[On November 17th, 1925, Roy Harold Scherer Jr.—better known as Rock Hudson—was born. His iconic career and complex life open up a lot of American histories, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of them, leading up to a weekend post on other 20C gay celebrities who lived their lives in the closet.]
On one
past and one present reason why Hudson’s diagnosis was so fraught, and an
inspiring effect of it nonetheless.
In 1955,
thirty years before Rock Hudson’s death, the gossip
magazine Confidential threatened to expose the then-rising star’s
identity as a closeted gay man. Hudson’s lifelong and domineering
agent, Henry Willson, quashed the story by disclosing
private information about two other clients, Rory Calhoun and Tab Hunter.
From what I can tell, that was how it went from then on, as illustrated by Hudson’s
subsequent three-year
marriage to Willson’s secretary Phyllis Gates (which ended when she filed
for divorce in April 1958 on grounds of “mental cruelty,” although it seems
she too could be cruel). Bob Hofler’s 2005 biography of Willson is entitled
The
Man Who Invented Rock Hudson (subtitle: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals
of Henry Willson), and if we think about that name as representing the
fictional identity that Roy Scherer Jr. inhabited for his whole professional
career, the phrase makes a lot of sense. All of which meant that when Hudson became
so visibly ill in 1984 and the rumors
of his diagnosis with AIDS began to spread, the moment’s complexity was
significantly deepened by these decades of media misinformation and
manipulation.
At the
same time, an AIDS diagnosis in 1984 (Hudson was diagnosed
on June 5th) needed no decades-old contexts to be hugely complex
and fraught. The first
cluster of HIV-infected patients had been identified just three years earlier,
the association between HIV and AIDS had only been fully
established in 1983, and to say that the
moment was ripe with extreme and paranoid rumors and fears would be to
understate the case. And if that was true for an entirely private
citizen like Ryan White, whose initial diagnosis was also in 1984, then of
course it was even more true for a very public figure like Rock Hudson—who had attended
a White House state dinner with his longtime friend President Reagan just
three weeks before his diagnosis, for example. The fact that Reagan did not
publicly address AIDS in any form until
September 1985, even though it has since been revealed that he called
Hudson in his Paris hospital room in
July 1985, illustrates just how much those rumors and fears drove the
public conversation about the disease in the era. As does the silly but very
real controversy over Hudson’s late-1984 televised
kiss with Dynasty co-star Linda Evans about which I wrote in Tuesday’s
post.
While Hudson’s
diagnosis thus did not change those narratives and fears, it nonetheless
significantly and inspiringly affected both conversations around AIDS and support
and funding for research into the disease. After Hudson’s
death in October 1985, People magazine reported that more than $1.8
million had been raised in private contributions since his July confirmation of
the diagnosis (more than double the total for all of 1984); shortly thereafter
Congress earmarked
nearly $200 million to develop a cure. Joan
Rivers noted, “Two years ago, when I hosted a benefit for AIDS, I couldn't
get one major star to turn out. Rock's admission is a horrendous way to bring
AIDS to the attention of the American public, but by doing so, Rock, in his
life, has helped millions in the process. What Rock has done takes true courage.”
And Hudson
himself agreed, telegramming the September 1985 Commitment to
Life AIDS benefit that “I am not happy that I am sick. I am not happy that
I have AIDS. But if that is helping others, I can at least know that my own
misfortune has had some positive worth.” It most definitely did, a moving final
act in this complex career and life.
Special
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Rock Hudson memories or connections you’d share?
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