BEFORE: Yes, there's clearly a theme this week, it should be obvious. But then sometimes things aren't obvious even when they should be.
Joan Rivers and Liberace carry over from "Little Richard: I Am Everything".
THE PLOT: The biography of renowned actor Rock Hudson is examined in this relevant investigation of Hollywood and LGBTQ+ identity, from his public "ladies man" character to his private life as a gay man.
AFTER: Well, as long as I'm on the topic of people who led double lives, let's talk about Rock Hudson. Sure, it's easy to say you "knew" about his secret relationships, especially if you lived in Los Angeles and were part of that scene yourself. It was an open secret, if that's not a contradiction in terms. Armistead Maupin is very open about his relationship with Rock, and there was a time when he wondered if he was the only gay man in California that had NOT slept with Rock Hudson. I guess maybe all you had to do was wait your turn, like there was a system or you took a number or something.
Rock, or Roy Fitzgerald, or Roy Scherer, whichever you prefer, was discovered by a talent agent named Henry Willson, who was also gay and frequently dated his clients, so there was something akin to a gay casting couch, but he also put them through a training program of sorts so they could learn to walk and talk and act like macho men, if they didn't already, and thus fit the profile of what Hollywood casting directors were looking for in leading men. Basically, they had to appeal to women, but not in a threatening way, and men had to aspire to BE them, and sure, some men had to want to be with them, too. If they ticked all the boxes - and who better to judge them but other gay men - they could get starring roles in action pictures, and romances if they were willing to kiss girls. Well, it is called acting, after all - and if they could act well and put out a certain public image to the world, they could go far.
However, sacrifices were involved, they couldn't be seen in public or photographed with other men, else people would draw the right conclusion. And they had to get married by the age of 30, even if it was a sham marriage, or else the tabloids would start speculating that they were not interested in women at all. As the studios provided their meals and a place to live not far from the set, these actors had a lot of spare time, which they spent traveling, or at pool parties and beach parties if they weren't shooting on location. And the system was such that the agents only had to make a phone call in the morning so that by the mid-afternoon there were two dozen young gay men hanging out around Rock Hudson's pool.
The gig was almost up with Rock Hudson appeared in a photo pictorial in a magazine, showing the small house he shared with Bob Preble, with photos of them getting dressed side-by-side, eating breakfast together, and working on a car without shirts on, it's almost a portrait of some kind of domestic bliss, two actors who did everything together when not working, and maybe that was a little too close to gay marriage for some people's tastes. Another magazine threatened to go beyond blind items about "pajama parties" and expose Rock Hudson's secret life, but his agent gave them the scoop on Tab Hunter and another client if they would kill the story about mega-star Rock.
Rumors persisted, including the very false one that Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors were secretly married in a ceremony performed by Truman Capote - it just didn't happen, but once these urban legends start, they are very hard to disprove, and therefore they get repeated for years. Really, this was a joke that had gotten out of hand, in the early 1970's there was a group of gay men in Huntington Beach who got together for an annual party, and one year they sent out joke invitations to this fake wedding of Hudson and Nabors, the punchline was that one actor would (for some reason) take the married name of the other person's TV character, and thus become Rock Pyle. No, it's not all that funny, but that was the gag.
The only people who knew for sure were Rock's lovers (and apparently that was a long list) and his female co-stars like Julie Andrews, Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Day and Susan St. James, who could probably tell that he wasn't really into them during the love scenes. And obviously his wife, Phyllis Gates, who was a secretary for his agent, therefore close at hand, and though she later claimed she had no idea he was gay, rumors were that she was, too, so how could she not have known?
There are more Little Richard-like contradictions in his life, so we're seeing the same sort of "split personality" situation, how can the same person be seen on screen as a macho actor, always involved in a whirlwind romance in the middle of a battle scene or an African jungle, and also be the guy hanging out at the gay beach, or having breakfast with his male roommate before they take their shirts off and go rotate the tires on their car? Well, as we've seen, people can be more than one thing, and they can go through phases in their lives. Rock Hudson was born Catholic and later called himself an atheist, what happened in between? How could he vote as a conservative Republican, belong to a party that didn't support gay rights or gay marriage or really, anything gay, at least publicly? But come on, we know that there have to be gay Republicans, there have been many political scandals over the years, so they exist, they're just better at hiding this aspect of themselves, at least publicly.
The later part of this documentary gets into the AIDS crisis and Rock Hudson's declining health, at the time he was the most notable public figure to contract the disease. And even though he spent months denying it, while flying around the world seeking various treatments, near the end he did declare it publicly, which kind of radically jump-started the need to find a cure, it gave a face for the disease. You have to remember, the 1980's were a very different time, with this epidemic spreading across the world and it was still a mystery where it came from and even why it seemed to target certain people who were perhaps reluctant to change their behavior, while a Republican President refused to listen to medical advice or take any actions to combat it and a Christian-based coalition was attempting to control the government. Wait a minute, that does feel a little familiar, doesn't it?
Also, there were problems that resulted from his appearances on "Dynasty", where his character had to kiss Linda Evans - and people were still unsure how AIDS spread, or what precautions needed to be taken. Well, I guess if the industry learned anything from the AIDS crisis, it was to take better precautions during the COVID years, and put protocols in place that would protect the actors. Filming of all major movies and TV shows shut down for months in 2021 and COVID testers and safety crews were hired, and I think the whole of show business took maybe two years to get back on track, which is why there are so many movies released last year and this year, it seems like there are new ones every week! Who can possibly watch them all?
Special mention really has to be made - a shout-out to whoever selected the archive footage from Rock Hudson's movies. Perhaps it was the director, perhaps it was a bunch of interns who had to go through every movie he was in very carefully, looking for lines of dialogue that could be taken out of context and then applied to the actor's personal life. It's really genius, because they found a lot of clips where he played a man with a secret, or a character trying to figure out who he was, or in some cases he was turning down the idea of marrying a woman, without giving a definite reason, and we're left to infer why. There's also dialogue from the film "The Spiral Road" with Burl Ives, where Rock's character is talking about the symptoms of leprosy, but he mentions "lesions" and other things that suggest the symptoms of AIDS. But the most spot on came from one of those romantic comedies - "A Very Special Favor" - where his character is found hiding in a bedroom, and Leslie Caron's character finds him and says, "Hey, what are you doing, there? Hiding in the closet isn't going to cure you!"
Also starring Allison Anders, Carol Burnett (last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Joe Carberry, Illeana Douglas (last seen in "The New Guy"), Lee Garlington, Paul Garlington, Mark Griffin, Robert Hofler, Ken Jillson, Peter Kevoian, Ken Maley, Armistead Maupin, Howard McGillin, Bill Misenhimer, Tom Santopietro, David Thomson, Tim Turner, Wes Wheadon,
with archive footage of Rock Hudson (also last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Kirk Douglas (ditto), Jim Nabors (ditto), Joe Abrell, Claude Akins (last seen in "The Defiant Ones"), Bea Arthur (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Rona Barrett (ditto), Burt Lancaster (ditto), Gena Rowlands (ditto), Lucille Ball (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Jack Benny (last seen in "The Beach Boys"), Doris Day (ditto), Marlon Brando (last seen in "Sly"), Tom Brokaw (last seen in "Framing John DeLorean"), Yul Brynner (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It"), Truman Capote (last seen in "Breakfast at Tiffany's"), George Peppard (ditto), Leslie Caron (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), John Chancellor (last seen in "Attica'), Dan Rather (ditto), Yanou Collart, Joan Colllins (last seen in "Wolfgang"), James Dean (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Troy Donahue, Ralph Edwards, Leif Erickson (last seen in "Show Boat"), Linda Evans, John Forsythe (last seen in "Destination Tokyo"), Phyllis Gates, Steve Gendel, Michael Gottlieb, Betty Griffin, Murray Hamilton (last seen in "MLK/FBI"), Ken Hodge, Richard Hodge, Kathleen Hughes, Ross Hunter, Tab Hunter (last seen in "I Am Divine"), Burl Ives (last seen in "Ensign Pulver"), Jennifer Jones (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Larry Kramer (last seen in "Koch"), Piper Laurie (last seen in "Eulogy"), Gina Lollobrigida, Anna Magnani, Dorothy Malone (last seen in "Scared Stiff"), Doug McClure (last seen in "Tapeheads"), Mark Miller, Liza Minnelli (last seen in "Little Richard: King and Queen of Rock 'n' Roll"), Roger Moore (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), George Nader, Laurence Olivier (last seen in "Val"), Jane Pauley (ditto), Robert Preble, Paula Prentiss (last seen in "The Parallax View"), Tony Randall (last seen in "Bathtubs Over Broadway"), Nancy Reagan (last seen in "Balls of Fury"), Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over"), Sue Simmons (ditto), Al Roberts, Hayden Rorke (last seen in "The Robe"), Dean Rusk, John Schuck (last seen in "McCabe & Mrs. Miller"), Esther Shapiro, Randy Shilts, Dinah Shore (last seen in "Love to Love You, Donna Summer"), Douglas Sirk, Elizabeth Taylor (last seen in "Ira & Abby"), Claire Trevor (last seen in "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold"), Rudolph Valentino (last seen in "Remembering Gene Wilder"), John Wayne (ditto), Vivian Vance (last seen in "Lucy and Desi"), Nancy Walker, Henry Willson, Jane Wyman (last seen in "Stage Fright").
RATING: 6 out of 10 beefcake photos, posing with lumberjack gear
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