir and his companion Mark Miller and dick Clayton the agent said he has no friends except studio people and he didn't want around us burn roster they'll be able he needs a couple of friends I said come to dinner you know and we were instant friends their friendship was solidified by the necessity to camouflage their sexuality it was easier for three gay men to go out than four because instantly all over the room it's two couples there's no way around it you know so we went three not a problem you know nobody gossiped nobody said anything in 1950 rocks agent suggested he share a house with another one of his clients the young straight actor he knew that he had to date women that was a foregone conclusion and he did you know not so much because he was attracted to them but just because he knew or something that would have to be done because all the other young male actors in town were doing the same thing and it would be required of him just as it was of them the studio took care of his home car and wardrobe Roy concentrated on creating Rock Hudson starting with the voice when he had a cold grew up in the mountains and yell as loud as you can he'll and break the vocal cord as soon as you break it your voice will drop and he did it and he called me up and he said hello this is me and I said no way hey and he said he had worked at the premier of Bend of the river rock got a bigger reception from the girls in the audience than star Jimmy Stewart Universal started to give him leading roles and sell him like a commodity in 1953 producer Ross hunter and actress Jane Wyman cast him in her next film a romantic tearjerker called magnificent obsession and he was scared of course you know because we were in a big big big a production now and he wanted so much to learn Rock was a sponge she just chopped up everything you know and pigeon hold it and use it when he could and by the end of the picture he was a pearl magnificent obsession turned Rock Hudson into universals top box-office draw and with that came a sudden focus on his private life fan magazines wanted to link him with female starlets but confidential the first of a new breed of muckraking movie magazines wanted to reveal something else yeah confidential approached me wanted me to do an exposure article on him they came right out and told me they said we know this man is gay mr prevel and it'll be a first in the movie industry and will help fatten your wallet a little bit if you'll you'll tell us everything you know about this gay bird so what I turn them to I said no in the 1950s Hollywood and the rest of America were not willing to accept an openly gay actor in the movies Universal would gladly take whatever steps necessary to keep their number one star in the closet in the mid-1950s Rock Hudson had become Hollywood's number one leading man but it was a well-guarded secret that Universal star was only romancing women on screen homosexuals in the 1950s lived in a world of coded signals and secret communication but sex for a gay movie star was just as available as sex for a straight movie star you know he would walk down the set and if he saw somebody he was interested in he would put out the word and the person would be brought to his trailer throughout his life Rock black men who could pass for straight I went to look up all the key romantic people that had been in his life a man he had loved and had close relationships and I felt like I was meeting the same person at different ages they were all blond it seemed they were all extremely fit and they did not look gay they were not obvious effeminate people for financial reasons Hollywood conspired to keep rocks secret but the strain on him took its toll I said Rock you bite your nails and he said yes isn't that terrible I can't show my hands in in in the two shots because he said I bite them down to the quick in late 1954 Rock was seen dating his agent secretary Phyllis gates she moved into his house in September of 1955 on November 9th the couple eloped to Santa Barbara it was a secret except for the Universal photographers invited the first phone calls made after the ceremony were two columnist Hedda Hopper at Louella Parsons that was a range marriage from the get-go and was obviously never gonna work and well the few things he ever said to me about that was that he had always resented being manipulated like that and there was a very dark period in his life others claimed it was an honest attempt on rocks part to live a straight life I really think Rock was bisexual because he was tracked to other women you know several others now whether that came to fruition I don't know cuz you know you're not there so you don't know for sure for the most part rock spent the first two years of his marriage away on location many actors jealously guard their stardom but Rock never seemed competitive with his colleagues and I came into written on the wind for another studio and he had just a magnificent obsession and he was a big star and I was a loan-out actor and he could have done what I would imagine that most of the actors on those old days would have done is go to the head man and say hey wait a minute I'm the star this guy's a loan-out actor he's got a terrific part cut it never cut away rocks apparent humility may have just been a necessity for a man living a double life a man who could ill afford making enemies in 1956 director George Stevens borrowed rock from Universal for his epic production giant Stephens coaxed from Hudson his best performance to date earning rock an Academy Award nomination in 1958 rock left for the skates and moved into the Beverly Hills Hotel customary protocol for movie stars gossip columns dutifully printed the separation the next day Phyllis gates declined to be interviewed for this program I would make a list those who thought it was a real marriage and those who thought it was just a sham and I would write down which were in this column which were in this column then I'd look at them I think who was closer to rock who saw more who has a reason to be lying to me now who has a reason maybe to be telling the truth and that was what I had to do with everything and I there were some things which I could never decide for 10 years Rock Hudson had been the square-jawed masculine hero but in 1959 Universal presented him with a comedy script starring girl-next-door Doris Day never having tried comedy especially bedroom humor Hudson feared for his image he thought it was too racy he read the script and said it's too racy you can't do this pillow talk what 1958-59 I think it came out and Doris had to talk him into it he turned it down three times he kept saying you can't do this pillow talks sexual innuendo and games of mistaken identity were so popular it spawned two other films with similar humor we had a sequence of them on the beach stretched out on rock making a pass at her and finally wound up with a kiss and the day we were shooting that they got the giggles over something I don't remember what it was when they would start the scene and get maybe one sense into it and one or the other would crack up I don't have to stop the scene and started over again literally they did that eight times in 1961 at a time when the studio system was ending Rock renewed his contract with Universal the studio bought him a house on Beverly crest Drive where he threw lavish Christmas celebrations and cocktail parties surrounding himself with people he could trust he was always so busy giving gifts to everyone else in responding to everyone else and would always sidestep any questions and was never one to show a lot of emotion about what he was feeling himself protected and cushioned rock Hudson's life remained in the closet a condition with a toll he would finally have to pay but in the mid-1960s his success began to falter America was captivated by a new crop of complicated anti-heroes and the conservative films Universal gave Rock were out of step with the times in a rare display of control over his career Rock fired longtime agent Henry Wilson and that his contract with the studio and hired new agent John Foreman at a party for man approached director John Frankenheimer and insisted Rock was right for the lead in his new dark science fiction film and I said to his agent I said well you know I said I just don't see how you can say that I mean what how would he do it and the guy said well uh don't you think that you owe him the respect of having a meeting with him and talking to him about it because he is who he is so kind of grudgingly I said all right if you look at it he was kind of an invented personality wasn't he and he identified with the sky the fact of you if you destroy your past then you're nothing you can't function and he had to to become Rock Hudson really destroy a great deal of his past I saw I went with rock to the Cannes Film Festival and saw seconds there for the first time it rocks out there for his time and the movie was booed but and then he stood up they had introduced him and he was stood up and got thunderous applause and I think the level of the of the leap reflected the level of the disappointment when the audience's just didn't want to see Rock Hudson like that with the sexual revolution of the 1960's people were becoming more aware of homosexuality rumors about Rock Hudson were now taken seriously at the Hollywood premiere of high station zebra Pranksters set out to embarrass him who was his last premiere he ever attended because they chanted faggot as he went up the Redman carbon somebody started in the crowd and he never attended again in his late 40s Rock drifted into his first long-term relationship when publicist Tom Clark moved in with him when Tom first came into Rock's life it was to sort of take over the job of trying to order Rock's life a little bit and to put an end to people taking an advantage of him and it eventually grew into something else Tom organized rock social and personal life however Hudson refused to commit to an exclusive relationship it was not unusual at all for him to have sex a couple of times a day and with people he didn't know very well in 1971 a group of men in Hermosa Beach sent mock invitations to their friends announcing the wedding of Rock Hudson and actor Jim Nabors in reality the two were merely acquaintances but the rumors spread nationwide you know the last 20 years of his life the very first question every interviewer asked him are you gay for 20 years and you know we always said next question that's how I answered it not long after I met rock I noticed that he had this kind of deformity on his thumbnail a really deep groove that ran down the middle of the thumbnail I observed that rock was in the habit of taking his forefinger and rubbing it against his thumbnail and as a sort of nervous tic it was just a repeated thing that he did over and over and over again and he deformed his thumbnail in the process and I later thought of as the perfect little symbol for the closet the notion that the secret that you have to carry finds its way out in some way until it actually deforms you in 1971 Rock's agent accepted a deal that made him the highest-paid TV actor up to that time television work paid well though many in the industry considered it a huge drop in stature for movie stars McMillan and wife was a 90-minute mystery program co-starring Susan Saint James for instance when it would be on Sunday night and he would come to work on Friday having gotten drunk Sunday watching the show because I don't know what about it but he just he would upset him maybe his performance or whatever I don't know what it was under the influence of Tom Clark's gourmet tastes rock began to gain weight and drink heavily in addition to his already heavy smoking he'd always been a social drinker Tom Clark was an alcoholic it was a half a gallon of scotch a night J&B very often rock would say to you might be his house for dinner or something he'd say he'd had five drinks and he watched him drink five drinks while you drink your one that all I read and you'd say I've got a great idea let's have a drink he's had five already Tom Clark George nadir and Martin there were now rocks family he had seen little of his father since the late 1940s but Hudson put him in the actors retirement home in the mid-70s he died shortly thereafter rock kept his mother living well one hour away from him when she fell ill he did not visit her until the day she died in 1977 Macmillan ran for seven seasons Rock continued to make a few movies choosing scripts on the advice of friends in 1973 actress Carol Burnett brought rock to the stage in the musical I do I do in 1977 he played the aging King Arthur in Camelot when the movies begin to move away from him he embraced television and you know he was wonderful to macmillan when television started to sort of move away he embraced the theater I think he was always just satisfied to be working I think that's what he loved doing the only problem with musical theater was Rock Hudson couldn't sing but as always he won his audience over with charm Oh Rock remained the familiar face on prime-time television in miniseries like the Star Maker the Martian Chronicles and the Las Vegas strip wars America's thirty-year long relationship with Rock Hudson had grown from shallow idolatry to genuine affection but circumstances were about to test the limits of those feelings in 1981 Rock Hudson agreed to do a second television mystery series the Devlin connection as usual both cast and crew loved him but didn't think they really knew him I'd ask him every once in a while and say you're always telling stories rock I said I know why you tell stories he goes you do I said I do he says why I said of course then you never have to show anybody who you really are he went did I even tell you this story about after shooting of the third episode was completed Rock was rushed to the hospital with chest pains years of heavy drinking eating and smoking had caught up with him he underwent a successful quintuple bypass I remember when he had the two quintuple bypass and I went in and we started talking about something about life and about death and I looked up at him and he had a little tear in his eye and I looked it honest I said what are you feeling and then he looked at me and then he looked away and he came back he went like this anyway nothing the Devlin connection was canceled in 1983 after 13 episodes such a drift from regular work brach became Moody his relationship with Tom Clark grew strained and Tom moved to a New York apartment not long after a 29 year old man named Mark Christian moved into Rock's house in November of 1983 despite Hudson's age and paunch men still sought him out for sex there was at least one counter that exposed him to the AIDS virus a producer called and said there's a young man in New York that I think you should see and he said ok I booked him on American Airlines he flew to New York for the weekend saw the young gentleman paid him 150 dollars came back and six months later we got a letter saying I'm terribly terribly sorry and I did not know at the time but I have I'm HIV positive on May 15 1984 Rock went to a White House dinner with an aids-related lesion visible on his neck a week later he was diagnosed with the virus as always his first concern was being unable to work a trip was arranged to Paris where he would receive an experimental AIDS treatment Rock did a press interview as a cover rock did not want to stay and continue treatments because there was no work in Paris he returned to California to accept a very lucrative guest appearance in nine episodes of dynasty he kept his condition a secret but the illness was beginning to show in one scene Rock was to kiss Linda Evans terrified of being blamed for transmitting the then misunderstood disease he kissed her to the side of her mouth in the summer of 1985 Doris Day invited him to be the first guest on her new TV show for several days before he was supposed to drive up there everybody begged him not to go it was just we all did we said you know Ross mark every time everybody said don't go wrong please don't go Rach said no Doris needs me Doris wants me I'm going and of course at that point he was his mind was wandering as well his appearance was rerun on news programs worldwide he rushed back to Paris for further treatments before he could get to the Pasteur Institute he collapsed in his hotel room and was brought to the American hospital administrators refused to cover up his condition so friends called in press agent yeah Nicole art to help draft and read an announcement no one wanted to make I had to go and read that statement to get his approval I have to tell you that if it would have been wrong decision it would never ever told the world that he had AIDS and I had to it's one of the most painful thing I did in my life I was standing next to him in the bed reading that to him and he listened he had the eyes his eyes closed and then he opened his eyes and he says that's what they want well Google anyone give that to the dogs with an announcement he'd been forced to make Rock Hudson brought unprecedented attention to the causes of gay rights and AIDS research although he had done nothing to earn the role except that get sick that breaks my heart and makes me very angry because I had so many friends die before Rock died we base our concern on the trials of celebrities so it took a celebrity death it took a celebrity illness to to draw attention to something that should have been acknowledged years before too weak to continue treatments Rock Hudson decided to go home 28,000 letters of support arrived at his Beverly Hills estate Rock Hudson died peacefully the morning of October 2nd 1985 six weeks before his 60th birthday cameras arrived within minutes for one last photo opportunity per his wishes Rock's body was cremated than friends arranged a secret boat trip to scatter his ashes at sea within a month mark Christian sued Hudson's estate claiming Rock had knowingly exposed him to the AIDS virus a jury awarded him 14 million dollars of rocks 22min and daughter estate for emotional anguish Hudson's attorneys appealed and the judge reduced the settlement to 5 million repeated phone messages to Christian requesting an interview for this documentary went unreturned [Music]

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Channel: Marmar

Views: 362,747

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Length: 26min 19sec (1579 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 17 2018

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