November 17, 1925 – Rock Hudson:

“Look, I know lots of gays in Hollywood, and most of them are nice guys. Some have tried it on me, but I’ve said, ‘Come on, Now. You’ve got the wrong guy.”

The above quote is from an interview in 1980 when Hudson was asked if he were gay. We all know how that turned out.

Hudson was blessed with the desirability, dashing good-looks, and the driving virile masculinity of Hollywood’s classic matinee idol image. That image and his considerable talents were used to great effect in 1960s romantic comedies, on some occasions paired with the equally magnetic Doris Day.

Hudson was a good actor; in the right project he could even be very good. But, he also had something extra special from the very start, a sparkling screen presence. He could totally fill up the screen. Hudson was unworldly handsome, with a broad chest, a deep, velvety voice and a smile that dazzled. He was that rare Hollywood commodity, a class act and an authentic leading man who could work in any genre: Westerns, Melodramas, Thrillers, War flicks, and Rom-Coms.

Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. He was six foot five inches of solid rock, just like the name dubbed him by his agent Henry Willson in 1948. Willson was also gay and built a stable of stars by cruising clubs looking for talent for his personal and professional handling. He usually gave his clients new names and new backgrounds that included conventionally masculine pursuits such as football or fishing. He coached them on how to shed any obvious gay traits.

Hudson’s new identity as Rock was assembled around his easy going, natural charm and hunky body, his Mid-Western roots and his easy wholesomeness. His public persona was defined by strength, firmness and constancy, although Hudson’s years as a heavy drinker suggest he had a private struggle.

Willson’s most successful star package was Hudson and the agent worked hard to make sure he continued to be a money maker. As Hudson became more famous, the press demanded to know when “Hollywood’s Most Eligible Bachelor” would find the right girl.

In 1955, Confidential magazine threatened to leak a story, complete with photos, about Hudson’s secret gay life, a revelation that certainly would have destroyed his budding career. But, Willson quickly put together a marriage for Hudson to his secretary Phyllis Gates. The gossip rags reported on their whirlwind romance and film fans accepted the story because they wanted to.

Gates worked as a clerk in a department store, airline stewardess, and secretary for a New York City talent agent, before moving to Hollywood to work for Hollywood talent agent Willson, who represented Hudson and still in the closet Tab Hunter.

Gates met Hudson in 1954 and they were married a year later, shortly after he finished filming Giant. Following a brief honeymoon, their marriage immediately began to disintegrate. They separated in 1957, following rumors that Hudson had committed adultery while on location in Italy for the film A Farewell To Arms. The rumors were later confirmed by a close friend of Gates’s, who also revealed to her that the individual Hudson had the affair with was not his costar Elaine Stritch, but a man. They divorced in 1958.

Gates became a successful interior decorator. She died in 2006, taken by lung cancer at her home in Marina del Rey at 80 years old.

In My Husband, Rock Hudson, published in 1987, two years after Hudson was taken by AIDS, Gates wrote that she was in love with Hudson and that she did not know Hudson was gay when they married, and was not complicit in his deception.

However, in The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson (2005) by journalist Robert Hofler, the author writes:

“Those who knew her (Gates) say she was a lesbian who tried to blackmail her movie star husband. She then became addicted to being the wife of a star, and didn’t want the divorce. Phyllis could play around with women, but Rock had to remain faithful to her. In a way, she was just being pragmatic: she feared that Rock’s exposure would ruin his fame, which was in turn her gravy train.”

Gates told septuagenarian, multi-married, now deceased Larry King that people were trying to protect Hudson by spreading lies about her and that she had been the one to initiate the divorce, based on her husband’s gay behavior. Gates said she did not get much in the divorce because she did not want to take advantage of him. She never stopped loving him, and he was the “love of her life”.

Sometimes life is messy.

Known for his easy going demeanor in civilian life, Hudson was well liked by his colleagues. He seemed to enjoy a rich and happy life in the public eye. But in truth, Hudson endured a deeply troubled private life. It was no secret to Hollywood insiders and his closest friends that Hudson was gay, but he worked within a studio star system that regularly rewrote an actor’s life story to match what film-goers demanded and found most palatable. Being gay did not fit this script. When Hudson was named the Number One Box Office Star in 1957, he still was forced to sell his sailboat because someone kept painting “faggot” and “queer” on the bow.

Hudson was one of the greatest film stars of all time, but he was a gay man who played the part of an international symbol of straightness. In the more open 1970s, Hudson did open his closet door a crack. He was spotted in bars and bathhouses of Los Angeles and San Francisco, and was even included anonymously, but with his blessings, in his former lover Armistead Maupin‘s classic serial novel Tales Of The City.

Tragically, after contracting HIV, his private life was pushed onto the public. Hudson was the first major Hollywood casualty of the plague. Hudson’s sex life finally received detailed attention after his passing, when his boyfriend, Marc Christian successfully sued his estate claiming that Hudson had not informed him of his diagnosis. Christian died from a drug overdose in 2010.