INFAMOUS SCANDALS (True Crime) by Anne Williams, Vivian Head Read Free Book Online

much trouble remembering his one line in the film that it took 38 takes to get it right. But despite this unpromising start, Hudson went on to get more roles in films, primarily because he was an extremely handsome man. Many of his roles were physically demanding ones and he had to take lessons in riding, fencing and dancing. Then, in 1954 his break came in a film called Magnificent Obsession , playing a rogue who repented the error of his ways. The film showed that as well as being a matinee idol, Hudson could also act, and he went on become one of Hollywood’s most popular stars, working with Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean and many other Hollywood greats.
     
    L IVING A LIE
     
    Unlike other Hollywood stars of the 1950s, Hudson’s popularity continued well into the 1960s, and he extended his repertoire with a series of romantic comedies in which he played light-hearted roles with Doris Day as his leading lady. However, by the 1970s his star was beginning to fall, and although he toured the country in the musical Camelot and made several TV movies and series, by the end of the decade he was no longer the major movie star that he had once been. This led to a downward spiral of heavy drinking and smoking, until in 1981 he was forced to have heart surgery. In the following years, his health continued to deteriorate and by the time he took a role in the TV drama Dynasty in 1984, it was clear that he was seriously ill.
    Throughout his career, Hudson had been living a lie. He was a homosexual, yet he was seen as a pin-up idol that women swooned over. Because of his status as a matinee idol, he felt, for obvious reasons, that he could not let his true sexuality be known. In the 1950s homosexuality was taboo in most social circles and it would undoubtedly have harmed his career if his sexual orientation had been revealed.
     
    G AYS IN  H OLLYWOOD
     
    In 1955 Hudson married his agent’s secretary, a woman named Phyllis Gates, in an effort to persuade his public, and perhaps himself, that he was heterosexual. The real reason for the marriage, which only lasted three years, is still a matter of speculation. In Gates’s autobiography she claimed that she and Hudson fell in love and lived together before they married. However, after she died in 2006, some suggested that Gates was a lesbian, and that the pair had made a pact between them. It is thought that as a ploy to restore his reputation, Gates would become his wife, but then they would divorce, and in return, she would receive large sums of money from him for the rest of her life. And indeed, when this happened, her alimony amounted to over $200 a week for a decade. Today, the truth about the marriage
    remains unknown.
    In later biographies of Hudson, there were claims that he had gay relationships with some of the most famous stars in Hollywood, including Marlon Brando and Burt Lancaster. There were other relationships with men such as the novelist Armistead Maupin and the publicist Tom Clark. Later, his co-star and friend Doris Day said she knew nothing of these liaisons, and that as far as she was concerned, her friend Rock Hudson was not gay, nor had she ever had cause to doubt his heterosexuality.
     
    S TRUCK DOWN BY  AIDS
     
    Whatever the truth of the matter, on 5 June 1984 Hudson was diagnosed with HIV, but chose to keep it a secret. Later, when he became visibly ill, his staff told reporters that he was suffering from liver cancer. That same year, he made an appearance on a TV show called Doris Day’s Best Friends and the public were shocked by just how sick he was. He could hardly speak and he had become quite emaciated. Such was the public concern that on 25 July 1985, he finally issued a statement to the press saying that he was suffering from AIDS. Even then, he did not refer to his homosexuality, saying that it might be the case that he had contracted the disease during his heart bypass operation in the early 1980s.
    Hudson became progressively weaker,