Rock Hudson' Stories

At first meeting, Marc Christian seems shy, sincere, gentle and articulate. But it is difficult to get a fix on him. His eyes have a flat, opaque quality, and when asked a question, he may give one answer one day and a different answer the next.

Rock and Marc started spending afternoons together at Liberty's apartment. "Rock would come here, have coffee with me and Liberty and then we'd go out," Marc says. "Rock always had to live his life in secrets. He kept things from Mark Miller, he kept things from everyone. This was hke Rock's secret world, a haven. We'd play music and talk, or we'd drive up to Mount Baldy." Marc says Rock asked him to go away for the weekend, but they did not go far—they stayed in a motel in North Hollywood. Their secret meetings went on for a year before Rock invited Marc to live with him at the Castle.

Rock had a lifelong problem of not being able to confront people, to fire help or ask lovers to leave. Perhaps because his father had deserted him, he did not want to be in the position of rejecting another person. Instead, he would use indirect measures. As Phyllis Gates said, "He froze people out." Rock would grow silent, hostile, and make things so uncomfortable that the person would decide on his own to leave. But this method did not always work. Rock had been cold to Tom for some time and had moved out of the bedroom, but Tom stuck it out, believing "this too shall pass."

Tom Clark did not know it was the end of the relationship. He told himself that Rock was probably reluctant to be away from his doctors and Cedars-Sinai Hospital, because of the heart surgery. "Several times, he had canceled trips at the last minute with weak excuses. I figured he didn't want to leave the womb."

Mark picked Rock up at the L.A. airport on September 13, and was distressed to see him in baggy pants, a shirt that didn't match and old. scuffed loafers. "He looked bedraggled, and it embarrassed me. I don't like to see a movie star get off" a plane looking like shit. It's bad for his image," Mark says. When he asked about Tom, Rock said, "I hope he stays in New York the rest of his life. I never want to see him again."

On October 7, Tom flew back to L.A. with Claire Trevor, who was staying at the Castle. Tom knew, by now, there was a rift, but he wanted a reconciliation. He believed that Rock and he could work things out if they had a chance to talk. When they did. Rock told him he had fallen in love with someone else. Marc Christian. Rock said, "Nothing will change. You go live in New York and let me spin this out." Tom said, "I have too much pride. I'm out.

A few nights later, James heard a fight between Rock and Tom in the kitchen. It was about nine-thirty, Claire had gone out to dinner and Rock and Tom had been drinking. James says, "I was in my room, which is next to the kitchen, and I heard this terrible row. They were shouting at the top of their voices. I heard Mr. Hudson say, 'I want you out of this house and out of my Hfe. I should have kicked you out eight years ago. It was finished eight fucking years ago. It's finished!'

"Tom said, 'Oh yeah? I've done everything for you. I got you all the work you've done. . . .' And then I heard Mr. Hudson hit Tom. I heard Tom fall down on the bloody ground and say, 'You see what you've done? You punched me in the eye.' And Mr. Hudson said, 'It serves you fucking right. If you keep on, I'll belt you in the other eye.' Tom said, 'Go ahead, I dare you.' " James heard someone walk out the swinging door and there was quiet. James was stunned; it was the first time he had heard Rock, drunk or sober, tell Tom to leave.

On October 27, Tom flew to New York with Claire Trevor, and stayed in the apartment at the Beresford. Four days later. Rock left for Israel to shoot The Ambassador. Wally Sheft was nervous that Tom would sue for palimony—he had been with Rock ten years—but Tom said, "I'm not the suing type." Tom was certain there would be a reconciliation. "If Rock would just come here and talk to me, we could straighten out our lives in ten minutes," he said. Rock called Tom from Jerusalem, and said he would stop in New York on his way home and they could settle things.

Tom waited, but Rock never came. He flew directly back to Los Angeles, and Tom did not see him again until Rock was at UCLA Medical Center. Tom started rebuilding his life on his own, but he did not give up. "There was never any question in my mind that we'd get back together.

Rock was euphoric, at first, to be away from Tom. He told Dean Dittman he had had "five wonderful years and five years of servitude." When a relationship that had deteriorated into fighting and recrimination is suddenly stopped, there is instantaneous relief. "No one's beating me up anymore. I'm free!" It is only later, gradually, that one comes to realize what else is missing: the positive qualities that kept the relationship in place.

Rock was enchanted with his new lover, and had romantic expectations of the future. With Marc Christian, he told friends, he could recapture the passion and sexual ecstasy he had known in younger years. Stockton Brig-gle says, "Rock was totally smitten with Marc, he couldn't keep his hands off him." When Rock was in Israel, he called Dean and said, "I wonder what Marc's doing. Why don't you call him? I can't wait to get back home and see him." He wrote passionate letters to Marc, who responded in kind.

Just before he left for Israel, Rock brought Marc Christian to the Castle and introduced him to the staff. Rock said to James, "Would it be all right if I let Marc move into the house while I'm away?"

"All right with me," James said.

"Thank you," Rock said. He gave Marc the keys to the Cadillac Seville, and told Mark Miller, "Marc will be house-sitting, he'll guard the house on James's days off, and he'll prevent Tom from moving back."

John Dobbs, an aspiring actor who was Rock's houseman and came in days to clean the house, says, "At first, everyone was joyous he was replacing Tom Clark. I liked Marc. He was intelligent and he treated me as an equal. He was farther to the left, politically, than the rest of the house, so I felt I had an ally."

Mark Miller sensed, instantly, that Marc Christian was more than a house-sitter, which Rock confirmed privately. Rock told Mark to put Christian on salary, so he could have health insurance. Christian was paid $400 a month from Rock's company, Mammoth Films, to look after the film library. He was given use of a car, membership in a gym and a private workout instructor. Rock said, "Send him to Dr. Tennis, we're gonna fix his teeth, and we're going to restore his father's Chevy Nomad station wagon." Rock explained that Christian's father was dying of lung cancer, and to restore his 1959 car would lift his spirits. "Give Marc the money to get started on the car, and don't tell Wally."

Rock also wanted to send Marc to acting school with Nina Foch. Mark Miller says, "It was a crusade, like Pygmalion. Rock wanted to change the young man's life. He said he'd been living with a woman who had some kind of hold on him, and Rock was determined to break it." Mark Miller thought Christian was pleasant and would cause no problems for anyone. "Tom Clark had been so difficult at the end, we were relieved to have somebody new."

George Nader says, "Where Tom had been flamboyant, difficult and wonderful, Marc Christian took it slow and treaded on no toes. Like a snake enters the garden, that young man entered this house."

Marc Christian said he had never lived with a man before, and was reluctant to move in so soon after Tom Clark's departure. "I told Rock I didn't want to be his satellite or appendage," Marc says. "I'm very opinionated. I have a pretty good ego and can hold my own in a conversation, and Rock liked that. I was not some little blond twerp who couldn't talk.

The only person who was not happy with Christian's arrival was James. A short time after Christian moved in, James went to a party and several strangers came up to him and said they had heard Marc Christian was Rock's new lover and had moved into the house. "They described him perfectly, and said he was very well known around town." James was shocked that word had gotten out so fast. "Mr. Hudson was extremely discreet about these things." James told Mark Miller the next morning, "I hear he's bloody well known, and the word is out all over town." Mark said nothing to Rock, because "when someone is in love, you don't want to make waves."

James says that with Christian in the house, "things were easier for me, but I hated it. I could see what sort of person he was. I'm a good judge of character, I've had to be, and I thought he had no interest in Mr. Hudson. He was using Mr. Hudson. He was a user." On the surface, though, James was cordial to Marc.

Marc did not give James orders, as Tom Clark had done, but he would create chaos and walk away, leaving it for James to clean up. "He'd come down to the kitchen, make his stupid bloody energy drink and leave his garbage all over the place. He kept having all his friends up to the house, and they'd leave the place a mess. Mr. Hudson's bedroom was a shambles —Marc would drop his clothes on the settees and they'd stay there for days on end. Mr. Hudson always hung his things up. He was a considerate person. I told Mr. Hudson, 'I'm not picking up after him/ and he said, 'Don't, let him pick it up himself.' "

Rock left for Israel on November 1, 1983, and Marc Christian moved into the Castle on November 5. When Rock came back on January 4, 1984, Marc met him at the airport. That night, James saw them in the Hving room, hugging and kissing. They had set up a Christmas tree in the room, and Marc and his friends had put little notes on it. "Mr. Hudson was so happy and pleased," James says. "He was just thrilled to be with Marc again."

Rock and Marc went out for lunches and dinners and on shopping trips to buy Marc clothes. "It was wedded bliss," Mark Miller says. Marc showed a videotape he'd made as a joke for Rock, a tape of himself impersonating Doris Day, in a blond wig and makeup, miming to one of her records. Christian told Mark Miller he and Rock were going to Europe.

Rock had always loved taking his new mates to Europe, showing them the Ritz, the Savoy, and all his favorite restaurants, but at the end of January, Rock said, "We're not going," and gave no explanation.

With Marc, Rock started going to gay restaurants and bars he had never set foot in before. When Mark Miller learned about it, he asked Rock why.

Rock shrugged. "Marc likes it." "Oh. So you don't care anymore, about . . ." "What people think?" Rock said. "I was going to say, your image."

"Marc says that kind of thinking is fifties shit. No one cares anymore. Hell, I'm not even recognized most of the time. Last week, we went to the Hayloft, and no one even looked twice."

"Rock, that's bullshit and you know it," Mark said. "I'm going on sixty. It's time to do as I please."

"You can go on acting until you're eighty. Look at Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart—the parts get older, but they're still there. But you can't if you go around throwing it in people's faces; you've always said that yourself."

Rock brushed him off with his customary wave of the hand. The next day, though. Rock was sitting in the kitchen, doing a crossword puzzle, when Marc came in and proposed they have dinner at a gay restaurant he Uked, Cafe d'Etoile. Rock said no.

"Why not?" Marc said. "Boring. Been there too much lately." "But they're expecting us . . ." Rock looked up from the puzzle and stared at Marc. "No," he said, and waited. When Marc did not respond. Rock deliberately took a sip of his coffee and went back to work on the puzzle.

On January 17, just two weeks after Rock's homecoming, Mark Miller came to work and found Rock sitting in the kitchen in a rage. "Marc didn't come home last night," Rock said. "Oh? Cute."

Rock said Marc hadn't called, he simply stayed out all night and appeared the next morning, as if nothing had happened. Rock refused to question him; it was beneath his dignity.

Marc soon established a pattern: He would get up at midmoming (Rock started calling him "the sleeping prince"), set the video recorder to tape Days of Our Lives, leave for the gym, and when he came back, immediately turn on the TV and watch his soap opera. Once a week, he would drop into Mark Miller's office, turn in his receipts for meals in restaurants and purchases in stores, get his money and go on his way

James would ask Rock, "Will Mr. Christian be in for dinner?"

"I don't know," Rock would say. "He never tells me where the fuck he's going." Rock would walk into Mark Miller's office and start needlepoint-ing. "Where does he go all day?" Rock asked Mark. "He says he's going to the gym. How long does that take? He calls at five and says he'll be home in thirty minutes. I wait three hours and he doesn't show up. Fuck him."

A wall went up between Rock and Marc that was evident to everyone in the house. James says, "I felt sorry for Mr. Hudson. Marc Christian was treating him like a piece of dirt. There was no warmth or caring. Mr. Hudson would come down to the kitchen first, then Marc would come down and there'd be no words exchanged. They didn't have big fights, it just wasn't lovey-dovey ever again."

Rock and Marc led separate lives. At night. Rock would go have dinner with Dean Dittman or Ross Hunter and Jacque Mapes. Most of Rock's friends did not care for Marc. Stockton Briggle says, "As a friend of Rock's, I tried hard to like him, but I found him cold and calculating. Nobody knew his real past." Occasionally, Liberty would invite Rock and Marc to dinner, and they'd take separate cars. John Dobbs says Marc complained to him that Rock would never go out with him. He wouldn't go to movies, he wouldn't do anything Marc proposed. Marc said Rock had introduced him to his gay friends but not his straight ones. "He hadn't met Elizabeth Taylor. He told me he was lonely, and started trying to fill his days."

On February 24, Rock and Marc went to visit Mark and George in the desert. George met Marc for the first time, and was surprised to see "no affection between them, no jokes, no sweetness, no connection on either side. No sense of, this is mine, isn't it great? You'd have thought they were two strangers stranded together for the weekend." The four went to dinner Saturday night at the Beach House, and Rock grew sullen when it was clear that no one in the place recognized him. He began barking rude orders to the waiter.

George looked up and suddenly felt sick at what he saw: "It was like a caricature of the aging star. Thirty-five years and this is what's left: a man whose cheeks are starting to fall in, who doesn't look good, sitting with a guy half his age that he doesn't like and who's using him."

Rock had lost weight in Israel, but George didn't think the weight loss was flattering. Rock, however, was pleased and proud. He'd go into Mark's office and say, "I've lost another two pounds!" Mark was envious. "We were eating the same food. Rock had a chocolate sundae every day. We'd discuss what we ate and why he was losing and I wasn't." Mark weighed 225, and Rock was down to 210.

Mark noticed, about this time that Rock had a peculiar smell, which was familiar but which he couldn't place. Then he remembered, and told George: "It's the smell my brother Philip had when he was dying." They were silent. Rock is dying? Impossible, George thought. Rock is invincible. Rock is never going to die. Rock has an angel on his shoulder. Mark rationalized: Rock had started drinking gin again; it was probably the smell of gin seeping out of his skin.

Sometime in 1984, Marc Christian stopped sleeping with Rock in his bedroom and moved into Tijuana. Mark Miller says it was the spring of 1984. James thinks it was later. Christian told me, "I never officially moved out of the room. Rock snored and had sweats at night—I thought it was from the alcohol. It was intolerable to sleep with him when he was sweating, it was like being in the ocean, so I'd get up at night, a few times a week, and go sleep in the red room."

Christian said in his deposition, taken under oath, in his lawsuit against Hudson's estate, that he and Rock had a constant sexual relationship until February 1985. Christian said he was faithful to Rock, and to his knowledge. Rock was faithful to him

James says Marc started staying out all night once or twice a week. "I'd go upstairs early in the morning, and be surprised to see only Mr. Hudson in bed. I'd check the red room and Marc wasn't there. I'd check the garage and the Seville was gone, so I knew he hadn't come home." Other nights, James says. Marc would have friends stay overnight with him in Tijuana, "while Mr. Hudson was sleeping in the blue bedroom. I knew it galled Mr. Hudson, but he wouldn't let on. I'd say to Mr. Hudson, 'Why have him around? You're not happy with him, he's upsetting you and you never know where he is. Why don't you get rid of him?' Mr. Hudson said, T'm going to,' and I'd always say, 'The sooner the better.' "

Marc Christian was fucking a (late) friend of mine DURING the Rock estate trial -- where he was saying Rock had traumatized him and ruined his sex life by not telling he had HIV. I begged my friend to call the judge or the defense but no way that was going to happen. He and Marc had a short lived little romance even after Marc won that money (wrongly, in my opinion).

The cool disinterest Rock had adopted toward Marc turned into outright hostility. John Dobbs says, "Within three months of Rock's return from Israel, he exuded a cold loathing of Marc. He called him 'that asshole' or 'that ditz.' If Marc said 'Good morning,' Rock wouldn't answer. I couldn't have taken it. I would have packed up and left. But it didn't seem to bother Marc, he just went on about his business. I think he felt, I'm not going to be abused by this movie star."

To Christian's face, everyone in the house was pleasant. He received all the money he wanted, the charge accounts and cars. But there were always rumors whispered in the halls: "Any day now. Rock will get rid of him."

On February 29, Mark Miller, sensing that relations were strained, took Rock aside. "It's time to have a talk about something. What do you know about Marc's background? People say he's well known around town." According to Mark Miller, Rock told him the following: "When I came back from Israel, Marc told me, 'There's something I want you to know. Some of your friends might know, and I want you to hear it from me first. I've only done it a few times, when I was hard up and desperate for money. I was sent to people's houses, and I took money for sex.' "

Rock said he felt disgusted, duped. He had taken Marc in, thinking he was innocent and trustworthy. Rock said Marc had then told him how he'd "hooked him." Marc had learned that Rock went to Brooks Baths every afternoon for a sauna while he was shooting The Devilish Connection. Marc had gone to Brooks Baths and hung around the dressing room until he succeeded in meeting the star. Rock said, "I promised him I'd fix his teeth and car. Give him the money for that, and I'll get rid of him."

Marc Christian says he has never taken money for sex, and never had such a conversation with Rock. But it is evident that in the spring of 1984, some event or sequence of events led Rock to turn against Marc.

When Rock went to dinner at Dean Dittman's, he mourned that the romance he had set such hopes on had turned to ashes. He said Marc was getting "all the advantages and wasn't putting out—not just sex, but companionship." He ranted about Marc with such violence that Dean said, "You've got to get rid of him because you're suffering and you're making me suffer with these conversations."

Rock said, "I'm working on it, in my own way." Dean says, "Rock could never face things directly. He wouldn't tell Marc to leave. He was sure that Marc would pick up the message and would be 'too embarrassed to stay.'" Dean tried to tell him it wouldn't work. "You spent five years giving Tom Clark the message. Are you gonna wait another five years? You don't have five more productive sexual years. You're fifty-eight years old. You better get out there in the field while you can still get a hard-on."

Rock laughed, and nodded, and the next time he saw Dean, nothing had changed. Dean asked, "Does he have something on you? Is that why he's still in the house?" Dean says Rock waved his arm and didn't answer, "but the subtext was, Rock felt he did have something on him. He was afraid of Marc. Rock had begun seeing other people and didn't want Marc to know. He said, 'I never want him to have that on me.'"

Rock was starting to be drawn to a new person, Ron Channell. Rock had hired Ron to come to the house and work out with him in October of 1983, just as Tom Clark was leaving. Rock told Mark Miller that Ron was "John Foreman's workout man," which Mark learned, later, was not true. Rock had met Ron on his own, at a gym. At first, Ron was businesslike; he and Rock did exercises together in the playroom to music Ron would bring. Ron's voice could be heard over the music: "Come on, guy. Harder!" Ross Hunter, who overheard them one morning, said, "How can you work this man out? He's so skinny, there's no meat on his bones. What are you trying to do?"

In February of 1984, when Rock was becoming disenchanted with Christian, he encouraged Ron to spend more time at the house. Ron would come at 10:30, stay for lunch, then Rock would say, "Let's go shopping," and ask, "What are you doing tonight for dinner?" Rock showed films to Ron, paid for him to go to acting school and even did a screen test with him, because, he said, "The boy's talented and I want to help him." Rock showed him Iron Man one day, and Ron started calling him "Speed." Rock was tickled by this, and would call Ron's number in the morning and say into his answering machine, "Hi, it's Speed. You up yet? How soon you coming over?"

John Dobbs says, "There was something electric between the two of them. Rock delighted in every moment he spent with Ron, and Ron genuinely cared for Rock. They laughed together, which was something Rock and Marc Christian rarely did."

Mark says, "James and I watched Rock fall in love with Ron. They had secrets and would giggle like crazy. Those were some of the happiest times I saw Rock have in all his life." James says, "Mr. Hudson was a different man when Ron was around. Ron gave him that feeling of happiness and freedom."

Ron was a new physical type for Rock: He had dark skin, brown eyes and very dark hair. Ron knew that Rock was infatuated with him and that he hoped the relationship would grow to something more than friendship, but Ron kept things on the buddy level, like guys in the locker room. He indicated that he was straight and didn't feel as Rock did, and yet there was an element of flirtation and pursuit.

Marc Christian saw what was happening and barely spoke to Ron. Rock had given Ron permission to borrow any videotapes he wanted from the vault, and when Marc discovered this, he went into the kitchen where Mark Miller was talking with James. According to Mark Miller, Christian was furious, and said, "I don't want him coming in the house and taking tapes without my permission! If they're not careful, they'll find themselves in the Enquirer as lovers. I'm not afraid to go to the Enquirer and say I'm Rock Hudson's lover. You think I am? Test me." James said afterward, he thought Christian was serious and that the threat was real. "I said, that guy is out to ruin Mr. Hudson."

Christian says he never threatened to expose Rock. "It would have ruined my acting career." He says Mark Miller told him not to be concerned about Ron. "Relax, kid. You've got nothing to worry about. These things happen in every affair."

While Rock's days were increasingly occupied by Ron Channell, his evenings were the province of Dean Dittman. Dean says Rock would get depressed at night if he had to be in his house alone. "I became his social director, after Tom Clark left. Tom had been a marvelous instigator, but Rock didn't instigate things." Dean says he and Rock would speak on the phone every morning and every night. "His favorite time to call was five-thirty. He'd wait until then to see if he got a better invitation, and if he didn't, he'd call me. Rock knew that for me, every night is New Year's Eve. It's a disease—I love to entertain. Around dinnertime, I'll think, there's no one to cook for. God! And I'll round up a group."

Dean lived in a high-rise apartment building in Hollywood, and his apartment was furnished all in green: green carpet, green velour walls, green couches and chairs, in one of which Rock would hold court. Dean was a "flowerholic," and Rock would bring him roses from his garden. Rock would usually come early and watch Dean cook, and before the guests arrived. Dean would methodically light the crystal "space candles" around the room. Dean had a doorbell that could be programmed to play music; when it was someone's birthday, the doorbell would chime "Happy Birthday," but most of the time it played "Home Sweet Home." Dean's apartment was destroyed by a fire, which police believe was the result of arson, on the night Marc Christian gave his second deposition in his lawsuit. There is nothing left of the green apartment, but when Rock was alive, it hummed with festivity

Dean says, "Rock was very much like a child of mine." In 1984, when Rock was asked to be one of the presenters at the Academy Awards, he stopped at Dean's on his way to the ceremony. "He wanted approval," Dean says. Rock had lost weight and hadn't bothered to have his tuxedo refitted. It was baggy, and Dean took it in with safety pins. "Even after we pinned it, it was loose, but it wasn't so tentlike." Rock went on television with safety pins in his tuxedo, for what would be his last Academy Awards. Ten minutes after presenting the Oscar for best actress to Shirley MacLaine, Rock walked back into Dean's apartment, where a dinner party was in progress. Everyone cheered.

One of the guests at Dean's that night was a young man named Pierre, whom Rock had met with Dean at a gay bar in Long Beach. Rock had been fascinated with Pierre: He was a boat builder, in his twenties, and, of course, blond and blue-eyed. Rock was reluctant to give out his phone number, so Dean got Pierre's number, called and invited him to dinner at his apartment, along with Rock. Pierre played piano and wrote songs, one of which was about saving the bald eagle, and Rock sat at his feet, enthralled.

In April, Rock went to Mexico with Pierre for a week, and stayed at the home of Pierre's father. But the romance was not consummated. Pierre later told Dean, "In Mexico, I looked at Rock and looked at my dad, and they were the same age. I couldn't do it."

Rock had not told anyone in the Castle, even Mark Miller, about Pierre. He told Mark he was going to Mexico and would make his own travel arrangements. Between the time Rock returned from Israel and his death in 1985, he went to Hawaii twice, Europe twice, New York, Florida, Louisville and Washington, and never once took Marc Christian with him. Most of the time, he took Ron Channell.

When Rock was out of town in the spring of 1984, Clarence Morimoto, the gardener, discovered Marc Christian in Rock's bed with another man. It was Clarence's habit to go up to Rock's bedroom in the afternoon to water the roses on the balcony. "If he's home, I always knock on the door and say, 'Rock, are you there?' " Clarence says. "If he's out of town, I go right in." On this afternoon in the spring. Rock was off traveling and the bedroom door was closed.

Clarence opened it and walked through the dressing and bathing area to the main part of the room, where the carved wooden bed was. "When I passed the bathroom area, I could see, at the bottom comer of the bed. Marc Christian with a blond boy. I don't know his name. I could only see them from the waist up. They were on the bed, no clothes on, and both were caressing each other. I could see Marc's face, I'm sure it was him, but they didn't see me and I didn't say anything. It was such an embarrassing place to jump in." Clarence turned, walked out and softly closed the door.

On May 15, 1985, Rock was invited to have dinner at the White House. He had met the Reagans at Hollywood functions, but they had never been close; he had voted for Reagan because he was a conservative Republican. The dinner was a black-tie affair, and Rock was seated at Nancy Reagan's table. He told Mark Miller later he had been "bowled over" by her. "She's funny, charming, and does she know how to keep a table moving." Nancy had told Rock he was too thin, he should fatten up, and Rock had answered, "You're thin, also." Rock was down to 195.

A week later, Rock was in Mark's office,when a photograph taken of him with the Reagans at the White House arrived, autographed by both of them. He hadn't asked for the picture, and thought it was a "classy touch" for them to send it.

Rock and Mark studied the picture: It was taken from the side, and showed a large red sore on Rock's neck, just below the hairline. Rock thought it was a pimple, but it had been there almost a year

"Rock, you've gotta do something about that pimple on your neck," Mark said. "Why didn't you wear Erase? You knew you'd be photographed." "I don't wear makeup, except on film. Never have." "It looks terrible, it's bigger, and it should have been gone by now. You should go see the skin doctor.

On May 24, Rock went to see a dermatologist in Beverly Hills, Dr. Letantia Bussell, whom he'd been referred to by his internist. Dr. Rex Kennamer. She told him the growth was too large for her to remove. She took a biopsy, and suggested Rock go to Dr. Frank Kamer, a plastic surgeon, to have it removed. Dr. Kamer had done eyelid surgery on Rock in 1981, and Rock made an appointment for June 5.

A few days after Rock had seen Dr. Bussell, and before his appointment with the plastic surgeon. Dr. Bussell called with the biopsy results. "Are you sitting down?" she said.

"No," Rock said.

"I think you'd better sit down. It's Kaposi's sarcoma. You have acquired immune deficiency syndrome. AIDS."

Rock immediately went to Dr. Kennamer's office for blood tests, and told no one. On June 5, he asked Mark Miller to drive him to the office of the plastic surgeon. Dr. Kamer, to have the "pimple" removed. Mark had no hint of the gravity of the occasion. He took Rock in at 7 a.m., and was told the procedure would take about three hours. He chatted with the receptionist, then went down to his car and listened to classical music on KUSC. Dr. Kamer did an excisional biopsy of the sarcoma and the lymph node underneath.

"I made the definitive diagnosis, and it broke my heart," Dr. Kamer says. "Mr. Hudson was one of my favorite patients. I knew, when I looked at his neck, it was Kaposi's sarcoma. He didn't look well, but his mood was up. He said he was gonna lick it, he'd licked other things, and if he didn't, it had been a good life."

Mark drove Rock home with a large bandage covering his neck. They ate franks and beans that James had fixed—it was one of Rock's favorite lunches. Then Rock went to his bedroom to take a nap, and Mark went into his office. "He didn't seem upset," Mark says. "He was a perfect poker player, as Kay had been."

At 2:25, Rock came into Mark's office and sat down in the lion's-head chair. "I have to tell you something. I have AIDS." He stared at Mark a long time. "Oh, shit," Mark said.

"I don't know why I haven't told you before. Dr. Bussell called last week and said they found it in the biopsy. They're concerned it'll be in the lymph node. They've arranged for me to see a specialist from UCLA, and you have to go with me. You have to come to all the doctors with me."

I sit and listen and I don't hear a word." Mark recalls, "My first thought was, run, get out and never come back, so you don't get it and die too. I got up and walked out of the room, but my body stayed. An inner voice said, 'Do not desert. Don't get out of the chair, don't even offend him by starting to get out of the chair.' Somehow, I held myself in that chair, but I was in utter panic.

Mark knew nothing about AIDS, and Rock knew nothing, except that you don't survive it. Newsweek had done a cover story in 1983, calling AIDS "the health threat of the century." But Rock was the first man they knew personally to contract it. "I thought it was a disease that fairies on Santa Monica Boulevard got," Mark says. "My mind was whirling—could you get it by kissing, touching, was it in urine? Rock used my bathroom, he coughed in my face, he touched my hand, we shared food. When he was cooking, he'd take a taste, then put the spoon back in the pot"

Rock talked about who should know and who shouldn't. "Under no circumstances is Marc Christian to know. He can't keep anything to himself. He'll tell Liberty, and they'll tell the world."

"May I tell George?" Mark said Always. I trust George with my life."

Rock went back to his bedroom, and Mark immediately called George in the desert. He told him to write the date and time in his diary, then he told him the news. George recalls, "He could have said, Rock is going to be executed. It was just like the knife going down with a terrible sound." George asked if he could speak to Rock, and Mark told him to call that night.

"Hiya," Rock said. "I know the news," George said. "I'll do anything I can. What can I do?" "Silence," Rock said. "Fine. Are you sure there's nothing else?" "No. Just absolute silence." "Fine. We love you."

George was worried about Mark, and that night he went to the supermarket and bought a paperback titled AIDS. He read it at one sitting, and

was relieved to learn the disease was not transmitted through casual contact but by the exchange of semen or blood. Mark was probably not at risk, but this left Rock, sentenced to die. Rock had told Mark that the first week, he had sobbed every night and couldn't sleep. The nights were the hardest for him. How could they help?

On June 7, Dr. Kennamer cleared his office of patients and Dr. Michael Gottlieb came in from UCLA for a two-hour consultation with Rock. Dr. Gottlieb was one of the premier researchers in the country working on AIDS. Dr. Kennamer is a "celebrity doctor," tall, thin and gray-haired, fashionably dressed; his practice is geared toward people accustomed to receiving special attention.

Dr. Kennamer and his associates, Dr. Gary Sugarman and Dr. Jeffrey Helfenstein, have refused to discuss Rock's case. Dr. Bussell also refused; only Dr. Kamer was willing to answer questions, as was Dr. Dominique Dormont in Paris. Dr. Gottlieb spoke briefly in August of 1985, and later refused to comment further. As a result, the information that follows comes largely from Mark Miller, who accompanied Rock to all his medical appointments, and from Dr. Dormont, who spoke candidly and at length.

Rock had been a patient of Dr. Kennamer's for twenty years. The doctor shook Rock's hand sadly and said, "I'm sorry this had to happen to you." He left Rock and Mark alone with Dr. Gottlieb, who examined Rock and confirmed that he had AIDS. In a kind and gentle voice, he told him about the symptoms and course of the disease. Rock said, "Is it terminal?"

Dr. Gottlieb paused, too long. "If I were you, I would get my affairs in order.

Rock was in a rage afterward. "He wouldn't tell me if it was terminal. He wouldn't answer me directly. Everyone in the office was saying goodbye. *Oh, Rock, why you, of all people?' It's like they just gave up, instead of saying, hey, let's fight this." Rock told Mark, "I'm going to fight this. And besides, I think they're wrong. I don't have it. I won't have it. I won't. I will not have this!"

Dr. Gottlieb said there were four stages patients usually go through: fear, denial, rage and acceptance.

Rock said, "What about sex?"

The doctor said it was not advisable to have sex because there was the possibility of transmission. If Rock did have sex, he should use a condom.

The doctor asked if Rock had a sexual partner. "Yes, well, that is, there has been . . ." Rock waved his arm. "It's over with."

Dr. Gottlieb asked if the partner lived with Rock. "He's still in the house, but it's finished."

According to Mark's recollection, Dr. Gottlieb said that in his experience, sometimes it was best to tell the partner and sometimes it was best not to. Some partners would flee in panic. Some would start developing symptoms of AIDS, even though they did not have the disease. Some would stay and be supportive to the end. Dr. Gottheb acknowledged that because Rock was famous, he would have to weigh his decision even more carefully.

He asked if Rock's friend had any symptoms of AIDS: weight loss, dry cough, night sweats. Rock shook his head no, and Mark said, "He's very healthy. He doesn't drink or smoke, doesn't use drugs to my knowledge."

Rock said, "I'll take care of it."

Rock then asked, "How long do I have?" Dr. Gottheb said there was no way of knowing.

Driving home. Rock and Mark were silent. Mark remembers feeling as if they were floating in space—quiet, motionless. He watched Rock behind the wheel and thought, "I'm looking at a dying man, he's dying right there."

Rock broke the silence. "It's like the plague. I've got the fucking plague. Nobody will come near me. If this gets out, I'm ruined. My career will be over. I'll never get another acting job. No actor will work with me." Rock said he felt ashamed and unclean, like he'd let everyone down. "I can never have sex anymore. I don't even dare touch people."

"What about Christian?" Mark said. "What are you going to do about him?"

"He goes immediately. Now—today."

"Rock, you can't do that. He's been exposed," Mark said.

"Bullshit, I could have gotten it from him!"

"That's not the point. What if he comes down with it, without health insurance? He'll be back living with Liberty on her sofa. He has no money, his parents have no money, Liberty has no money. Morally, you can't turn him out in the street."

"You're right," Rock said. "We'll leave him in the house, keep him covered. He's already sleeping in the other room. But I'm the one who has this, so, please, let me handle it my way, okay? He is not to know. Understand?"

Mark started to argue, but he knew the hard, flat tone of Rock's—when he used it, his decision was final.

"What about Ron Channell?" Rock shook his head. "I struck out with Ron. No worry there."

Dr. Gottlieb had said that one member of the staff should be told, so he could make sure proper hygiene was maintained and would know what to do if Mark Miller wasn't there. But Rock insisted the staff not be told. "Not James, not John Dobbs or Clarence. I'll take care of the cleanhness; I'll make sure no one gets AIDS."

Rock said he wanted to send an anonymous letter to three people he'd had sex with in the months prior to learning he had AIDS. Mark drove to Palm Desert with a draft of the letter, and George wrote out the notes in longhand and mailed them from his post office, so they couldn't be traced to Rock.

"Hi,This note shall remain anonymous for obvious reasons. Since we have had intimate sexual contact where sperm has passed between us, I feel it only fair to tell you that I have just found out I have AIDS. I am most sorry to tell you this. I suggest you have tests made to make sure you 're ok. Most sincerely"

One of the letters was sent to a twenty-two-year-old man in New York, who had had a fling with Rock after his dinner at the White House and guessed immediately that it was he. Obviously, Rock was concerned about the people he might have infected. But Marc Christian contends that Rock never told him he had AIDS, and that Rock continued to have sex with him until February of 1985. Rock told his friends and staff that they hadn't had sex since the spring of 1984. Rock's coldness to Christian and the fact that they led separate lives would seem to support this. There were no witnesses to sexual acts between them. Rock is no longer here to defend himself, so we have Christian's word against the evidence of Rock's behavior and statements to friends.

Since Rock informed three other lovers that he had AIDS, why did he not tell Christian? This is difficult to understand: Christian may have been exposed to AIDS and may have exposed other people. We can only try to imagine what Rock thought and felt in the extraordinary circumstances in which he found himself in 1984. We can attempt to piece together Rock's reasoning, his point of view, from those who were closest to him at the time and shared his secret: Mark Miller, George Nader and Dean Dittman.

As they see it, Rock's intimate relationship with Christian ended shortly after Rock's return from Israel. Christian told Rock he had taken money for sex, and had set out to "hook" Rock at Brooks Baths. Rock beheved it was possible that Christian had threatened to blackmail Rock by going to the Enquirer or other publications, and revealing that he was Rock's lover. What would he do with an even more damaging, and valuable, piece of information—that Rock was dying of AIDS?

Rock felt he was fighting for his life and his career, which, through the years, had become indistinguishable. He kept saying, "As long as I can work, I'm okay." George Nader says, "I feel very certain about what Rock felt. He had spent almost his entire life creating his persona and career, so that his career and his hfe had long ago become commingled. If anything threatened his career—it was tantamount to an assault on his life." Rock had faced threats before, but the threat from Christian was so great. Rock felt, he had to defend himself by the only means he had: silence

Rock made his decision and never wavered. But Mark Miller suggested that Christian should be examined, somehow, by a doctor. Mark went to his own doctor, Barry Unger, and said, "I have a problem. My employer has AIDS, and he has a friend whom he's chosen not to tell. Would you give the friend a complete physical and check his white count?" Mark then said to Christian, "When's the last time you had a physical?" Christian said he couldn't remember, it was long ago. "You should have one every year, why don't you go to my doctor and Mammoth Films will pay?"

Dr. Unger saw Christian on September 27, 1984, and reported to Miller that Christian was in outstanding health and there was no impairment evident in his immune system. His blood was not cultured for AIDS because at that time, the test could be done at only a few laboratories in the world.

It was Rock's intention to tell no one else he had AIDS, but shortly after receiving the diagnosis, he had broken down and told Dean Dittman. He had gone to Dean's for a dinner party and arrived an hour early. He walked over to the bar, took out his wallet and said, "Look what I got." He threw a package of rubbers onto the counter.

"Why, Rock, have you gone back to women?" Dean said. "No. I have AIDS."

As Dean stared at him. Rock said his doctors had told him if he had sex, he should wear a condom. The trouble was, he couldn't figure out how to put it on gracefully. "I've never worn a condom in my life. Won't I give the show away if I suddenly have to put one on?"

Guests began to arrive, and Dean and Rock could not talk further. It was a warm night, and the guests drifted out to the balcony. Dean was in the kitchen, cooking, when Rock came in, leaned back against the sink and started to sob. "Why me. Dean? Why me?"

Dean says Rock was overcome with shame. "He felt he'd committed a crime against his public. That was his main concern—that the public would find out. He said one night, 'I hope I die of a heart attack before they find out I have AIDS. If only that would happen.'"

Dean felt honored that Rock had chosen him to confide in, and took up the task of being Rock's support. "I had to fill Rock's life. He stopped calling people, and in Hollywood, if you don't invite people, you stop getting invitations. Also, he was becoming so dour and withdrawn, he wouldn't participate in conversations. He had no social life anywhere but here."

Dean consulted his doctor to see if there was any danger of exposing his other guests to AIDS. "I needed to know, if someone accidentally picked up Rock's glass and drank from it, could they get AIDS? Because if they could, I was taking people's lives in my hands." Dean was told that the AIDS virus does not survive in air, and could not be transmitted on glasses and plates.

As the months went on, Dean says, the guests he invited for Rock became "less interesting, but safer. I didn't want people in the business to see him looking poor, because they would gossip." Dean never went to sleep at night without calling Rock. "He'd take a pill, I'd talk to him and he'd drift off to sleep, so he didn't have to lie awake all night, alone and terrified." Occasionally, Dean tried to introduce God and metaphysics into their talks.

"I don't want to hear that," Rock said.

Rock entered a period where he refused to believe he had the disease. He began staying out late, drinking and smoking more, even though he had been told that alcohol and cigarettes lower the white-cell count. He went to the opening of Evita, ignoring a warning to avoid crowds because he was susceptible to any sickness present. When Mark reminded him of the doctors' counsel, Rock silenced him with a wave. "I told you, I don't have it!"

Rock was losing weight rapidly, and friends began to ask Mark and Dean if he had cancer. Mark and Dean would say, no, but maybe he has anorexia—is that possible? Mark said it often struck men at his age who tried to recapture the weight of their youth and went too far. No one really bought the story of anorexia, but no one was willing to believe, either, the vague rumors that Rock had AIDS. People discounted it as gossip; it was too horrible to believe. Elizabeth Taylor said she thought Rock had cancer, but she didn't feel she could ask him about it.

In July, Dean received a letter from a woman in New York whose son had AIDS and had learned of a new drug, HPA 23, that supposedly could suppress the AIDS virus. The drug was being tested in Paris, and the woman's son had gone there for treatment and was improving. Dean showed the letter to Rock, who gave it to Mark, who called Dr. Gottheb and asked about HPA 23. Dr. Gottlieb said he could arrange for Rock to be given the drug by Dr. Dominique Dormont at the Percy Hospital outside Paris. He warned that it was experimental and might lead nowhere, but on the other hand, it might prolong Rock's life.

Mark and Dean started to work on Rock. "It was a ray of hope," Mark says. "In Paris, they were doing something. Here, they could do nothing." He told Rock, "You gotta do this, kid, you've got nothing to lose."

Rock agreed, and Dr. Gottlieb said he would have to go for seven or eight weeks. Who could go with him? Mark didn't want to leave George for eight weeks. Rock said he wouldn't go with Marc Christian. "Why should I take him to Paris and sit in my hotel room alone every day?

"What about Ron Channell?" Mark said.

"Great idea," Rock said. He had thought of taking Dean, but Dean knew he had AIDS, and it would be a heavy-hearted journey to the court of last hope. With Ron, he could pretend they were on Holiday. Rock had received an invitation to the Deauville Film Festival for a George Stevens Retrospective, and that would be his cover. He invited Ron to go to the festival with him and take a vacation in Europe. They could continue their workouts, and Rock would keep him on salary.

On August 20, Rock flew to New York ahead of Ron to revise his will with Wally Sheft and his attorney, but did not tell them he had AIDS. He removed Tom Clark and put George Nader in first place as the beneficiary of his trust, with Mark Miller second.

On August 27, Rock met Ron in New York and they took the Concorde to Paris. The next day. Rock left Ron at the Ritz Hotel and took a cab to Percy Hospital. Rock told Ron he was working on a film project, and had to go to "story meetings" every morning. On the second or third day, he accidentally took off" his shirt in front of Ron, revealing a bruise on his arm from the IV needle. "What the hell is that?" Ron said. "Oh, I banged into a chair on my way to the bathroom in my sleep," Rock said

Dr. Dormont, established an immediate rapport with Rock. He found that Rock's condition was good, "the disease was not very advanced, but his immune system was badly impaired." Dr. Dormont recommended that Rock stay in Paris at least three months and get daily shots of HPA 23. It was the course of treatment they had found most effective. He explained that the drug doesn't stay in the body so it's necessary to have injections every day to inhibit the virus.

Rock said he could not stay that long, he had work to do in films. Dr. Dormont said there was a shorter course of treatment, but it was more intense: Rock would come to the hospital every day for a week and have three-hour infusions of the drug. He would then take a week off, have another week of infusions and continue for four cycles. Rock agreed, and they started that morning. When I interviewed Dr. Dormont in December of 1985, he said, "If Rock had agreed to stay in Paris for a long-term course, probably the disease would have stabilized. But he felt the work in films was more important. My impression was, he was thinking Rock Hudson couldn't be killed by this virus."

Mark Miller called Rock to see how the first day of treatment had gone. "Awful," Rock said. "I feel terrible, the drug made me nauseated." Mark was standing in the kitchen of the Castle, and when he hung up, he started to cry. James thought he was laughing. "What's so funny?" he said, but when he turned, he saw Mark in tears.

"I wish it was funny. It isn't. Rock has AIDS. The boss is gonna die."

"You're joking!" James did not show much emotion, he consoled Mark and tried to be positive, but he could not sleep that night. George Nader suggested that James leave the house immediately or he might be branded as having worked in an AIDS household and have difficulty finding another job. James refused. "I love Mr. Hudson. You don't leave a person at a time like this."

Rock and Ron went on to Rome, London, Barcelona, Nice and St. Tropez. While they were traveling, Rock's agent called Mark Miller and said that Esther Shapiro, the creator and producer of Dynasty, wanted to see Rock about doing a part on the show.

Esther Shapiro had been a fan of Rock's since seeing him in Giant, and had always wanted to do a project with him. She and her husband, Richard Shapiro, had created the character of Daniel Reece, a wealthy rancher, with the idea that if the character worked, it could be the basis for a spinoff series. She decided to go after Rock. His agent at that time, Marty Baum at C.A.A., said, "I don't think he'll do it, and he's in Europe." Esther said, "I can usually persuade people. If you will get me a meeting, I will go anywhere."

Esther flew to Paris one day, and Rock asked her to come to the Ritz and have tea. "I felt like a fan, not a producer. Here I was, flying fourteen thousand miles to have tea with Rock Hudson. I'd heard rumors he was sick, but he looked wonderful to me. He was wearing khaki pants and a bush jacket." Esther's view of Rock was similar to that of Susan Saint James and Dick Ebersol in Atlantic City. Rock's presence was still so dazzling that it overpowered the eye, and people did not notice the physical signs of illness and deterioration that showed up in still photographs

Rock started telling her all the reasons he hated doing television. She told him that on Dynasty, they operated more like a repertory group and the actors had time to work on material. "It was hke an Indian war council," she says. "One side speaks, there's silence, then the other side gives their position." This went on for about two hours. "I didn't push head on, because I sensed he wouldn't respond to that. I said, please don't feel pressured, just because I've flown all this way. I've heard no before, and if I hear it from you, I'll go on."

..... "I read the script," Rock said. She nodded, and did not ask what he thought. Rock began telling her again how he hated doing television. "What would be the downside if you did the show?" she said. "Do you think it would hurt you in any way? I don't think it could help, you've already arrived."

Rock said he didn't think a soap opera was his milieu, but he admitted he liked to work. He looked at Esther and smiled. "What the hell. Maybe I'll just do it."

After Rock's fourth week of treatment with HPA 23, Dr. Dormont cultured his blood and found no AIDS virus present. He told Rock the treatment had been successful, the virus had been inhibited, but he cautioned him that he still had the disease. "The culture can be negative and the person still has AIDS," Dr. Dormont said. "The virus creates disorders in the immune system, after which the disease progresses independent of the virus." He said the AIDS virus would grow back, so it was important for Rock to return to Paris for treatment as soon as possible.

Rock said he wouldn't be able to come back before February because he was going to do a TV show, Dynasty.

Dr. Dormont said later, "I'm sure he heard what I said, but he didn't want to understand all my sentences. He understood what he wanted to understand." Dr. Dormont waited for Rock to return in February, March and April, but to his disappointment. Rock never came. The doctor received a case of champagne and flowers, sent by Mark Miller, but he did not hear from or see Rock until July of 1985, when Rock collapsed and was taken to the American Hospital.

In October of 1984, just before Rock was due to fly home to Los Angeles, Marc Christian learned that Ron Channell was with him. Ron's father had called the house and asked Christian, "When are the boys gonna get back from Paris?" Christian called Mark Miller in the desert and said, "Why didn't you tell me? Why was this done behind my back?"

"Marc, you're not having an affair with me, you're having an affair with Rock. It's up to Rock to tell you. Don't look to me for your information.

"But you and I are friends. You should tell me things like this."

"I work for Rock," Mark said. "When Rock says don't tell, I don't tell."

On October 7, Mark Miller picked up Rock and Ron from the airport and brought them back to the Castle. Marc Christian had gone away for the weekend. When Rock was alone with Mark in the kitchen, he told him he had great news: The serum had worked. There was no more AIDS virus in his blood. Mark nearly fainted with joy and relief. Rock did not tell him the rest of Dr. Dormont's message, that he still had the disease, and that he would have to stay on HPA 23 or the virus would grow back. What Mark Miller heard was that Rock was saved. The virus had been killed. Rock looked wonderful, he hadn't lost any weight in seven weeks, and he was elated. "I can work, I can do Dynasty, " Rock said. "I don't have AIDS. I've licked it! I told you, I never had it in the first place.

Within a few weeks of Rock's return from Paris in October of 1984, the bubble had burst. "Pve lost another ten pounds. What the hell is happening?" Rock said. The skin of his face had the creased and saggy look of elephant skin. He was sleeping twelve hours a night, and collapsing after lunch to sleep for another two hours. Mark Miller says Dr. Sugarman was upset that Rock had agreed to do Dynasty. He asked why Rock was jeopardizing his health, he might not get through the show, he might not see Christmas.

Rock would listen, at this time, to no one but Ron Channell. Ron persuaded Rock to start eating breakfast, which he had never done, and Rock would pick at eggs and toast and maybe eat half a portion. Rock started wearing only his jockey shorts around the house, and the staff was shocked at the way his bones protruded. John Dobbs blurted, "Mr. Hudson, you've got to eat more."

When Mark told Rock he had informed James of his illness. Rock did not speak to James for three days. "He acted as if I wasn't there. He was so embarrassed and ashamed, he couldn't face me. But then he came round," James says

Rock was depressed and silent much of the time. "The famous laughter we all love is going," Mark said. He would tell Rock stories he knew would make him laugh, "and he'd barely react. Before, no matter how low he was, I could always get him to giggle. I could make him fall on the floor, but now I couldn't. I was losing him."

At the end of October, Rock started work on Dynasty. He had made a commitment to do six episodes, with an option for four more and a spinoff series the following year.

When he was shooting. Rock joked and chatted with the cast, but when he was not required on the set, he went to his trailer and slept. He did not eat with the cast, because he had no appetite and was beginning to throw up meals. The assistant director would come to his trailer to call him for scenes, and once she had trouble waking him. She spoke to him, touched his arm, then had to rock and shake him. "It took me a long time. He was really out—completely unconscious."

Rock's memory was failing, and he had to have cue cards, which was humiliating. It meant he could not perform the most basic part of his craft —memorizing lines. The makeup man. Jack Freeman, who had worked with Rock before, said, "His coloring was pale. I did what I could to make him look better, but it was evident he wasn't well or strong. And yet, his face would light up at times and he'd look wonderful."

Esther Shapiro says, "I would have kept him forever. I thought he was magical on screen. He looked tired at the end, but it was the end of the season. None of us thought he was seriously ill." Esther says that if she had known he had AIDS, she is not sure they would have hired him. "I would have had to take it up with the production company and the network. The ill have rights, and other actors have rights too."

Rock was pleased with his appearance on Dynasty. He would ask friends, "See Dynasty last night? I think I look good. I look the way I did when I started acting." Rock was disconcerted, though, when he received a script for an episode in which he would have to kiss Linda Evans. He walked into the kitchen where Mark Miller was sitting and threw the script on the table. "Jesus Christ. I've got to kiss Linda. What the hell am I gonna do?" He had been given the script a week before it was to be shot, and all that week, he agonized. It had been reported in the press that the AIDS virus had been cultured in saliva, although there was no evidence that the disease could be passed through kissing. Rock did not consult his own doctors. Dr. Gottlieb says, "I would not have advised a passionate kissing scene with anyone."

Rock discussed and fretted about the kiss with Mark. "Do I run to Gottlieb and Sugarman and say, there's a kiss, what do I do? Do I reveal it to Linda Evans, to Esther Shapiro and Aaron Spelling?" Rock kept coming to the conclusion that he could do nothing. Mark says, "He was trapped. He felt, either you announce you have AIDS, or kiss the lady.

I asked Mark why Rock did not tell the producers he had an infection in his mouth and could not kiss anyone. Mark said, "You couldn't suggest things hke that to Rock. He would wave you away and say, 'It's my kiss, not yours.' He felt he could not ask them to change a script; it would have aroused suspicion."

Rock made what Mark calls a "career decision." Rock's career had always been the priority; all other considerations came afterward. It was the ruthless, tunnel vision he had applied to all decisions in his hfe, and it did not change. Rock knew, though, that "way down the line, I'm gonna pay for that kiss." His mood changed toward the show, and he started making a pun of the title. Die Nasty.

Mark says that he, Rock and George still believed they could keep Rock's affliction quiet. "We didn't know there would be an announcement." They talked about bringing Rock to the desert and installing him in a condo with discreet male nurses round the clock. "We thought Rock would have a slow demise, and it would be hushed up forever. All of a sudden, there would be an announcement that Rock Hudson had died of cirrhosis of the liver. He would die quietly; we should have known better with Rock."

On the day the kiss with Linda Evans was shot. Rock used every gargle, mouthwash and spray he could lay his hands on. He came home and told Mark, "The fucking kiss is over with. Thank God." He said it was one of the worst days of his life.

The episode went on the air February 6, and George Nader watched it alone in the desert, frozen with dread. He taped the show, played it back and stopped the action. To his relief, he says, "I could see where Rock kept his lips closed and hit Linda on the side of the cheek for a brief, chaste kiss. He did not open his mouth, no sahva was exchanged."

Esther Shapiro, in retrospect, agreed. "It was not much of a kiss. It couldn't be passionate because Linda loved her husband and was pulling away from Rock." Esther was not angry when she learned Rock had AIDS and hadn't told the company. "I was horrified Rock had AIDS and was going to die." She said she didn't think about the disclosure issue. "The man was ill and wanted to work, he had a history of denial all his life. It was understandable to me."

No one on the Dynasty set seemed upset about Rock's lack of truthfulness. The cast and crew had developed a fondness for Rock, and their reaction when the news broke was grief. One director said, "It was a damn shame this had to happen to such a wonderful man." Ironically, no one on the set voiced what people were saying outside: "How could he have kissed Linda without telling her he had AIDS?" Fans of Linda were furious. One man, who owns a small business in Los Angeles, said, "He flat-out exposed her, and I can't forgive him for that. I don't trust these doctors who say it can't be passed through kissing. They don't know everything yet. Linda should have been told, so she could make the decision herself if she wanted to take the risk."

Mark Miller woke up in the middle of the night, worrying that Linda Evans would get AIDS from the kiss. "Even though I knew Rock couldn't give it to me by touching, I still shrank from his touch. When he asked me to rub salve on his back, I'd go in the bathroom afterward and scrub down like a surgeon. On Dynasty, there he was, rolling around the ground with Linda, kissing her, even though his mouth was closed." Rock, however, did not give the matter a second thought, once it was over. It was a lifelong pattern: He did not seem vulnerable to guilt.

........On Monday, November 19, he asked Rock, "How'd the parties go?" Rock made a thumbs-down gesture. "No sixtieth. I'm leaving town next year."

Rock was beginning to accept what was happening to him, and to resign himself not to fight it. He said, in November, that he was through with doctors. He complained that when his blood was taken, the doctors never called him with results. "No one calls and says, hey, there's improvement, or, uh-oh, there's a setback. Sugarman takes blood, then nothing. Silence. There can't be any good news, so why the hell go on pulling the fucking blood? I've had it—no more blood tests and that's that!"

Rock had no further interest in sex. Where in the past, he had loved to hear details of sexual adventures, and was pleased if someone sent him a "care package" of pornography, in the fall of 1984, he did not want to hear or see anything relating to sex. Dean Dittman says, "If a sexy scene came on television, Rock would shut it off. You couldn't discuss sex around him; he was dying because he'd had sex."

Mark Miller felt Rock was giving up. "Sex and career had been the most important things to him. Now, he couldn't have sex, and his career had waned to the point where he was doing a soap opera on television. He was dreading the future, he saw a way out and decided to take it."

Rock had stayed home alone three nights in a row, for the first time since he had arrived in Hollywood in 1948. "I had no place to go," he told Mark. "Ron Channell was busy and so was Dean." The phone hardly rang anymore, where, in prior years, all four lines would ring night and day. "Rock loved the phone; he could be talking on one line, have someone on hold, and if the third line rang. Rock would yell, 'I'll get it!'"

Rock spent long periods in Mark's office, sitting in the hon's-head chair, staring into space. Mark would be answering letters or balancing accounts, and Rock would say, "I'm gonna die." He said it like a child taunting his mother, "I'm gonna eat worms."

In December, Rock and Dean started learning a duet to sing at Christmas parties, "Perhaps Love," recorded by Placido Domingo and John Denver. Rock took the John Denver part, and Dean took Placido Domingo's. Rock enjoyed working on the song, but they were not invited to any parties where they could perform, and Rock ended up staying home by himself on Christmas day. "For Rock, invitations had almost ceased," Dean says.

They went to a tree-decorating party at Stockton Briggle's, and Stockton remembers Rock sitting by himself, looking thin and unhappy, staring wistfully at the tree. Stockton went over and sat beside him, put his arm around Rock's shoulders and kept it there. "He seemed so vulnerable, like he needed support." When Rock left, he told Dean he felt bad he couldn't share what he had with Stockton. When Stockton learned this, after Rock's death, he was saddened. Stockton himself had been told, ten years before, that he had cancer and might die. "I shared it with everyone. I was determined to beat it and I did." Stockton says Rock could have spent his last year surrounded by loving friends. "But he had to tell the world or nobody. He chose to isolate himself and die alone."

On Christmas Eve, Rock and Dean went to a party at the home of Martha Raye, who had been Rock's co-star on McMillan, but Rock left early because Tom Clark was expected. Dean had toured with Martha that year in Annie, and one night on the road, when both were drinking, Dean had slipped and told her Rock had "the big A." Dean had sworn her to secrecy, and was furious with himself for the breach

When Tom Clark arrived at the Christmas party, he went straight up to Dean and said, "What's wrong with our boy? You've got to tell me, does he have AIDS?"

"Tom, if he has it, I have it. No, he couldn't possibly have AIDS," Dean said.

"If he does, I'll be right there, even if he throws me out," Tom said.

Dean saw Tom go off in a comer with Martha Raye, and feared what might happen. Later that night, when Dean returned to his apartment, Tom called and said, "Martha Raye just told me you told her Rock has AIDS!" Dean denied it, and called Martha and demanded that she call Tom and deny it; they had angry words and have been estranged ever since. Tom Clark says, though, that he never really believed it. He didn't learn Rock had AIDS until the news was announced in July of 1985.

By January of 1985, the rumors that Rock had AIDS were more persistent. Wally Sheft called from New York and grilled Mark, "Does he have AIDS?" Mark said, "Why don't you ask Rock?" Wally put the question, tactfully, to Rock, and he said no. Later, Rock said, "Maybe I should have told Wally. But why? It changes nothing."

As Rock spoke, his hands moved ceaselessly over his body, scratching, trying desperately to reUeve the itch. He was covered with rashes, in his genital area, on his face, and he couldn't have cortisone to alleviate it because it would affect his immune system adversely. He had Vincent's disease in his mouth, and two front teeth were loose. He developed contact impetigo, which was highly infectious and covered his chest, back and legs with itching sores. Rock said he could not sleep at night because of the maddening itch. He walked around in jockey shorts because clothing was intolerable—it aggravated the itch.

Mark and James started a campaign to persuade Rock to go back to Paris, to be treated again by Dr. Dormont. Mark showed him a letter from a friend they had sent to Dr. Dormont after Rock had gone. Bob Darcy. (This is a pseudonym; he asked that his name be withheld.) Bob had been in Paris six months, and wrote that he was gaining weight and swimming two miles a day. Doctors in San Francisco had told him he wouldn't see his next birthday, but he was celebrating his birthday in Paris!

"It's cold in Paris," Rock said. Mark said he would go over first, rent an apartment, furnish it and Rock could fly in. "I don't want to hear about fucking Paris! There's no work in Paris." "Forget your career, you want to live," Mark said. "I'm not gonna live in Paris alone, and how can I explain to Ron, we're gonna go live in Paris, in the cold. For what? Ron's in acting school—I can't take him away."

Mark said, after Rock died, "I did everything to get that man back to Paris. If he'd stayed in Paris, he would be aUve today. Bob Darcy is alive today."

In February, Rock took Ron Channell to Hawaii for a week's vacation at the Mauna Kea. He lay in the sun, which seemed to alleviate his rashes, but when he returned to the Castle, his weight was down to 182. He sat at lunch with the staff and did not eat. If he did, he would excuse himself afterward, go upstairs and throw up. The only thing he could keep down was Nutriment. "I get nauseated just walking through the kitchen," he said

He was slower in his speech and walk, and often had trouble understanding simple questions. Mark began to crack under the strain of watching Rock fade, and being forced to lie and cover up. Mark would drive to the desert every Thursday, sit down at the bar and fall into a catatonic stupor. It would take him until Sunday to regain his spirits, and then it was time to drive back to the house where Rock was dying, "to Plague Palace, to hell," Mark says. "Yet you could not desert. At least I couldn't desert. That's the Iowa farm boy."

In March, Rock asked Mark if he could come to the desert some weekend and visit. Mark was surprised, as Rock had never liked Palm Desert. "Sure," he said, "let's ask George." They called George, and Rock said, "Is it okay if I come down?" "Of course, it would be great. Come, and bring whomever you'd like." "Can't I just come by myself?" Rock said. "My God, Rock, sure, just get your ass down here."

They made a plan for Easter weekend, and on Thursday, April 4, Rock and Mark drove out in Mark's Jeep Wagoneer. George had not seen Rock in more than a year, since the weekend he had come to visit with Marc Christian in February of 1984. George had been warned that Rock looked poor, but the sight of Rock's face was still a jolt. It was hard to believe it was the same face George had known for three decades, the face that the camera had loved

.......They sat in silence a while, and then Rock sighed. "Well, I guess you're right . . .""I'm always right," George said. "Like hell! You've never been right." Through the years, Rock and George had had a fierce rivalry about who was wisest, and Rock had insisted he was always right and George was always wrong.

"For once in your life, you're right," Rock said. "People are no damn good." George let out a hurrah. "What converted you?" "The phone's died. At the house." "You sure the bill's been paid?"

Rock lifted his head and looked sternly at George. "No one calls . . . ever . . . about anything. Ross and Jacque have stopped calling. My agents don't call. Even the fucking doctors don't call."

"Rock, it's no consolation, but that happened to Mark and me a long time ago. When I stopped acting."

Rock said he was sick of spending all his evenings with Dean Dittman, and having to listen to his lectures about God and positive thoughts

What's with the sleeping prince?" George said, using Rock's nickname for Marc Christian. According to George, Rock replied as follows.

"More of the same." Rock turned over and lay on his stomach, so he was facing George directly. He gave a grim smile. "He trapped me, you know? And then he laughed about it."

"How do you mean, trapped you?"

Rock turned back to George, and told him how, shortly after his return from Israel, Christian had confessed to him that he'd taken money for sex. "With that shit-eating grin of his, he said he only did it when he was really so hungry he just had to," Rock said, imitating Christian's voice. "I told him to get the hell out. He just laughed and said to listen because there was more. It seems I'd been set up)—the 'accidental' meeting was planned." Rock related how Christian had waited for him to come into Brooks Baths. "And when I did, he kept waving his dick at me until I finally noticed him. The rest is history. Jesus Christ, I still can't believe it. Yours truly, set up and seduced."

"For God's sake, why didn't you throw him out?" George said.

"He said he'd go straight to the Enquirer, he had a friend who was a reporter, and they were all ready and waiting."

There was an uncomfortable pause. "That ended it for me, for good," Rock said.

George wrestled with a question he'd been wanting to ask Rock for some time: Why he hadn't told Christian he had AIDS. George tried to gauge whether this was the moment. "Uh, Rock, when you found out about ..."

"The Plague? I just told you, for God's sake, I was finished with Christian, we hadn't had sex for months. And if I said anything to him, he'd run straight to Liberty and she'd have it all over town."

"But ..." George tried to voice his concern that Christian had been exposed "Listen to me." Rock's voice was steely. "You know Christian's story. So fuck him. Because it goes with the territory."

....In May, there were rumors, repeated to Mark Miller, that Marc Christian had AIDS and had given it to Rock. When Christian came into his office on May 28, Mark said, "Have you heard the latest rumor about yourself?"

"What is it?" Christian said.

"That you have AIDS, and you gave it to Rock."

"What! That's ridiculous." Christian said, "Does Rock have AIDS?" It was the first time Christian had raised the question with Mark.

"Why don't you go ask him?" Mark said.

That night. Rock was alone in the kitchen when Christian came in and told him the rumor. "Do you have AIDS?" Christian said.

Rock gave him a withering look. "No. Do you?"

"No," Christian said. "But there's something wrong with you. Why don't you get help? Why don't you go to a good physician, instead of the quacks you're going to?"

"I'm fine."

"Have you been checked for cancer?"

"Yes."

Have you been checked for AIDS?"

"Yes, I've been checked for everything and I don't have it!" The familiar veil dropped over Rock's face, so no expression could be detected. He said to Christian, in a cold, intimidating voice, "What would you do if you had it?"

"I don't know. I'd probably commit suicide," Christian said

In June, there was a crisis over Christian's 1959 Chevy Nomad station wagon. The car had been at Image Makers for more than eighteen months, being restored, and Mark Miller had been paying invoices each week. In May, he had totaled up what Rock had invested to date—$20,000—and when Rock was advised, he said, "That's it. I won't pay any more." Mark had relayed this to Christian, who nevertheless ordered more work done on the car. When a new bill arrived from Image Makers in June, for $10,000, Mark told Christian he would have to pay it himself.

"Wait a minute," Christian said. "The car is not finished. You can't leave me in the lurch." Christian said he had discovered that the manager of Image Makers, Mike Frawley, had been jacking up the prices because he thought it was Rock Hudson's car. "This man has charged you three or four times for the same part. He's been stealing from Rock, by writing up orders of the same parts time and again. I'm trying to protect you, I have all this evidence. You can't just pull out on me."

Mark said, "There have been too many problems. We're going to wash our hands of it."

"If you want me to, I'll just take the car off the lot," Christian said.

"If you can do that without breaking the law," Mark said.

Christian consulted George Nader's attorney, Margaret Saal, and concocted a plan to get the car off the lot without paying the bill.

.......When Frawley stopped receiving payments from Mammoth Films, he asked Christian what was wrong. Christian told him Rock was upset the job was taking so long and would not pay any more until the car was completed. Christian said Frawley should stop sending bills to the house. Christian would take them up personally. Christian assured him he would be paid upon completion. Frawley asked his staff to work round the clock to finish the car in three weeks, and sent a final bill to Mammoth Films for $10,000. "I felt confident I was going to be paid when Christian tricked me into driving off the lot with him."

Christian told Mark Miller how he had "liberated" the car, and laughed about it. Christian went to Rock and said, "My car is ready, can I bring it up here?"Rock was in the kitchen with Ron Channell; they were about to start their workout

"Definitely not," Rock said.

"Why?" "You know how you got it. I don't want those people bothering me and coming up here after it."

"I live here too, this is my house, and it's my car."

Rock yelled, "I don't want that fucking car on my property and that's that!" "How can you speak to me like that in front of a servant," Christian said, pointing at James.

Rock walked out; Christian picked up a chair and hurled it across the kitchen.

Love these posts...keep it coming OP

Ron Channell, who was at the kitchen door when Rock came out, said, "If I were you, I'd go right back in there and tell that guy to move out."

Marc Christian stormed into Mark Miller's office and swore he would bring his car there whether Rock liked it or not. Mark buzzed Rock in the playroom, and asked him to come into the office. "Talk it out, guys, come on," Mark said. Christian and Rock went back and forth, and resolved that the car could be parked at the Castle, but it would have to have a car cover on it at all times.

Meanwhile, James was in a rage and told Mark Miller he wanted to quit. "How dare Marc Christian call me a servant! He doesn't own this house. I'm an Englishman, I have an honorable profession."

Mark Miller went to Christian and said, "Listen, straighten out your relationship with Rock. Go talk to him. Either you straighten it out, or leave. The house is in an uproar, James is in an uproar. Nobody speaks. Rock won't even speak to you."

That night, while Rock was at the table poking at his dinner. Christian came in and sat down quietly across from him. "Can't we return to what we had two years ago?"

"No," Rock said. "I don't give a good shit about you anymore. As a matter of fact, don't even bother to speak to me. We have nothing to say. You've put me through the wringer for two years. It's too late."

Christian's mouth dropped open. Rock turned his attention to his plate, making it clear the interview was over. Christian waited a moment, then stood and walked out

The following week, Ron Channell called a meeting with Rock and Mark Miller to discuss Rock's health. They sat down in Mark's office, and Ron made an earnest pitch for action. He wanted Rock to consult a new doctor, to see a dietitian and psychologists. It was time to mobilize all the powers of science, psychology, religion, anything that might help restore his health. Rock sliced open mail with a letter opener as Ron was talking.

Ron plowed on, like a coach trying to fire up a team that was hopelessly behind. "What say, men, shall we do it?"

Dead silence. Rock said, "Let me think about it." Ron slumped in his chair.

Rock was failing by the day now because he was getting no nourishment. He was down to 170—fifty pounds less than when the disease had started—and he seemed to have shrunk. No longer did he tower above other men; he seemed a normal size, about six one. For the first time in his life. Rock had nightmares and would wake up screaming. He was sweating so profusely in his sleep that James had to put plastic sheets on the bed. Rock told Mark Miller, "I stink at night. What is that terrible smell?"

On July 5, Dean called and said Ross Hunter had told him, "I hear Rock's being drugged by the staff." Mark repeated this to Rock, who said, "Yes, and I wish you'd stop it"

Rock had agreed to go to Carmel on July 15, to tape a show with Doris Day for her new cable program, Doris Day's Best Friends. A press conference had been set up, and Life magazine was planning to shoot what might be a cover picture: the reunion between Rock Hudson and Doris Day. Mark tried to persuade Rock not to go, the doctors tried. Dale Olson tried, but it was useless. Mark told them, "I don't think Rock realizes the change that's taken place in his looks."

Rock left for Carmel on Monday, "hanging by a thread," and the following day, Mark made an executive decision: Rock was going back to Paris. He made reservations for Rock and Dean to leave on Saturday, and asked Dr. Gottlieb to call Dr. Dormont in Paris to alert him. Mark called Wally Sheft and told him Rock was going to Geneva to be treated for anorexia. Mark would not inform Wally that Rock had AIDS until after Rock had collapsed in Paris.

In Carmel, Rock arrived late for the press conference, dressed in ill-matched, loose-fitting clothes. When it was over, the reporters were visibly shaken and swarmed around Dale Olson. "What's wrong with Rock? He was barely coherent."

"He's had the flu," Dale said. "I was afraid we'd have to cancel." "It looks worse than that," one reporter said. "No, I don't think so," Dale said.

U.S.A. Today ran a picture of Rock and Doris, and Dale started getting calls from around the world. "Is Rock dying?" Tom Clark called Dean and said he was alarmed by the picture. "The whole town is buzzing." Liz Smith printed an item that Rock was in the hospital, and friends called the house, asking where to send flowers

Doris Day and her son, Terry Melcher, were so concerned they tried to cancel the shoot, but Rock was adamant that they go forward. They started filming on Tuesday, July 16, and that evening, after dinner. Rock invited Dale to his room. "I've ordered some drinks, come and talk to me," Rock said. Dale found Rock lying on the bed of the suite, with a fire going, music playing, and on the table, four Scotches and four vodkas.

Dale realized it was going to be a long night. "I spent a lot of time around Judy Garland," Dale says. "She was so terrified of being left alone, you couldn't leave until she passed out. That was the feeling I got from Rock that night." Dale kept saying, "I'd better go, you've got to sleep," and Rock said, "No, no, don't leave."

Rock wanted to talk about personal matters, things he had never come near discussing with Dale. He talked about people: who had been his real friends and who hadn't. Dale remembers being surprised, some of the people Dale had thought were Rock's friends were not.

"You know, the most important person who was ever in my life was Tom Clark," Rock said. "You could laugh with Tom, and he was great to travel with. He was loyal, and he made the house sing. He was terrific."

"Really," Dale said. Rock acknowledged that his life had fallen apart after Tom had gone. The music had died. He had truly loved Tom and hadn't known how much.

"Maybe you should see him again." "No, I don't think so. I'd like to, but I don't think so."

Rock did not mention Marc Christian. Two years before. Rock had asked Dale if he could do anything to help Marc with his music project. Rock had showed him, with pride, the tapes Marc was compiling on the history of pop music. A few months later. Dale had told Rock he had some ideas about getting an institution to sponsor Marc's research, but Rock had waved him off. "Don't bother with that. It won't come to anything."

...........Doris said later, "When we were walking around out there together, it

crossed my mind, it might be the last time. But I didn't really know. I hoped and prayed that it wouldn't be. I didn't know what was wrong with him, but I knew he was determined to do that show if it took his last breath. It was his final thing, and it was with me, and I really cherish that."

Doris made Rock promise that he would eat more. Rock collapsed on the plane and slept all the way to Los Angeles, but in the middle of the flight, he opened his eyes and looked at Dale. "I think I'm going to Paris."

"Oh, why?"

"Doris is mad at me. There's a doctor in Paris I've got to see, because I guess there's something wrong with me. I don't Uke it that Doris is mad at me." He closed his eyes and slept

........,,,,,,,Mark had learned more from Rock in that ten-minute talk than he'd learned in thirty-four years, and he was still running it through his mind, plumbing it , Rock said he wanted to get started on the book. "It's time."

"I agree with you there."

"What the hell do we put in a book?" Rock said.

"Well, for one thing, who have you loved? I mean really loved, we're talking about love, not infatuations or fucks."

"Only two people," Rock said. "Phyllis Gates and Lee Garlington.

Mark was fascinated, it was not the answer he would have guessed.

"Lee just drove me crazy," Rock said "You didn't like him, did you?"

"No, I found him supercilious."

"He led me a merry chase," Rock said. "Goddamn I loved him."

Months later, when told what Rock had said, Lee Garlington was astonished. "I had no idea Rock had cared to that extent." Phyllis Gates, when told, said quickly, "He was lying. Rock never loved me. To me, he wasn't a very nice man."

Mark Miller hesitated to question Rock. "He opened up so little that when he did, you took what he gave you and didn't press." Mark said, simply, "No one else?"

Rock shook his head no. "Those are the only people I've really ever loved in my life. The rest, I thought I did but I didn't. Soon after I got into the situation, I realized I didn't love them. It was sex, or infatuation, but it wasn't love. Then I had to figure out how to get rid of them."

"Why is it that you cannot say those two words: get out?" Mark said.

Rock laughed. "I don't know, but I can't.

.......Rock was flown home from Paris on a chartered 747 on July 30, 1985, and taken by helicopter to UCLA Medical Center. When Mark Miller arrived the following day, he asked Dr. Gottlieb, "Should he see friends?" Dr. Gottlieb said yes. Rock should see as many people as possible so he would want to return to life.

Mark drew up a list of visitors, and Rock approved everyone except Marc Christian and Tom Clark. Mark hired a guard and private nurses to watch Rock, and the hospital set up a lounge next to his room for visitors. Mark would schedule one guest in the morning and one in the afternoon. He brought them up and gave them a speech: Rock doesn't look as we remember, try not to register shock; he may not recognize you or talk, you'll have to do the talking; and don't stay too long. After the visit, the guests would go into the lounge and "fall apart,"

Mark says. When stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Carol Burnett came. Dr. Gottlieb made himself available to answer questions.

On August 8, Juliet Prowse came to see Rock and when she learned he hadn't seen Tom Clark, she said, "Would you like to see Tom?"

"Sure," Rock said. She told Mark Miller, who went himself to ask Rock and when Rock said yes, Mark called Tom. "Get over here right now.

Tom drove to the hospital with Jon Epstein, who'd been scheduled to visit at 1 P.M. "I was shaking like a leaf," Tom says. Jon went in first with Mark, and after a few minutes, Tom walked in. Rock's face Ut up.

"How you doin', pal?" Tom said.

"Pretty good," Rock said. Then he smiled. "It's the pits, isn't it? The fucking pits."

Little was stated, but from Rock's eyes and voice, Tom knew, "It was all right between us. I got in that room and, bingo. It was as if I'd never been away. And you know what? He looked beautiful to me. I was expecting him to look worse, because of the Doris Day pictures, but he looked radiant."

Jon Epstein left to give them privacy, as did Mark, who says, "It was terribly touching. I hadn't seen Rock greet anyone with such joy since he'd collapsed. The look in his eye seemed to say. Thank God you're here, buddy, I need you

Tom took over Mark's duties at the hospital and practically moved in. He would arrive at eight in the morning and leave at nine at night. He read to Rock, watched television with him and cajoled and bullied him into eating.

Later, when they were alone, Mark told Tom that he was not in Rock's will and that Rock was too sick for any alterations to be made. "So if you're doing this with the idea that you can be reinstated, that's not possible. You have to decide if you want to continue nursing an AIDS patient."

Tom said he didn't care about AIDS or the will, he was grateful to have this time with Rock. "If he'd died in Paris and I hadn't been able to be with him again, I would have been desolate."

Within two weeks, twenty-eight thousand letters for Rock had arrived at the hospital or the house, some addressed simply: "Rock Hudson, Hollywood." Fans sent Bibles, handcrafted gifts and cookies; members of churches made scrolls and wrote little messages expressing their love

.......Mark was awakened by a call from Marc Christian in Los Angeles, who had heard the news on television and was enraged. According to Miller, the conversation went as follows. Christian said, "How dare you not tell me!"

Miller said, "It was up to Rock to tell you. Rock had the disease, not me. Rock ordered me not to tell anyone."

"But why the hell didn't you tell me anyway? You should have told me. I've been exposed. It's not fair to me!"

I couldn't tell you," Mark said. "My loyalties are to Rock Hudson and you know that. I'm not a friend of yours for thirty-five years. I tried to give you clues. I asked you to get a complete physical last year, remember? The doctor who examined you knew you'd been exposed to AIDS and said you had no sign of it. I doubt you have it now." Miller told him they would bring him to Paris immediately so Dr. Dormont could culture his blood.

Marc Christian had flown to Paris the day after Rock returned to California. At Mark Miller's request, Bob Darcy met Christian at the airport. helped him find a place to stay and took him to Percy Hospital where he was examined by Dr. Dormont. While waiting for the results of his blood culture, Christian went to the South of France with Darcy. Christian was impressed that Darcy looked so well and did not seem sick. They stayed together in Mougins, a little town outside Cannes, went to the beach during the day and at night to a gay bar called Zanzi. "All the Europeans were scared of Americans," Darcy says. "When they heard the accent, they'd say, 'You all have AIDS,' and walk away."

Darcy was surprised that Christian "did not seem all that freaked out. I would have been panicked. He seemed more concerned about Rock than himself." Darcy had known Rock for years and said, "Rock was one of the nicest, most generous people I ever knew, but I was angry he hadn't told Marc he had AIDS. Marc did not seem angry, which I found strange. My anger was stronger than Marc's."

On August 7, Dr. Dormont reported that Christian's culture was negative; there was no AIDS virus in his blood, and no antibodies to the virus. The staff at the Castle jumped up and down and hugged each other when they heard the news. A few days later. Christian returned from France.

On August 12, Wally Sheft called Mark Miller from New York and said he. Rock and Dr. Gottlieb had conferred and decided that Christian should leave the house before Rock was brought home, because his presence would disturb Rock. Mark called Christian and asked if he could meet him at the Castle at six. Mark asked James to be present, because he wanted a witness besides George. The four sat down in the large having room.

"Rock wants you to move out of the house," Mark Miller said.

"Why, is he afraid of publicity?" Christian said.

"No, he just wants you out. These are his last days, and that's what he wants."

"Why doesn't he tell me himself?"

"He doesn't want to speak to you."

"I don't believe it." Christian's voice began to rise. "How do I know you're telling me the truth? You lied to me for a year! If I wasn't told about AIDS, why should I believe what you're saying now? I don't have to leave this house. This is my house. It's not your house yet/"

George said to Mark, "That's it. You delivered the message. Let's go." He and Mark started walking out, but as they reached the bar, according to Mark and George, Christian shouted, "You're trying to kill Rock, Dr. Gottlieb is trying to kill Rock. I could have gotten Rock to go back to Paris for more of the drug and you couldn't." George kept Mark walking in front of him, sensing that Christian was trying to incite him. Mark turned. "I tried to help you, I did everything I could to help you ..."

"You tried to murder me!" Christian yelled.

George kept pushing Mark toward the door and they left

Christian says he did not accuse anyone of trying to kill Rock or himself. He says he was enraged because "I was told a different story every day about why I had not been informed about AIDS." He kept hearing from Mark Miller: "Let me tell you something that's been kept from you. I was not allowed to tell you before. This was Rock's decision, not mine. I've been following Rock's orders for a year and a half." Christian was frustrated to the breaking point, and decided to consult an attorney, Marvin Mitchelson, who was well known for palimony cases.

Mark Miller told Rock that Christian was refusing to move out unless Rock asked him personally. "Fuck him!" Rock said, waving his hand in dismissal. But Mark kept after him, and Rock finally agreed to see Christian. Mark drove Christian to UCLA, brought him into Rock's room and then stepped out in the hall, where he waited with Tom Clark and the private nurse, Tammy Neu.

The door was open and Mark could see Christian standing at the foot of Rock's bed, but could not hear the conversation. It was a short visit, and after five minutes. Christian walked out. "Did he ask you to leave?" Mark said.

"No, I had to ask him—do you want me to leave? He said yes. So I said, okay, I'll leave. I just need some time to find an apartment."

Mark said, "Isn't that typical of Rock? He couldn't say the words, even on his deathbed."

Tom Clark and Tammy Neu confirmed that Christian said, on leaving Rock's room, that Rock had asked him to leave. John Dobbs, who was Christian's closest ally in the house, says Christian told him the next day that Rock had asked him to leave.

When Christian filed suit against Hudson's estate, however, he said, "Rock never asked me to move out." His version of the talk in the hospital room is as follows: Hudson asked how the house was, how the dogs were. Christian said, "Why didn't you tell me you were sick?"

"When you've got a disease like this, you're all alone." "I wouldn't have run from you. I didn't run from my father's cancer. I would have been there to help you." Christian then asked Rock, "Do you want me to move out?" "No, why would you do that?" Rock said. "Carry on as usual."

On August 24, Mark Miller learned that Christian had gone to see Marvin Mitchelson. Christian assured Mark he was not planning to sue, but he felt he deserved some compensation for being exposed to AIDS and had gone to "find out my rights." Mark said, "Trust me, you'll be taken care of in some way. Don't take this to court. It will hurt Rock and hurt you." "No way," Christian said.

Mark told him they were bringing Rock home that night, and that Tom and a nurse were coming with him and would need to use Tijuana. Christian said he was moving out that day, and would be gone before Rock arrived. He packed his things in boxes and piled them in the playroom.

The next morning, James was up in Rock's room with the nurse when he saw the light come on on the desk phone. James went down to the kitchen and saw Tom watching a football game on television. "Who's on the phone?" James said. "Mr. Hudson isn't, the nurse is not, you're not." "I don't know."

"It's the line Marc Christian used to use. Let me go look in the playroom." Two minutes later James returned. "He's come back." "You're joking," Tom said.

"No, he's in the playroom. He sneaked right back in the house last night without telling anybody. He's sleeping on the sofa bed, and his things are all over the room. He's even put posters on the wall."

Christian said, later, that he hadn't been able to find an apartment. Tom called Mark Miller in the desert, who called Wally Sheft in New York, who consulted his attorneys and found that because of residency laws in California, Christian would have to leave voluntarily, or Rock would have to sign an affidavit and have the marshal evict him. Rock's attorneys suggested that they leave Christian in the house and ignore him.

"It was a mess," James says. "Both Tom and Christian were in the house at the same time, and I was caught in the middle." James says that Christian had a friend stay with him almost every night in the playroom, "sleeping with him in the same bloody bed while Mr. Hudson was lying up there dying." Christian says he had friends stay with him because "I was afraid I might be poisoned."

Tom did not want Rock to know Christian was still in the house, so he was careful not to bring Rock downstairs if Christian was around. Tom was civil to Christian when they met in the kitchen. "I decided, I can't deal with anything other than what's going on upstairs," Tom said. "All my energy is going up there and I'm not going to waste it."

On Monday, August 26, Mark Miller called a meeting of the staff". He explained that Wally had put him in charge of the house, and he and George would be staying in their condo in Hollywood four nights a week and going to the desert on weekends. "Tom, you're in charge of the patient," Mark said. "James will run the house, and I will disburse the money." Tom was not to order the staff" about; James had made it clear that one order from Tom and he would quit. Marc Christian was to do as he wished. "I will ask Rock daily if he will see you." Ron Channell was to have access to Rock whenever he wanted.

Ron Channell would breeze in every day, wearing shorts and a tank top, and Rock would always brighten when he saw him. Mark recalls, "Ron was now in the position Jack Coates had formerly held—the knight who could jump to the throne at will." Ron Channell asked Mark if Rock would pay for him to take dancing lessons, so he could perform in Las Vegas. "Rock has always said he'd help me with my career," Ron said. "Let's go ask him," Mark said, and Rock said, "Sure, why not.

One day when he was out, Mark and George went up to Rock's room and sat down on the blue ottomans facing the bed. "You should know what's going on in your house," Mark said. "We want to tell you, because for years, it's been kept from you."

"I wish you would," Rock said.

Mark told him Christian was still in the Castle, sleeping on the sofa bed in the playroom. The news did not seem to upset Rock; on the contrary, George says, "a secret twinkle came to his eyes—they darted about the room as he thought about the situation. Rock loved intrigue, and I think he got a kick out of imagining Tom in Tijuana and Christian in the playroom."

"Has Christian got a job yet?" Rock said.

"I don't think so. Do you want to see him?"

"No, fuck him," Rock said. "When's Ron Channell coming by?"

"He'll be here at five-thirty."

Mark and George also wanted to convey to Rock what had happened as a result of his announcement that he had AIDS. "We wanted him to know what he'd done for the world, before he slipped too far to be able to understand it."

George began, "Rock, you're a hero around the world and the world loves you."

"You are the biggest thing since the pay toilet," Mark said. "You're ten times more popular than you ever were as a movie star."

"Why? I haven't done anything."

"The announcement that you have AIDS stunned the world," Mark said. "You've made AIDS the number-one story in every newspaper; you've put it on the cover of every magazine. You've made the disease real —the world is tuned in to AIDS because of you."

"You're joking."

Mark said thousands of people were donating money for AIDS research, and governments were allocating major funds. The dinner that Ehzabeth Taylor was helping sponsor in Los Angeles to benefit AIDS had had to be moved to a larger ballroom after Rock's announcement. "Before your announcement, they'd sold two hundred tickets. Now they've sold twenty-five hundred, and they've raised a million dollars."

"All that because I said I have AIDS?"

George explained that Rock was the first well-known person to contract the disease; if it could happen to Rock Hudson, it could happen to anyone. "We've got thirty thousand letters downstairs. You're getting more mail and publicity now than in all your years as an actor—through sixty-two films."

Rock turned on his side and propped his head on his elbow. "Isn't that neat."

Every morning, Tom would come into Rock's room at six to see how he'd slept, have coffee with him and read the paper while Rock did the crossword puzzle. At nine, Tom turned on The $25,000 Pyramid. When Tom had left in 1983, Rock had said, "Thank God, we don't have to see the fucking Pyramid, anymore," but when Tom moved back, the Pyramid came back on. They watched movies on cassette and cable, but Tom was reluctant to turn on network television because the Enquirer was running ads, promoting stories about Rock and Linda Evans.

September 6 was Tom's birthday, and when he went to Rock's room that morning. Rock was on his feet between two nurses, holding a cake and singing "Happy Birthday." Tom was moved that Rock, sick as he was, had remembered the day and planned a celebration.

Friends came to the Castle in a steady stream, bearing pies and cakes, soufRes and soups. It was tiring to Rock to see visitors, but when Tom put his hand on Rock's as he lay with his eyes closed and said, "Elizabeth is here," Rock smiled. "Oh, good.

The third week he was home. Rock started having days when his mind would cloud, and just walking to the bathroom would exhaust him. He weighed 140 pounds, and when George went to massage his shoulders, he felt nothing but bones. Rock would not be able to leave his bed for days, but then he'd get up, walk down to the kitchen on his own and entertain visitors.

On September 11, George and I went into the bedroom to try to interview Rock. The massive bed was cranked up and Rock was sitting in his blue pajamas under a navy quilt.

Rock had been watching a movie, Blood and Sand with Tyrone Power. Tom said, "Now here comes one of your all-time favorites, The Postman Always Rings Twice, with Lana Turner." Rock looked at the screen and sighed: "Lana Lana Lana."

George asked Rock about Lester Luther, the voice coach who had taught him to lower his voice. "I went out in the hills and yelled," Rock said. He fell silent. "I didn't have any . . . shoot." He looked confused. "I don't remember. I truly don't remember."

George tried again. He asked about an acting coach Rock had had, a woman.

"She was just terrible!" Rock said. Partly because of the way he said it—like a child calling the teacher stupid—and partly because I was uncomfortable, I laughed. Rock perked up. "She was so dumb!"

George and I both were laughing now, and Rock stirred in the bed, enjoying the sound he was ehciting. His eyes came into focus and he repeated it—"She's so dumb!"—while we laughed harder. His face was full of color and he looked happy.

In the evenings, when the house was quiet and everyone had gone, Tom would get in bed with Rock and hold his hand. "Sometimes he'd clutch my hand and sometimes he wouldn't," Tom says. "I'm sure he understood me. I'd talk and talk, saying positive things, letting him know he was not alone.

Everyone admired Tom for the way he cared for Rock. Stockton Briggle says, "Tom was selfless; he had nothing to gain, he'd been cut out of the will and he might have been risking his health by being so close to an AIDS patient." Tom carried Rock to the toilet and into the shower and stood with him there, so he could bathe himself instead of having the nurses do it....

On Saturday, September 21, Tom was alone in the house with Rock and one of the nurses. Rock had been given a blood transfusion but had not responded well, and was being fed intravenously. The doorbell rang. Tom opened the door and saw a tall, well-dressed woman holding a Bible. "I've come to bring a message to Mr. Hudson from God," she said.

"That's just not possible," Tom said.

"It must be possible, because God told me I was going to see Mr. Hudson. Would you mind if I waited out here, because I know I'm going to see him

Tom walked upstairs and, he recalls, "There was Rock and he looked so sick, I came down and got the lady and brought her up. That is so unlike me I cannot tell you! I throw nuts off the property all the time." The woman stood at the foot of the bed and said, "Mr. Hudson, I have come with a message from God."

Rock opened his eyes and smiled at her.

"God has asked me to tell you you're not going to leave us yet. He has a ministry for you here on earth that will be a far greater reward than your film career has been. The cancer will leave your body and you're going to be just fine."

Tom escorted her downstairs and learned her name was Eleanor

The next day, Sunday, the actress Susan Stafford called and said the Boones had been having a round-the-clock prayer vigil for Rock and wanted to come lay on hands. Susan had been a friend of Rock's since 1970, and was a bom-again Christian and intern minister. Tom says, "I figured, they can't do any harm." Fifteen minutes later, the group was in Rock's bedroom, kneeling around the wooden bed with their hands on the sheet. Shirley Boone led the prayers while Rock slept. When they finished, Tom said, "Rock, there are a lot of good friends here. I want you to thank them." Rock opened his eyes, said, "Thank you," and went back to sleep.

Many of Rock's friends were angry when they learned that bom-again Christians had been allowed to pray over him, and said, "Rock would never have stood for that if he'd been conscious." Tom said, "I never heard him say anything for or against religion. I'll do anything, I'm gonna fight and fight and not give up. I'll have a witch doctor here if you know one."

The previous year, Mark Miller had asked Rock what religion he was and Rock had said, "I guess, Congregationahst." But Tom said Rock had been baptized a Catholic and had selected a Catholic service for his mother when she died. Tom decided Rock should see a Catholic priest. Susan Stafford brought a friend. Father Terry Sweeney, who sat with Rock and asked if he wanted to be forgiven for his sins. Rock nodded, received communion and the anointing of the sick.

Tom began to hang religious medals and pictures sent by fans and friends on the posts of Rock's bed. "Tell me why not?" he said. Martha Raye had given him a gold medallion, which, she said, "got me through two tours of Vietnam," and Tom put it on the bed.

On Friday, September 27, Clarence brought a fresh bunch of ginger up to Rock's room and placed it in a vase. "Good night, Rock, keep your faith," Clarence said in his gentle voice. "I'll see you Tuesday." "Probably you won't see me Tuesday." "I'm gonna see you.

On Tuesday, Clarence brought up an orchid from the greenhouse and set it, floating in water, on Rock's nightstand. "Here's your favorite orchid," Clarence said. Rock's eyes were open but they were fixed on the ceiling, and Rock did not respond. That night, Clarence could not sleep. Death is close at hand, he thought. No, it can't be, I must have been mistaken.

Over the weekend. Dean Dittman had come to visit after church. Tom had told him, "Rock's out of it," but when Dean walked into the bedroom. Rock said, "It's Dean!" Dean saw a smile that he felt was one of transcendence—a smile he had seen when Rock was Ustening to great music or watching a film he treasured. Dean felt Rock was "letting me know he knew something—that from all the pain and anguish he'd had to suffer during that devastating year and a half, he'd learned something. In his mind, he was home."

On Monday, September 30,1 asked to see Rock, sensing that it might be the last time. His eyes were closed, his bare arms were above the covers and he was shivering. Tom leaned over and said, with tenderness, "Are you cold?" Tom pulled the blanket up to his chin. Rock's skin was transparent, he was a frail skeleton, yet as I stood there, he opened his eyes and gave a smile that was unearthly in its radiance. Where was it coming from, I wondered. His body had sunk to nothing, and it was as if all the brilliance of his being was in his eyes.

The next night, October 1, Toni Phillips, the night nurse, said to Tom, "I haven't told you this before, but I'm a member of the prayer vigil the Boones have been having, and they want to come again and pray with Rock."

"Get 'em over," Tom said.

Rock was unconscious, but Pat Boone placed a Bible on his chest and took his hand. Tom got in bed with Rock and held him, and Eleanor fell to the floor and began speaking in tongues. After the prayers, Pat Boone told Tom to lay out clothes for Rock, because a miracle would occur in the night and Rock would be feeling so well in the morning, he would want to get up and get dressed. Tom went to the closet and placed on the sofa a pair of gray slacks, a blue and white striped shirt, a sport coat, shoes and socks. "Those will be his happy clothes," Boone said, and instructed the nurse to put them on him in the morning.

On Wednesday morning, October 2, James was the first one up to Rock's room. There was Rock, lying on the bed with his arms straight out, completely dressed in his shoes and "happy clothes," which were now so big that Rock looked lost inside them. "He was lying there like a doll, not moving at all," James says. Two nurses were there because a shift was changing, and the nurses started carrying Rock to a chair where they propped him upright. James says Rock looked in agony as they moved him, and clear liquid was coming out of his mouth, dripping onto his sport coat. Tom Clark walked in at seven, and James said, "Mr. Clark, he doesn't look at all comfortable or well."

"Get him undressed," Tom said.

Rock seemed to revive once he was back in bed in his pajamas, and wanted to watch the Today show. James left to do some shopping—he needed more disinfectant for the sickroom and some Swiss Miss tapioca puddings that Rock liked. Tom had coffee with Rock, they talked about the news, and at 8:30, Tom said, "I'm out of coffe. Do you want some more?"

"No, not now," Rock said.

Tom went down to the kitchen and a few minutes later, the nurse buzzed him. "Could you come upstairs?" Tom walked into Rock's room and saw the nurse in tears. "We've lost him." They reached for each other and hugged, then Tom asked to be left alone with Rock

Tom had been given instructions as to what to do when Rock died, "but I hadn't paid attention because I thought Rock was gonna live." Rock had stipulated that he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes scattered at sea, but Tom couldn't remember the procedure. Ironically, Mark Miller had flown to New York for that one day. Tom called Dr. Kennamer, then went and told Marc Christian Rock had died. "Do you want to see him?" Tom brought Christian up to the room—the only time since Rock had come home from the hospital that Christian had been allowed there.

Tom tried to reach Mark Miller in New York and couldn't. He called Wally Sheft, he called Claire Trevor, and at 9:07, he called George in the desert. At 9:15, the news of Rock's death was on the radio

Elizabeth Taylor called and said she was sending her security people over. "My God, the gates are wide open," Tom said, and quickly went and closed them. All four phone lines began to ring.

.......When they reached the crematory, the gates were locked to keep out the press. Tom and the driver put Rock on a gumey and carried him into the building where there was a cardboard box that said rock Hudson. They put him in the box, put the box back on the gumey and rolled it into the oven. "I saw the box catch fire. I stood there watching it, then they closed the oven and I left," Tom says. "It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, but I did it and there weren't any photographs taken.

.........The night before, there had been a memorial service and party at the Castle for three hundred people. Rock had not wanted a memorial service, he had wanted his friends to have a party on a yacht with champagne and mariachis. But there were too many guests to be accommodated on a yacht, and Rock's inner circle had decided to have the party at the Castle.

It was to be the last great party at Rock Hudson's house, and Tom was to plan it. Then Elizabeth Taylor stepped in and decided there should be a Quaker-style memorial service where everyone could share their memories of Rock. She wanted pink and white flowers, where Tom had ordered bright colors. She wanted coffee and a sweet table, where Tom had wanted Mexican finger food—passed. She wanted no writers or public-relations people present, even if they had been friends of Rock, and names on the guest list were crossed off and reinstated all the way up to the day of the ceremony

A white tent and rows of chairs were set up on the croquet lawn behind the house. The ceremony had been called for five, and at 5:15 Elizabeth Taylor walked in wearing a navy and white dress with a long rope of pearls and the service began

......Elizabeth Taylor closed the service, saying, "Rock would have wanted us to be happy—let's raise a glass to him." People streamed through the house and out to the patio.... Small groups gathered in the rooms, and in every circle, someone said it was a shame Rock's house would have to be sold.

Sunday morning, among the small group that gathered at the marina, there was not one person whose name was a household word or who could be recognized by the two photographers who, despite elaborate ploys to throw them off", had managed to show up at the harbor for the burial at sea. The code word for the event had been "George Nader's birthday party," and in fact, it was George's birthday. The guests included the entire staff" of the Castle, Rock's attorney and business manager, four female cousins who had lived with Rock in the house of Grandma Wood, a dozen male friends and three of Rock's lovers: Tom Clark, Marc Christian and Jack Coates. (Inadvertently, Mark Miller had forgotten to invite Ron Channell.)

Mark suggested that the three lovers all hold the container of ashes, but Tom wouldn't hear of it. He alone would scatter the ashes.

"By what right does he . . . ?" someone asked.

"He just does," Mark said

The house on Beverly Crest kept running as if Rock still were ahve. There was a flurry of scheming and meeting to try to stave off a lawsuit by Marc Christian and the sordid publicity it would bring. Susan Stafford met with Christian, Rupert Allan took him to lunch, George Nader had a heart-to-heart talk with him. All of them promised to help Christian obtain the money and insurance he needed, and Christian assured them he had no intention of suing, he had only gone to Mitchelson because he needed a powerful ally.

Yet even as he was making these assurances, papers were being drawn up for the court action. The drama was running on its own engine now, Uke a Greek tragedy that, once begun, has to play out to the end, until the stage is littered with bodies and everyone is bloodied.

Marvin Mitchelson told Rock's attorneys that Christian wanted a substantial settlement. Wally Sheft told James to have the locks changed at the Castle, to ask Christian for the keys to the Seville and to deny him kitchen privileges.

Christian started moving out on October 25, and the next night, James found that the playroom had been stripped bare of electronic equipment, films and records. In a cross-complaint against Christian, the Hudson estate would charge that he took three video recorders, approximately seven thousand records, 150 videotapes of films, eight pieces of audio equipment, a computer, a video camera and the most elaborate needlepoint rug Hudson had made. He had tried to take a large-screen television, but Moshe Alon, the security chief, pulled it out of Christian's station wagon.

Christian said, "Most of the things I took. Rock had given me before I moved into the house. He told me the records were all mine and said, 'Anything you need, just consider it yours.' " Tom Clark asked Christian to return the records because they were a priceless collection that should be donated to a public institution. "Rock never gave you anything and you know it."

On November 2, Christian and Mitchelson held a press conference, announcing they were suing Hudson's estate, Mark Miller, Wallace Sheft and two unnamed doctors for $14 million for conspiring to endanger Christian's life. At the Castle, the staff watched it in the kitchen and James turned pink with rage. "How dare he drag Mr. Hudson's name through the mud!"

Christian said in an interview later, "I don't care if I win money in court. I made my point; I didn't let them treat me like an ant or a non-person."

One afternoon in late November, I found Clarence in the kitchen, fixing himself a bowl of ice cream. On the counter, he had stacked sprigs of ginger, with their exotic yellow blossoms that possessed the most intoxicating scent. Rock and Clarence had planted the ginger and nurtured it together, and Rock had always looked forward to the summer when it would bloom. "He was some man, as far as I'm concerned," Clarence said. "He loved his fellow workers. He treated me like I was one more member of the family."

"He never paid you very well," one of the staff said.

"That doesn't matter. It's not the pay but who you work for."

Marc.

Phyllis Gates :

While Rock was traveling through Europe, Jack Navaar was spending time with a young woman named Phyllis Gates, who worked as a secretary for Henry Willson. Jack had met Phyllis in Henry's office and they had started going out to lunch. "I had a tremendous crush on Phyllis," Jack says. "I could understand why Rock thought he could fall in love with her, because I could have. She knew how to make a guy feel fabulous. She would say, 'No, honey, you don't want to eat that for lunch, you should have this because it's better for you.' She was much more attractive in person than in her photographs, she had a marvelous laugh and an incredible personality—you'd meet her and in ten minutes, you'd feel you were the most important person in her life. It was a talent."

Jack says that on Sundays they would go to a bar in Santa Monica, the Tropical Village, which was frequented by gay men and lesbians. One weekend, when Rock and George Nader were on location, Jack and Mark took Phyllis to Laguna. The first night, they went to a bar called Camille's, Phyllis started talking to a woman and Jack and Mark did not see her the rest of the weekend. Mark says, "We'd call her room and ask her to come to dinner or the beach, and she'd say, 'You go on ahead, I'll catch up.'

Phyllis had two weeks off in the summer, and Henry Willson called Jack and said, "Why don't you and Phyllis take a trip? Rock's away and you're just sitting there. Phyllis wants to visit her family." Jack agreed, and they drove Rock's new yellow Lincoln Continental convertible across the Rockies to Montevideo, Minnesota, where Phyllis's family lived. "I enjoyed her company, and I felt secure doing this because Henry had proposed it," Jack says. "Later, I realized Henry had instigated the trip to alienate me from Rock."

To save money, they checked into motels as Mr. and Mrs. Navaar, shared a room but, Jack says, they did not sleep together. While they drove, they sang popular songs—their favorite was "Little Things Mean a Lot." As they were approaching Montevideo, Phyllis said they had to swear—they had to yell every dirty word they knew and get it out of their systems because in Montevideo, they wouldn't be able to do it at all. "So for ten minutes, we swore and shouted and cussed," Jack says.

They stayed with her family, and all her relatives and friends came to meet "Rock Hudson's roommate" and see "Rock Hudson's car." Then they drove to Kansas City, where Phyllis had worked as a stewardess before coming to California. Phyllis took Jack to gay parties, where women danced together and kissed.

When they returned to Los Angeles, Jack found he was in trouble. Rock called from Venice, Italy, angry and accusatory. He had heard reports that Jack was using the house for drinking parties; that Jack had left the house unguarded and it had been robbed; that police had come to the house frequently; that Jack had been seen driving Rock's Lincoln convertible filled with unruly people yelling obscenities

"I wasn't even in town!" Jack said. "You son of a bitch, how dare you ask me those questions." The more Rock grilled him, the angrier Jack got, and the long-distance call ended badly. Jack's checks stopped coming, and when he called Rock's business manager, he was told there was no more money for him.

Jack turned to Henry Willson, but Henry implied that Rock and Jack's relationship was threatening Rock's career, and it would be in Rock's best interest if it were ended. "The Studio is capable of taking extreme measures to protect a property," Willson said

"Everyone turned on me, including Phylhs. She disappeared," Jack says. "Everyone treated me like I was dead meat. I felt like dead meat, and I didn't want to live like that. So I did exactly what they wanted me to do. I dumped the keys at Henry's office and moved out."

When Rock returned from Europe, he found the house on Grandview emptied of all traces of Jack Navaar. Rock had started living with Jack before he became a major celebrity. After Jack left. Rock became more cautious. "He went way into the closet, and didn't start coming out for fourteen years," Mark Miller says. Rock would not have with a man again until the late sixties, when social attitudes had loosened and his position as a star seemed safe.

Phyllis Gates grew up in the Midwest and came to California to break into show business. She heard that a powerful agent, Henry Willson, was looking for a secretary and applied. She couldn't type, but Henry was charmed by her, hired her and paid for her to study typing at night. What Henry saw in Phyllis and felt he could use in his business was her gift for making people feel good. She could soothe tempers, soften bad news, and she could coax people into consenting to do things they had sworn they wouldn't do. In a short time, Phylhs had a warm acquaintance with all of Henry's clients.

When Rock Hudson returned from Europe in the fall of 1954, Henry started telling Phyllis, "You and Rock should go out to dinner." He called Rock and told him how much fun his secretary was and why didn't he take her out to dinner? Rock made several dates, which he broke. The next time Phyllis had to get Rock on the phone for Henry, Rock mentioned having dinner and Phyllis laughed. "Don't bother, you're just gonna break the date." He said he was serious this time, but she begged off.

Her resistance caught his attention; they had their dinner and afterward, as was true to Rock's pattern, he wanted to see her all the time. Phyllis was appealing and fresh-looking—she had reddish-brown hair which she wore swept up in a French twist, and she was slender, graceful, willowy. She possessed enormous confidence and spunk. She stood up to Rock and was not at all cowed by the fact that he was a star; she acted as if they both were stars. She had a melodious laugh that was infectious, and she loved to tease Rock and mimic him. "Who cares if you're a big movie star. Be quiet now."

Are you going to copy and paste the whole fucking book, OP??

Thanks OP! Great job!

At her suggestion, they started taking painting lessons together. Rock presented her to the "family"—Mark and George. Mark had already met her through Jack Navaar, and George remembers being enchanted. "Love at first sight," he says. "She was bright, down-to-earth, no phony manners or pretensions of glamour like some of the actresses we knew. We felt instinctively at ease with her. She accepted us immediately, which was unusual, because in that age, homosexuals were looked on as alien beings. People would feel nervous and avoid your eyes, but Phyllis met our gaze directly; there was no barrier."

The four started spending time together, fixing dinners, playing parlor games. One weekend, when George was away on location. Rock and Phyllis drove to Lake Arrowhead with Mark and Pat Devlin, a woman who sat across from Phylhs at the office and was her closest friend. They booked two rooms at the Arrowhead Springs Hotel, but men and women who were not married could not stay in a hotel together.

Rock and Mark had to share a room, and Phyllis and Pat took the other. Mark says, "This was before king-size beds. We had one double bed for two big men. I slept on the edge of the mattress facing the wall, and Rock slept on the other edge. You could have driven a freight train between us. I was scared to death his foot might touch me in the night and I'd scream." The next morning, Phyllis kidded them, "How'd it go last night? Get much rest?"

They sat in the sun on the deck, rented a boat and water-skied, which was Rock's favorite sport. Rock taught Phyllis to water-ski, as he had taught George several years before.

In November of 1954, Rock bought his first house, a two-bedroom ranch house at 9151 Warbler Place, in the hills north of Sunset Boulevard. It was small but well built, Rock asked Phyllis to move in with him, which she did, although she kept her own apartment and used it to receive mail.

Mark and George remember being shocked at the arrangement. In the fifties, two men or two women could live together as roommates, but an unmarried man and woman having together was beyond the pale. It was "living in sin," and was practiced only in the most bohemian circles. "It would have been a scandal if the press had found out," Mark says. "Rock said, 'Fuck 'em.' "

For Rock, living with Phyllis helped to normalize his reputation in Hollywood. People could say behind his back, with a wink, "Did you hear— Rock Hudson's got a lady having with him." Rock and Phyllis did not have two phone lines on Warbler Place, they had one and Phyllis answered it. Rock told friends that being with Phyllis was a relief. He could do every-thing with her he had been unable to do with Jack Navaar: take her as his date to premieres, take her on the set to watch him work, take her to dinners given by people in the business.

Rock told three of the men he subsequently lived with that Phyllis was bisexual, and Mark Miller and Jack Navaar say that they saw her in lesbian situations. If both Rock and Phyllis were bisexual, that would have created a strong bond and been a source of mutual understanding. But when I asked Phyllis about reports that she was bisexual, she said, after a long silence, "No. You're hearing from the wrong people. That was part of the Henry Willson slander campaign. He started all that.

Phyllis was a good cook and made the kind of meals Rock loved—meat and potatoes. She fixed pork chops, meat loaf, and mashed potatoes with gravy, which was Rock's favorite dish up to the final days. Rock began to experiment with cooking himself, and he had two rules: No one could be around him while he cooked, and Phyllis had to do the dishes.

His efforts came to flower in what would later be known as "Rock's gourmet dinner." He had called Mark and George and said, "I am going to cook a gourmet dinner Saturday night. You've invited, but I want no one in the house the entire day." So at ten in the morning, Saturday, Phyllis showed up at Mark and George's with her friend Pat Devlin. They all went out and bought Bermuda shorts, which were the newest fashion and which Rock hated.

In the evening, Mark, George, Phyllis and Pat drove up to Warbler Place wearing Bermuda shorts and knee socks. "I'll kill you guys," Rock said when he opened the door. "You know I hate those faggot pants!" The dinner, to their surprise, was a sensation, and could serve today as an example of what was considered elegant cooking in the fifties.

"It tasted wonderful," Mark says, "and every pan, pot, dish and spoon in the house was filthy and it took Phyllis until five in the morning to clean up the mess. After that, Rock was banned from the kitchen."

Interesting read. I’ve never really known anything about these people mentioned, before my time and a completely different era that I know.

.........Rock told friends that he and Phyllis had the worst fight on their honeymoon, and that it was a terrible week. He told Susan Saint James, his co-star on McMillan and Wife, that the honeymoon had been in Mexico and he had developed horrible stomach problems. "He said he had diarrhea and vomiting from the moment he was thrust into the marital situation," Susan says. "He was embarrassed—it was supposed to be the most special week of his life and he was stuck in the can."

The marriage was to last two years, and afterward, the story that was told and retold until it became canon was that the marriage had been arranged to kill rumors that Rock was homosexual. The question of whether the marriage was real or phony is the central conundrum of Rock Hudson's life. It is still unresolved, and perhaps never can be, for one of the principals is dead and the other is not sure what happened

There are two views: The first is that it was a set-up; Rock was married to his agent's secretary with lightning speed in order to ward off the threat of an expose by Confidential. Rock told some of his friends, including Marilyn Maxwell and Armistead Maupin, that he had been forced to marry PhyUis and it was the one thing in his life he felt bitter about.

The second view is held by people who were close to Rock and Phyllis when they were married. They say the story about the arranged marriage was a rumor and had no basis in fact. In Roger Jones's words, "It was a lot of baloney. Phyllis and Rock were at our house constantly, and you get a feeling about people. They were happy together, they clicked. They were genuinely in love, and everything seemed okay for a while. Afterwards, who knows what happens between two people in a marriage?"

Jack Navaar and many others who have known Rock intimately say he was not a man who could be pushed around. "Rock never did anything he didn't want to do. No studio could pressure him into marrying someone if he didn't want to." If the marriage had been arranged, others add, financial arrangements would have been covered, and there would have been no rancorous divorce negotiations over property and alimony. George Nader says, "I can spot an acting job and Rock wasn't acting. If that marriage was phony, I'll eat my left tit. We were with them three nights a week and they were all over each other, talking baby talk.

George says it's possible that Henry Willson may have said to Rock, "You have a chance to be a superstar now, but we've got to do something about your life-style. Find a girl, get married for a couple years and that will carry you into major star position. Then the rumors will stop."

George says he himself was advised to do this by his publicist: "You're losing parts because you're thirty-five and you're not married." George had a long talk about it with Mark. They had a secretary who would have married George for that purpose. "She would have done it for Rock, too, and divorced him a few years later." But George decided he couldn't go through with it, and besides, Mark joked, "Where would I sleep?"

But Rock's case was different, George says. Rock was in love with Phyllis, he was living with her, and Henry's advice or pressure from the Studio may have prompted him to do something he was already contemplating.

If the marriage was arranged, it was done without the knowledge of Phyllis Gates. When I talked with Phyllis, she was avoiding all publicity, keeping a low profile, working quietly as a decorator in Beverly Hills. She had been young, thirty-two, when she was divorced from Rock, but she had never married again. For almost thirty years, she had refused to talk to the press about Rock Hudson. She had put the experience behind her, but in the final months of 1985, when Rock was dying and the press was besieging her again, a tangle of buried emotions came to the surface

Phyllis spoke fast, in breathy sentences, full of spirit and fire, with a tremulous quality that suggested tears or laughter might break through at any moment. "I never heard that my marriage was arranged until recently," she said. "I used to believe the marriage started with good intentions, but now I don't believe it was genuine.

Rock charmed women. He acted from morning till night. I used to say he did better acting at home than at the Studio. He didn't love me, he wasn't even here! I'll bet you my marriage was arranged by Universal."

Phyllis said that if she had known Rock was marrying her to protect his career, "I wouldn't have gone through with it. You don't use people like that and toss them aside. I was set up—I believe that one hundred percent. Henry Willson was so evil, he may have set it up. Rock's reputation was getting out of hand. I was there, I was pretty, and we liked each other. I wish I could find out who did it. It's a puzzle—I wish I knew how to put the pieces together."

After evaluating the evidence and the sources, I have come to conclude that the truth lies somewhere in the gray area between opposing views. I would say that Rock did have genuine feelings of love for Phyllis, and that concern for his career was one of the factors that led him to marry her. But I don't believe he acted with cold calculation; he was a romantic, he had romantic ideas about marriage and family, and he intended, when he married, for it to last.

After the marriage, Rock was absorbed in films and Phyllis. He and Phyllis called each other "bunting." If Phyllis was out, Rock would say, "I wonder where she is now? What do you suppose Phyllis is doing?" He stopped dropping by Mark and George's place for a drink after work and went straight home.

They had private jokes and lapsed into baby talk in front of friends. Rock liked her to sit close beside him or on his lap. Phyllis stopped working for Henry Willson, and began redecorating the house. She threw out the redwood lawn chairs and replaced them with furniture from Sloane's, and she tried to throw out Rock's sloppy clothes and moccasins from Thom McAn's. She went to the set while Rock was shooting Written on the Wind, and she accompanied him to Kenya when he made Something of Value with Sidney Poitier.

In October of 1956, a year after shooting had been completed. Giant had its world premiere in New York and its Hollywood premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Mark, George and Phyllis decided to make a home movie recording all the events surrounding the opening and present it to Rock for his thirty-first birthday. They called it Rock Goes A-Bunting!

Mark and George spent three weeks editing the film, hurrying to finish it by Rock's birthday, November 17. They asked Rock to bring his projector to the party, and after dinner, to run the film they handed him. "Why, what is it, what am I doing?" Rock said. When the credits began, he howled. "This is terrific. How'd you guys do this? I never saw a thing! What a documentary this is—won't it be great to have when I'm old?

Rock's relationship with Phyllis began to deteriorate after Giant. In Rock's view, Phyllis changed when she became Mrs. Hudson. She went on buying sprees, and she fired Rock's housekeeper, a black woman named Truitt who had been with him since his first days at Universal and whom Rock considered "family." Phyllis became more possessive; she would call the Studio and monitor Rock's movements through the day. Most important, Rock felt, she was no longer warm and loving, she was constantly picking on him.

Phyllis says Rock never thought about anything but his career. "He was out every night. He was always in a bad mood, and he'd pout for three days at a time. He would start an argument at the drop of a hat, then slam the door and not come back until morning. You couldn't talk to him. He froze people out—he just shut up and didn't talk. You'd say, 'Would you like some coffee?' and he wouldn't answer."

Phyllis said Rock never told her what he was thinking, never sat down with her for a heart-to-heart talk. "We talked about the business, about the pictures he was making, but not about personal things. I thought he talked to George." Phyllis became so depressed and unhappy with the marriage that she went to see a woman psychiatrist, who suggested that Rock come in for testing. "She gave him a number of personalty profile tests, and said he had the emotional development of an eight-year-old." Rock laughed when he heard this. "What do they know?"

Phyllis gave Rock an ultimatum: Either he would go for psychiatric help or she would leave. "I thought maybe an analyst could break through the exterior and he would talk." Rock sat on the edge of the bed and cried. "I can never tell anyone what I do when I'm by myself."

Phyllis was puzzled. "No matter what you do, I'll be here with you."

Rock went to see the analyst twice and refused to go again. He said he did not believe in doctors or psychiatrists, and he also did not believe in germs, "because I can't see them."

It was about this time that Rock called up Mark Miller and said, "I have to have a boy. For a year, I've been faithful, I haven't had a boy and I'm going crazy. Can you fix me up with someone?" Mark called a friend in Laguna, who was interested, and Rock drove down to meet him one night before going home to Phyllis. The friend said later it had been an incredible encounter, because Rock was "so starved."

"I've got a real problem with Phyllis," Rock said to George. "I don't know what to do. I have tried everything. I have tried thinking of razor blades. I have tried thinking of black widow spiders. I have tried thinking of snakes. . . . It doesn't do any good. Nothing works. I can't go to a doctor about it."

George nodded, but he had no idea what Rock was talking about. Black widow spiders? He didn't ask because Rock would clam up if questioned, and Rock implied that anyone should know what he meant.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what I can say," George said.

"You don't have to say anything. I just had to tell you," Rock said. "Now, I want you to promise me you won't tell anyone about this. And I mean anyone. "

"Okay, I won't," George said, but he was uneasy. His understanding with Rock had always been that he and Mark did not keep secrets from each other. Was Rock trying to violate that now—asking George to exclude Mark from his confidence?

The next morning, Mark walked down the driveway to pick up the newspaper. Before he returned to the house, he had spotted a story: rock HUDSON LEAVES WIFE. Mark was flabbergasted, and showed the item to George, who then told him Rock had come by the day before, "and we had the damndest conversation I've ever had. I don't know what the fuck he was talking about." They speculated: Was it premature ejaculation? Was he telling George he couldn't satisfy her?

R86 = this is why they hate us

Rock had not told George he was going to leave Phyllis. "But he never goes all the way—he doesn't drop the other shoe." In fact, when Rock had left George's house, he had packed a bag and checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel, which is what movie stars do when they leave their wives.

The next night, he called Mark and George from the hotel. Mark answered. "Rock, I'm sorry you left her. I thought it would work. I adore Phyllis; I think you didn't try hard enough."

Rock said, "I'm sorry you don't approve. Fuck you."

"Fuck you."

They hung up and did not speak again for a year. Part of the reason Mark had responded as he did was that he was still angry at Rock for giving him the runaround in Rome. "So it was easy to say, screw you, and not call. Rock had become unbearable." About a year later. Rock called Mark and said, "Let's have dinner," and they took up right where they had left off.

Armistead Maupin should write a mini-series based on this.

On April 22, 1958, Phyllis Fitzgerald filed suit against Roy Fitzgerald for divorce, charging "extreme mental cruelty." The divorce negotiations were rancorous, with both sides charging the other with unscrupulous tactics. Phyllis said Rock hired a detective to follow her. She said she had to go stay with friends because "I was afraid I might be killed."

Rock moved into a furnished apartment on Crescent Heights, and suspected it was being bugged. His attorney, Greg Bautzer, ordered a sweep, and the investigators found evidence that induction equipment might have been used and removed just prior to the sweep. There were wires that had been freshly cut.

Rock did not answer his wife's complaint, nor did he appear in court. A settlement was reached by their attorneys, and on August 13, 1958, a hearing was held at Santa Monica Superior Court. Phyllis testified that Rock had been sullen and wouldn't speak to her, that he stayed out nights and when she asked where he had been, he struck her. Pat Devlin was her witness, testifying that she had seen Rock strike his wife, and that Rock had failed to visit Phyllis when she was in the hospital

Phyllis was awarded alimony of $250 a week for ten years, plus the house on Warbler Place, which was valued at $35,000, and for which Rock agreed to make the payments, plus a newly acquired Ford Thunderbird. She also owned 5 percent of a corporation, 7 Pictures, formed to produce Rock Hudson films. At the time, Rock was earning $3,500 a week.

In 1961, Phyllis went back to court, claiming Hudson had reduced the assets of 7 Pictures Corporation without advising her, and that her alimony was not sufficient. Friends of Rock say Phyllis told Rock she was considering writing a book about their marriage. She obtained an additional $130,000.

Rock was pained by the divorce, and he was particularly upset at losing the Warbler house—his first house, the tangible symbol of the success he had worked so hard for. On the surface, though, he kept up a sunny, carefree attitude. If someone asked why his marriage broke up, he said, with a disarming smile, "It didn't work." He refused to discuss the details with anyone, and his friends knew better than to probe. For Rock, Phyllis Gates did not exist

...........In the early years, when Rock had been single-mindedly pursuing his career, sex had taken second place, but as his career waned, sex became predominant. Rock thrived on intrigue and conquest. "The minute the prey fell into the lair, the chase was over and a new one began," a friend says. Rock liked multiple partners, and had trysts with airline stewards in San Diego and with carpenters and maitre d's in New York. He gave all-male parties, like the beauties party, where he would not know most of the guests.

Jim Gagner met Rock at one of the "boy parties." Jim had been a roommate of Armistead Maupin's; he needed a job while he was trying to break into screen writing, and Rock hired him to transfer his 35-mm film collection to videotape. Jim was Rock's type: a blue-eyed blond, who eventually would become a yoga instructor. When he met Rock, Jim was struck by "the power of his libido. His sexual energy was so extreme, you could feel the heat. It made my ears bum." Jim says that Rock's sexuality sucked people in like a black hole. "If he could have you, he did. His sexual orientation was lots of it. He could have sex once or twice a day with several different people."

Jim recalls how, at their first meeting. Rock had fixed his eyes on Jim's and said, in a low, sensual voice, "Hiya, come on in." It was clear from his look and tone what he was thinking, and Jim felt flattered and sexually aroused. "We had a great conversation and two minutes later, someone else came by and I saw Rock turn on the same heat.

After their talk, Mark Miller let Jim know Rock was interested in him. "It was tempting—it made me think about being queen of the Castle, having all the money I wanted, being able to travel. But all kinds of warning signals went off. You could smell the poison coming out of Rock's system."

Jim was put off by Rock's drinking and what he saw as Rock's "astronomical ego," and resisted a physical relationship. He worked at the Castle, but "it was a roller-coaster ride. Rock was alternately nasty and charming."

Jim would be in the playroom, working on the tape machines, and Rock would come in and say, "Get that shit outa here! What are you taping that for?" The next day, he would look in, all smiles, and say, "Why don't you take a break? Let's go in the kitchen and make lemon crepes." And they would cook together and laugh and Jim would be charmed again.

"I felt sorry for him. It was sad to see a fifty-three-year-old star so driven to follow his dick around."

In July of 1978, Rock went to San Francisco for the weekend with Tom, Mark and George. They had dinner with Jim Gagner and Armistead Maupin at a beautiful house on Telegraph Hill called the "Duck House" because it had a frieze of geese flying around the top of the building.

After dinner, Armistead took everyone to the Club Fugazi to see a revue he had co-written. Beach Blanket Babylon. Then Mark and George went back to the Fairmont to sleep, and Rock and Tom went on with Armistead for a sightseeing tour of gay clubs.

The next morning, at breakfast in the Fairmont, Rock gave a detailed report which startled and horrified George, who wrote in his journal, "My GOD." George felt Rock was getting a kick out of "shocking the hell out of me, like I was a fuddy-duddy, the straitlaced country cousin." George had always chosen to stay away from gay gatherings, and the description of clubs where mass sex was taking place between strangers seemed to him the beginning of the end of civilization.

This was a time when gay sex had reached a height of tolerance and permissiveness, and the awful irony, of course, is that this was when the AIDS epidemic was taking root.

George was upset that Rock had gone to these clubs where he could be recognized, and had even signed his name. Rock said, "I wanted to see it, you should see everything in life." Rock admitted, though, that he was startled at how promiscuous things had become

The next stop was a club called the Black and Blue. Tom Clark took one look inside and said, "This is too much for me. I'm going back to the hotel. You guys go on.". Armistead and Rock stood against the wall, watching, and Rock thought it was funny.

Armistead remembers thinking, "How ironic. I'm standing with the man who was the sex symbol of the world for two decades, and nobody's paying any attention to him. We could walk through this place like two women—completely invisible."

The Glory Holes, like other gay clubs and bathhouses, shut down a few years later, after men began dying of AIDS.

.........Just before the tour ended. Rock called Mark in California—called him personally, instead of having Tom do it—and said, "I want a beauties party when we get home. Could you arrange it? Have a party with beauties waiting for me at the house."

Mark did as he was told. He invited about ten friends, and asked a gay optometrist in Hollywood to round up fifty beautiful young men and bring them to a swimming party and barbecue.

"Rock loved it," Mark says. "Tom Clark was less amused. He went upstairs to the bedroom, and his friends came up and had drinks with him."

Armistead Maupin was in Los Angeles for the party, and was dazzled. It was like being at Hugh Hefner's Playboy mansion, except all the perfect-looking creatures were male. "There were some of the best-looking men I'd seen in my life," Armistead says. Rock took him aside and said, "Look at that one. Look at those legs. He's an eleven on a scale of ten."

"Who are they all?" Armistead said.

"The blonds are named Scott and the brunets are named Grant," Rock said

Jim Gagner,who worked in the Castle for a year, says he found it difficult to have a meal with Rock and Tom. "I'd feel so much tension, I couldn't eat. Occasionally, the anger softened to gruff", like when they were playing Spite and Malice and would fight over whose card it was. But most of the time, they were like the characters in Who's Afraid of Virginia Wool/? Tom would say, 'I've ordered you this beautiful lunch. Isn't it marvelous?' And Rock would say, 'I'm not hungry.'"

The quarreling was exacerbated by alcohol. When Rock drank, he became "a viper," Mark says, and made Tom his whipping boy. Tom would walk into the room and Rock would taunt him. "Oh, it's Tommy Truth. What lies do you have to tell us today?"

"Fuck you," Tom would say, and walk out of the room. In front of friends, Tom would say, "I hope he dies a terrible death, bald. I hope he doesn't wake up. We'll all be better off and I will be rich, thank God. I can do what I want."

Most of their friends learned to ignore the bickering, and had no doubts that underneath it was a powerful bond. " Stockton Briggle, who directed Rock in Camelot, says, "Tom loved and protected Rock magnificently, but Rock didn't want so much protection. Tom had given up a successful career to be 'Mrs. Rock Hudson.' It's hard to respect somebody who gives up his own life and starts doing everything for you. They were never able to face this. They just drank more, socialized more and took more and more trips.

Was Rock a top or bottom?

Thank you OP!!!! I am equal parts loving and fascinated by these stories! I am old enough to remember when it was announced from Paris that Rock had AIDS, and all the subsequent “scandal” about it. Funny though, I do remember my parents and older relatives all commenting “well everyone knew he was gay” and that he only ever had a “marriage blanc”. I even remember one uncle commenting “you know he was a long haul truck driver before he was an actor, so...” as if that explained him being gay.

Now I’m curious what happened to all these characters - the boyfriends, the gay friends, the protective staff - all these years later.

I will also admit to also being curious if he was really bi? I never heard that before. Also, as this is DL, was he top or bottom? Verificata sizemeat?

Please keep the posts coming OP!!!

Susan Saint James was green, "a baby," who was creating an acting style as she went, a loose, natural style that was different from the stiffer acting practiced on television at that time. Rock told Tom Clark, "If Susan put on film what she puts into the rehearsal, she'd be an enormous star. But the minute the camera's rolling, she gets tight and doesn't show her real talent."

The show was a hit and stayed on the air for six years. Rock and Susan gradually became good friends, despite their surface differences. "We were together twelve hours a day," Susan says. "That's more time than you spend with your spouse. You can't help but fall in love with someone when you're working together so intimately and giving each other the energy and spark that makes it work on screen."

Susan and her husband would go to Rock's on Sunday night to watch the show and have dinner, and they were always invited there for Christmas.

Susan says Rock never talked to her about his personal life, and she didn't ask, because "I worshiped that man."

When Susan was told, early in the first season, that Rock was gay, she says, "I couldn't believe it. My feeling was, if I used my complete feminine wiles, I could disprove it." When she began making appearances to publicize McMillan and Wife, people would ask her about Rock's sexuality. "Everyone—women at the May Company, friends, hippies making peace posters—would say, 'You can tell me, is he gay?' I always answered, 'You could never tell by me.' I never felt shut out from him physically. I could hug Rock and get goosebumps. I got the same readings from him I'd get from Bob Wagner or Peter Fonda. If I hadn't been married, there was nothing to tell me I couldn't get all the way to home plate with him."

Rock was never satisfied with McMillan and Wife. He maintained his professional attitude, was always prepared and on time, was courteous and helpful to everyone but he never put his all into the role. At home, he drank every night, partly because he was unhappy with what he was doing. Susan was nominated for an Emmy award four out of the five years she did the show, but Rock was not nominated.

At the end of the fifth season, Susan's contract expired and she asked for more money than the company was wilhng to pay. She was tired of playing the same character; she was ready to move on. "I didn't realize how good I had it," she said years later. She left the show, and it continued for a season with Rock alone as McMillan.

Susan never had a chance to tell Rock personally she was leaving, or to say good-bye, and she did not see him again for nine years. It was a shock to her to have been so close and then not speak. She had not yet grasped the nature of show-business friendships, where you go on location with someone for four months and fall in love and come to feel you know and understand each other better than anyone else in the world and then the show ends and you never see each other.

"The closeness is terribly real and sincere, but the minute you don't get a work call, you're off in separate directions," Susan says. "People say, let's get together, let's have lunch, but it isn't gonna happen." She says that Peter Fonda told her to think of it as the circus coming to town. She worked with Fonda on a movie, Outlaw Blues, and had an intense friendship that dissolved when the picture wrapped. "He taught me it's okay for that to happen. It's like the circus— you have the best time of your life when it's there and then the circus moves on."

Tom Clark was completely unlike the men Rock had been with before. He was not a young blond hunk with a mustache. He was nearly Rock's age, and he was an equal match. He stood up to Rock and, more often than not, got what he wanted.

Tom began to use the collective "we." He would say, "When we did McMillan ..." and he would talk about "our dogs," "our car," "our performance." He took over Rock's career and business affairs, as well as the house. He kept track of "our engagements," made reservations and appointments and carried the money. "Rock was not organized. He never put a date down. He could never fire help or raise a fuss if things weren't

Rock became dependent on Tom and Tom wanted him to be dependent, but Rock resented it. Tom was the keeper of the gate. "Our worst fights were over that," Tom says. "Rock kept saying, 'Why do you do this?' I said, 'Rock, because. A, you shouldn't, and, B, you can't.' I wanted to keep unpleasant things from him. If there was a rumor, I tried to prevent him from hearing it. If he found out about it anyway and learned I knew, he was angry. He said I should have been the one to tell him."

Rock's life-style began to change after Tom moved in. Tom liked "fine things" and the society of people of achievement. They bought a Rolls-Royce, but Rock wouldn't drive it because he thought it was ostentatious.

Tom went into Mark's office one day and said, "Rock and I have decided to get rid of all the losers in Rock's life. We're going to clean 'em all out and get a fresh start." Old friends who had been welcome for ten years were suddenly dropped from the guest list. They would call Mark and say, "I can't get Rock on the phone, and Tom was very cold. Why, what've I done wrong?" Mark would try to let them down gently. "It's nothing you've done. Give it time."

The new circle included Ross Hunter and Jacque Mapes, Nancy Walker and her husband, David Craig, Roddy McDowall, Sylvia and Danny Kaye and Olive Behrendt, a wealthy socialite.

In 1970, Rock was given his first chance to play a villain in Pretty Maids All in a Row, an X-rated black comedy directed by Roger Vadim, a legendary sensualist who was then married to Jane Fonda. "I'm a murderer and a stud! I get to do everything," Rock told Mark Miller. Rock played Tiger, a high-school counselor who screws the prettiest girls in school and murders them when they become troublesome.

Angle Dickinson plays a sex-starved teacher, and in one scene. Rock lifts up her blouse and grabs her breasts with both hands, forces her down on the table, gets on top of her and, just as she's about to come, he stops and leaves her lying there, clawing. The film is a jumble of spoof and murder mystery that doesn't work, but the sexual excitement Rock gives off is palpable, and leaves the viewer in a state of arousal. Roger Ebert, the critic for the Chicago Sun Times, wrote, "Rock Hudson sex comedies sure have changed since Pillow Talk."

Rock was entering a period when sex would be his first concern. He told friends he had to have sex every day, and that he was constantly thinking about it. At business meetings, while driving in the car, he was thinking about having sex that night. He told Mark Miller there were three things he cared about, in this order: sex, career and people.

Jack Coates says that when Rock walked into a party, "the whole room filled with sexual heat. Everyone could feel it—women and men. He was that strong. His favorite expression was 'Wanna have some fun?' You knew what that meant."

Jack says Rock liked his bed made up with blue or white sheets and down pillows. He was a "champion cuddler."

It was at this time that the first doubts about Rock's sexual identity were voiced in pubUc. In the sunmier of 1971, a group of gay men in Manhattan Beach, California, who held a party every year with funny themes, sent out invitations to a party celebrating the wedding of Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors. One of the cards fell into the hands of a gossip columnist, who wrote an item in which he did not mention names but said that two male Hollywood stars had been married. "One is like the rock of Gibraltar; the other is like your neighbor."

The rumor spread—Rock Hudson had been secretly married to Jim Nabors. It was repeated on television and radio shows and in more columns, and the phone at the Castle rang constantly with reporters asking for comments. There was no truth to it; Rock had done a guest spot on Jim Nabors's variety show, and they had become casual friends. Rock liked to sing with Jim, and Rock and Jack Coates had gone to Lake Tahoe to ski and see Jim's show. When Jim's house had burned, Rock had called and said, "You can stay here, you can wear our underwear," but Jim had never stayed at the Castle. Joy said to Rock, when she heard the rumor, "Of course it's not true. He's not even blond."

At first Rock ignored it, with his usual attitude that if he refused to deal with an unpleasant matter, he could will it out of existence. When he did comment, he made a joke of it, telling Joyce Haber, "It's over. I've returned all the emeralds and diamonds Jim gave me." Finally, both Rock and Jim had to make public statements that the wedding had not happened.

But rumors take on a life of their own, and gossip is harder to retract than to spread. People came forward and swore they had attended the ceremony, which they placed, variously, in Las Vegas, Carmel, Tijuana, New York and Vancouver. Many people still insist that the marriage took place. Last year, my aunt, who sells real estate in Beverly Hills, told me, "I know they were married. You ask Carol Burnett, she gave the wedding in her home."

Rock became furious; how could he defend himself when people were swearing that something untrue had happened? Jim Nabors's variety show on CBS was canceled, and he and Rock could not be seen together again. Rock was even reluctant to go to Hawaii because he knew Jim had a house there. They did not speak for the rest of Rock's life.

By 1971, Jack Coates had finished college and was in full-time residence at the Castle, but he was growing restless. He did not want to spend his life as the consort of a movie star, with no identity of his own. He did not want to be, as his friends put it, "Rock Hudson's wife." He decided he would leave and go to graduate school in anthropology

Years later, Jack would say he left because of "my own ego. It's not because there wasn't great love. I wish I had been stronger, and I wish I'd been more sophisticated at chess playing, because I couldn't take the intrigue in that house. It was brutal."

Jack did not know how to handle the gossip and infighting around Rock. "Everyone wanted to be the movie star's best friend, and because I had pillow talk, they tried to get to the throne through me." Someone would start a campaign to oust Mark Miller from favor, spreading rumors and telling Jack, who was supposed to tell Rock, that Mark had said or done something, and then Mark would have to defend himself and launch a counterattack against his rivals. Or, friends who had been welcome at the Castle for years would suddenly find that their calls would not be returned. There was no explanation, they were out and new friends were in, so they would seek Jack's help in breaking through the barriers and regaining their place.

"When I learned to play chess, I understood what was going on," Jack says. "Rock was the King. Tom, after I left, was the Queen, who had the most power on the board. Mark and George were the Bishops. I was the Knight and I could always do a jump straight to the throne if I needed to. The problem was, I liked everyone and I didn't care what they said about each other or who was in what position."

Two days before Christmas, 1971, Jack told Rock he had decided to go back to Arizona. "Rock would not show any emotion," Jack says, "he was silent." Jack walked down the stairs in tears, got in his truck and drove away. Joy looked at Mark Miller and said, "What happened?

If Rock had wanted to, he could have prevented Jack from going, but he said nothing and let him walk out. They spoke on the phone, and Jack came back frequently for visits and holidays. "Jack was like a knight," Mark says. "Whenever he wanted to, he could snatch up the movie star and take him away and nobody could do a damn thing about it."

Rock never spoke with Jack about their relationship until many years later, after Rock's mother had died, and Rock saw Jack in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They wanted to be alone, so they hiked up a trail in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and as they stood in a clearing, talking softly. Rock said to Jack, "What went wrong?"

In the spring of 1968, Rock went to Europe to shoot Darling Lili with Julie Andrews. When Rock arrived, the film was behind schedule and over budget, and the atmosphere was chaotic. Rock told Jack that he had met Julie before, and when he did his first scene with her, she told him, "You realize, I'm a big star now." Rock lit a cigarette and smiled. "Thanks for joining us."

That summer, 1968, was the most tumultuous of the decade, with two recent assassinations, violent demonstrations against the Vietnam War and a Democratic National Convention that had to be held behind barbed wire. Rock watched the news on television and said, "What is this crap? Let's celebrate America." He did not understand the demonstrations, just as, a few years later, he would not understand the movement for gay rights, "where you march with a jar of Vaseline." He could not fathom why people would impose their beliefs or sexual practices on the public. But he did not brood on the news. "He was too busy showing old movies and barbecuing," Jack says

In October of 1968, there was a premiere for Ice Station Zebra at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. Rock took Flo Allen, a striking woman who'd become his agent when John Foreman had begun producing films. As Rock stepped out of the limousine, someone in the crowd yelled, "Fag*ot!" Rock turned white, and wanted to plow into the crowd and find the heckler. Tom Clark, who was close by, grabbed Rock's arm and guided him to the spot where Army Archerd, a columnist, was conducting live television interviews. After the interview. Rock went into the theater and out a side door. "That's it! I'm never going to another premiere," he said

Paris 1985 :

Rock had collapsed on the bed and was breathing irregularly. "What do I do!" Ron Channell said on the machine. Mark called Rock's doctor in Los Angeles, Gary Sugarman, and called Ron back. "Get Rock immediately into the American Hospital,

When doctors at the American Hospital examined Rock and saw the scars from his heart-bypass surgery, they assumed it was heart trouble and put him in the cardiology section.

That night, there were reporters and photographers swarming all over the Ritz Hotel. Ron Channell was in a state of distraction. He had finally reached Dr. Dormont the night before, and Dr. Dormont had told him Rock had AIDS. "Why didn't Rock tell me! My God, why wouldn't he tell me!" he said, and broke into tears.

"He would tell no one," Mark said. "He wanted to live a normal life."

Ron Channell was sick for Rock and frightened for himself. He and Rock had horsed around and shared food. Rock had kissed members of Ron Channell's family when he met them. What if the disease could be transmitted through saliva? Ron was worried the press would identify him incorrectly as Rock's lover, and that his own career would be ruined because of the taint of association with someone who has AIDS. Mark arranged for Ron to take the Concorde to New York the next morning. "How can I leave? I don't want to be photographed!" Ron said.

"Ron, this is not my first day in pictures," Mark said. "I'll get you out with no one knowing." Mark said he would order a limousine for "Mr. Channell" to wait at the front door of the hotel at 9 a.m. At 7 a.m., he would take Ron down a back hall and out a service door, where he would have a taxi waiting. Ron would miss the press entirely. The plan worked.

Before Ron left, Mark said to him, "While we're here—I'm sure Rock will approve—let's go buy you a Rolex watch. He was planning to give you one for Christmas." They sneaked out of the hotel, found a Rolex store, and Ron wore the watch home on the Concorde

Was hoping you'd get around to Hudson. Thanx OP!

On Wednesday, July 24, when Mark went to the hospital, he found Rock much improved, due to the intravenous feeding. There was color in his cheeks and the deep creases seemed to have been smoothed. Mark started to tell him how wonderful he looked, but Rock waved his hand and said, eagerly, "Where's Ron?"

"I put him on the Concorde to New York. He left two hours ago."

A veil seemed to drop over Rock's face, wiping away all traces of expression. His next words were toneless. "Two hours ago. Why?"

"He went to pieces," Mark said, "into total panic, when he found out you had ...

Rock finished the sentence. "The plague." He stared past Mark. "I knew this would happen. That he'd desert me when he found out."

"He was shaking with fright," Mark said. "He cried most of the night. I booked his flight and then got him out of the hotel by the usual routine . . ."

There was desolation in Rock's voice, though his face and eyes still showed no expression.

"Nothing. Not even a good-bye."

"He wasn't thinking," Mark said. "He couldn't. He's afraid the press will peg him as your last lover. Which they will, if they get to him.

On his way out, Mark stopped to talk with Dr. de Vemejoul To Mark's surprise, the doctor still was unaware that Rock had AIDS. Mark had expected that one of Rock's doctors in California would inform him, but none had, so Mark told the cardiologist himself The doctor was upset.

The American Hospital did not accept AIDS patients. The staff would be furious that they had not been warned before examining Rock so they could have taken special precautions. Rock would have to leave the American Hospital, but where could he go? He was too weak to travel.

An hour later, there was a rap at the door. Mark answered it in his blue nightshirt. The visitor was Yanou Collart, a French publicist whom Olson had called. Yanou is forty-two, with streaked blond hair, a youthful figure and an air of femininity and savvy. She represents celebrities and the great chefs of France, and likes to entertain them at dinner parties in her home near the Champs Elysees. She had met Rock and had become friendly with him during his European trip of 1984. Mark told her, "This is the first time in my life the press has been chasing me for statements. Can you take over?" "Yes, of course."

Mark then told her the problem: Rock had AIDS. He had to leave the American Hospital and could not be accepted at Percy. Yanou was shocked. "I knew he was homosexual but I was not expecting AIDS. In Paris at that time, we knew very little about the disease. We heard it was a new sickness in America that homosexuals were dying from."

Later that morning, Yanou and Mark learned that the commanding officer of Percy Hospital had reversed his decision and told Dr. Dormont that Rock could be admitted. It is unclear who intervened on Rock's behalf. Some say it was Nancy Reagan, who called Mitterrand; others report that the French minister of defense made the decision. The day before, however. President Reagan had called Rock in the hospital. Rock reported it to Miller: "I got a call from the President."

"Oh, what did he say?"

"He said, 'Hi. Nancy sends her love.' I said, 'Good. I send my love to Nancy.' Then Ronnie said, 'We're both not in the best condition. [Reagan had cancer of the colon.] I hope we'll both be better in a while.' "

Rock added, "It was like a script. We both read our lines perfectly. But . . . Why did he call?

At 11 A.M., there was a meeting at the American Hospital to determine what would be done with Rock. Mark, Yanou and Dr. Dormont attended, along with the cardiologist and staff members of the hospital. Everyone had a different concern. Certain members of the hospital staff wanted Rock removed as soon as possible. They could not cover up the fact that he had AIDS and told Mark that if he did not make an announcement disclosing the disease, they would. Some of the staff hoped that Rock could be moved before the announcement was made, so the hospital would not be associated with AIDS patients.

Dr. Dormont, on the other hand, wanted Rock to stay put until he was stronger. Mark Miller wanted Rock to get the best treatment and to have his life prolonged. "We were dealing—trying to get Rock what we could." Yanou sent word to the press that there would be a statement at 2 p.m., and began to draft the release. The statement was only one paragraph, but the group argued about it for two hours until it was satisfactory to all parties

Mark went back up to Rock's room. "Rock," he said, "I'm sorry, but, unfortunately, we have to announce that you have AIDS."

Rock stared at Mark, then waved his hand in dismissal. "Who cares. Go ahead. We've hidden it for over a year. What's the point."

Mark brought Yanou in. "I have to read you the statement I will be reading to the press, with your approval," she said. She sat down at the foot of his bed and began to read the draft, in French-accented English. As she spoke, her eyes filled with tears. "Mr. Rock Hudson has acquired immune deficiency syndrome." Except for her voice, the room was still, so still that every sound was magnified. A sheet rustled. The hand on the wall clock ticked. "Mr. Rock Hudson has acquired immune deficiency syndrome, which was diagnosed over a year ago in the United States."

Rock lay motionless. He was witnessing the death of the image he had created. For thirty-six years, he had planned, plotted and protected his image as the romantic hero, the leading man. For thirty-six years, he had lived with the fear of being exposed. There had been years of furtively exchanging phone numbers and sneaking out at three in the morning. Years of taking beautiful women to premieres, then going home to the man he lived with. Years of being careful not to go out in public with "too many boys." Three years of marriage to a woman he thought he could love, which proved impossible. And, finally, after the social changes of the sixties and seventies, and after Rock's position as a star had become secure, there had been a relaxation. The press knew and protected him. The entertainment world knew and didn't seem to care. Now, everyone would know. Rock Hudson would be unmasked.

Yanou finished reading. Rock stared at her, then said, "Okay. Go out and give it to the dogs."

Mark Miller watched from the window of a private conference room as Yanou walked out to face the press on the hospital steps. She read her statement. They listened in stunned silence. When she finished, they ran, knocking each other down, to get to the hospital phones.

That night, Mark was awakened by a call from Marc Christian in Los Angeles, who had heard the news on television and was enraged. According to Miller, the conversation went as follows. Christian said, "How dare you not tell me!" Miller said, "It was up to Rock to tell you. Rock had the disease, not me. Rock ordered me not to tell anyone." "But why the hell didn't you tell me anyway? You should have told me. I've been exposed. It's not fair to me!"

"I couldn't tell you," Mark said. "My loyalties are to Rock Hudson and you know that. I'm not a friend of yours for thirty-five years. I tried to give you clues. I asked you to get a complete physical last year, remember? The doctor who examined you knew you'd been exposed to AIDS and said you had no sign of it. I doubt you have it now." Miller told him they would bring him to Paris immediately so Dr. Dormont could culture his blood

On Friday, July 26, when Mark arrived at Rock's room. Rock looked at him with a glint in his eye. "Got some brush fires out there?" "It's a fire storm," Mark said. "Thought it might be." Rock made a spiraling motion with his finger. "I can't leave my hotel room without being photographed," Mark said. "I've become a little media star."

Rock laughed. "Remember how Andy Warhol said everyone should be famous for fifteen minutes? Well, you've been on sixteen. Get off"

The twinkle had returned to Rock's eye, Mark thought, because Rock had always loved it when controversy was swirling around him. "He was happiest when he was putting out brush fires." Though he protested that he hated publicity, he knew the power of keeping his name in print.

Mark told him Elizabeth Taylor had called and said that Rock, by coming forward and admitting he had AIDS, was going to "save millions of lives."

"Why?" Rock said.

Mark showed him some of the telegrams: from Frank Sinatra, Gregory Peck, Marlene Dietrich, James Gamer, Carol Burnett, Ali MacGraw, Jack Lemmon, Richard Dreyfuss, Ava Gardner, Mickey Rooney, Milton Berle. There was one from Madonna: "To Rock Hudson, my heartthrob since childhood. Saying lots of prayers for you. All my love. Madonna."

Rock was puzzled. "I don't know Madonna. I barely know Gregory Peck."

Then there were the cables from motorcycle policemen and switchboard operators and teachers, sending love and wishes of encouragement. Rock could not make sense of it; he had expected the opposite

Dr. Dormont told Rock he had two choices: He could return to the States, to UCLA Medical Center, and at a later date come back to Paris for treatment; or he could go to Percy Hospital and stay two to three weeks until he was in a condition where it might be possible to give him HPA 23. "Think about it," Dr. Dormont said. "You can give me your answer Sunday."

Mark went to the hospital Sunday morning and was met by the public-relations director, Bruce Redor, Dr. de Vemejoul and another specialist. They sat him down in the conference room and told him Rock was in very serious condition. No matter what they found in the biopsy. Rock's white-cell count was so low he would not survive. They said he would probably die within three days. They asked Mark to tell Rock.

Mark agreed, but said he wanted them to come with him. Rock was sitting up in bed—he'd been expecting Mark's visit. Mark grabbed his foot through the covers and held onto it. "I have bad news for you," he said. "You've got three days to live."

"Oh, fuck." Rock turned to the window.

Then he looked at the men standing opposite him with dour faces.

"What'll I do for an encore?"

They laughed—it broke the tension and they were grateful.

"You can go to Percy Hospital," Mark said. "That's been cleared. Or you can go to California ..."

"I want to die in my own bed," Rock said.

"You're on."

Mark asked if he wanted to see Phyllis Gates, his former wife. Rock made a rocking gesture with his palm, meaning he wasn't sure.

"I'm leaving you with a mess," Rock said. "And believe me, it's going to be a real mess. I'm sorry."

Mark did not focus on that statement or what it meant. He had one mission: to find a way to get Rock home.

Sunday night, Mark called Yanou back from St. Tropez, and all that night and Monday, they worked on chartering a plane. A commercial flight was impossible because Rock needed to travel with medical personnel and intensive-care equipment. They found a 707, but it could not fly to Los Angeles without stopping. Europe Assistance offered to rent them a 747 for $250,000, including the intensive-care unit, doctors and a nurse. Later, when Dr. Dormont heard the figure, he stood up from his chair. "What? That's my research budget for four years!" Then he reflected: It was Rock's money, he had earned it and this was his last wish.

The money had to be wired from New York before the plane would take off". The wire was sent, and departure was set for 11 p.m. Monday.

Rock was sleeping—he'd been given a sedative. The helicopter landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport in an area beyond customs, where photographers were not allowed. Rock was carried on a stretcher into the 747, and the stretcher was placed across a row of seats. Rock woke up and saw Yanou standing by him. "Where am I?" "Rock, you are in a plane taking you back to Los Angeles," she said.

"Am I flying?" "Not yet. You will be flying in about forty minutes." "Who's with me?" He looked about. "Where's Mark?" "Mark is not here. He has to stay in Paris to pay bills and take care of paperwork. He'll return the day after tomorrow."

Rock looked disoriented

"But, how did I get on a plane?" Rock said

"Listen, I will explain it." Yanou told him how she'd rented the ambulance, rented the helicopter, issued a false statement to the press and landed with the helicopter beyond customs. "So we avoid all the press!"

Rock started to laugh—the deep, ripping laugh that so enchanted bis friends. "I love that," he said. "Fuck the press."

The nurse walked by and Rock asked Yanou, "Who is she?"

"That's the nurse who's going with you."

"She's very pretty. But . . . you're flying with me, aren't you?"

"No, I cannot."

"You're not coming with me either?"

She said she was sorry, and explained that she had work commitments.

Rock started to cry.

He was alone, a dying man on a deserted jumbo jet, with two doctors and a nurse who did not speak his language. Yanou took his hand, but after a moment he stopped crying.

He swallowed, regained control. He smiled. "You know, it would have been great if you could have flown with me. You could have made the chocolate mousse at my house."

She kissed him on the cheek. Rock looked at her with wonder. "You're really not afraid ... to touch me?" He gestured toward her hand in his. "No," she said

It was one in the morning, Tuesday, July 30, when the plane landed in Los Angeles. No personal friends were there to meet Rock, just the press, who were kept at a distance. He was taken by helicopter to UCLA, where he stayed for a month before returning to the Castle, where he would die, as he had wanted, in his own bed

...........Mark and George had different relationships with Rock. Neither was involved with him sexually. Mark's friendship with Rock was playful: "I never talked with him on a deep personal level," Mark says. "He'd immediately freeze—he was embarrassed by it. Instead, we loved to giggle, and I could make him laugh anytime. No matter had bad a mood he was in, I could break him up and have him rolling on the floor."

If Rock wanted to talk about serious matters, he went to George. Yet even with George, he would open to a point, then withdraw. George expected and demanded the most of Rock; he always urged Rock to aim higher as an actor, to try Shakespeare, to seek greatness. Whenever Rock made a film he was proud of, he asked "Has George seen it?"

One of the reasons the three became so close was that in 1951, when they met, they could not go out freely and be seen with other men. This was the "Dark Ages," when there was no such word as "gay." Homosexuals were "fairies" who were ridiculed and shunned. Rock, Mark and George were deep in the closet, although they did not use those words. They rarely spoke about being homosexual, or if they did, they used code phrases, like "Is he musical?"

If they went to a restaurant, they could go as three but not as four, because four men would look like two couples. Often, a group would be gathered at Mark and George's and someone would say, "Let's go to DuPar's." George would look around and shake his head. "Too many boys. Let's order in.

George says, "It was more fun to stay home anyway. If you didn't go out, you didn't get in trouble.

It took Mark him a year, he says, to make Rock do something about his "abominable clothes. He wore those Pendleton wool shirts, which he sweated in and rarely had cleaned because he couldn't afford it. He had a definite body odor that needed correction. Henry Willson told him, 'For God's sake, wear deodorant,' but Rock wouldn't, because he thought it was sissy." There were no deodorants for men on the market at that time; the deodorants had names like Tussy and Mum. Eventually, Mark bought a jar for Rock, which he tried, but he broke out in a rash and got angry.

Rock spent all his spare money on records; his favorite was Patti Page singing "Mockin' Bird Hill," which he played again and again until one night Mark shouted, "If I hear Patti Page sing 'Mockin' Bird Hill' one more time, I'm going to fling it out the window!"

Rock and George knew that if they were going to be stars, they had to present a masculine image without a chink, without a suggestion of softness. To this day, no actor who plays romantic leads has been open about being homosexual, even though many stars are. If exposed, an actor could not continue playing sexy parts, making love to women. The audience, it is feared, would lose their ability to believe him.

Rock was terrified of being caught in a sexual situation with a man. He always had two phone lines when he lived with someone, and made sure his roommate never answered his phone. He was careful not to be photographed with a man. On the set, if he met someone, they would exchange phone numbers with the stealth and caution of spies passing nuclear secrets. Rock would wait until one in the morning to make the call. If it was all right, he would drive to the person's house, park two blocks away, look around furtively and then run to the door. "It was as if the Russians were watching," Dean Dittman says. "And in fact, they were."

Rock, according to one friend, Stockton Briggle, was "the straightest homosexual I ever met. He had no feminine traits or mannerisms, even when in private among friends."

Rock had enormous sexual energy. Mark Miller used to tell him, "Just because it wiggles, you don't have to fuck it. "Oh, I do," Rock would say

He was attracted to women, he enjoyed flirting with women and occasionally had affairs, but all things being equal, he preferred to be with men. He liked blonds, with blue eyes, in their twenties, who were tall, well built and manly.

He never responded to men who were obviously gay. He preferred it if they had also slept with women, if they "had a story." The fact that a man liked women made him more masculine in Rock's eyes. If he met someone straight who showed any wedge of curiosity, Rock would move mountains to win him.

.................The parade ended outside the theater, where there was a wooden platform set up with heights and a microphone. Jimmy Stewart walked on, said a few words and was applauded. Rock walked on and before he could speak, the young people screamed and pushed so hard the platform started to collapse. Rock had to be escorted away by a wedge of policemen. To everyone's surprise, the fans had yelled more for Rock Hudson than they had for James Stewart.

"It went to my head "was floating! Me over Jimmy Stewart? I went back to the hotel that night and got drunk. I couldn't sleep, I wanted more! I got up at the crack of dawn, ate breakfast and went out in front of the hotel so the people on their way to work could see me. But no one recognized me. I took a walk, and my picture was in the window of practically every store — beauty parlor, supermarket, cleaners — and still, no one recognized me. I finally stood right beside my picture. No one paid any attention. Nothing. Nobody knew who I was. They just kept walking.

It was sad, but I learned a great lesson. Mob scenes — cheering fans — don't mean a damn thing. It's temporary, and if you try to grab on to it, you get nothing but air in your hands"

........Rock would laugh, thirty years later, when he was going through scrap-books with Dean Dittman and came across these pieces. In a spread called bachelors' bedlam he was shown in the house he shared with Bob Preble, an actor under contract at Twentieth Century-Fox. In one shot, they were seen in Rock's red convertible with Rock driving. "Best friends: Rock Hudson and Bob Preble." In another, Rock was in bed with his shirt off, while Bob stood over him, holding a clock. The caption said, "Rip Van Hudson invariably sleeps through the alarm, which awakens Bob in the next room."

But the house only had one bedroom. The bachelors slept in two single beds pushed together and covered with a king-size spread. Bob Preble, who met Rock through their mutual agent, Henry Willson, now sells electric motors. He says he and Rock decided to live together for company and to lower their expenses. Preble had never shared a house with a man before Rock, and he moved out after three years to marry actress Yvonne Rivero.

Rock told Mark and George that Preble was straight and they were just roommates. But other friends had the impression they were intimate.

Preble says he and Rock did "a little experimenting, on a couple occasions after we'd had a few drinks, but nothing you would call a definite relation. I guess he hoped the barriers would come down. The situation did come close to spilling over to something that would have been foreign to my whole being, my whole behavior. But before that happened, I left and married Yvonne."

Preble found that Rock "needed a lot of refinement. He didn't know Mozart existed, and he'd never tasted wine, except the cheap stuff" for cooking." When they met, in 1950, Preble was staying in Malibu with four guys and wasn't getting anywhere with his career. Rock was living by himself and lonely, so the two went house hunting

Preble knew Rock was gay, "and I was a little nervous, but I said to myself, just roll with the punches." He tried, several times, to fix Rock up with women who were known to be "easy," to see if "maybe I could turn him around a little. Secretly, I really did want him to be straight so we could take out girls like any two guys. But it never worked. None of the girls could get to first base with him."

The three years they lived together were, in Preble's memory, "a blast— one great glorious good time." They lived in four different houses, and the last, on Avenida del Sol, was spectacular: all wood and glass, which, in its day, looked futuristic. To reach it, they had to climb steep wooden steps up a hillside, and from their windows, they could see across the entire Valley to the farthest mountain range.

They gave parties; they drove to Las Vegas in Rock's convertible with the top down and the radio blaring; they went to Grauman's Chinese Theatre with bottles of Kahlua and straws and got slowly bombed while watching Tyrone Power. "There was always music in the house. Rock bought a player piano and hundreds of rolls, and he could set it up to play for hours."

Preble dropped out of the entertainment business after his marriage to Yvonne, but he continued to weave in and out of Rock's life. "He was like a talisman," Mark Miller says. "Whenever Rock got in trouble or had bad news, Bob Preble would show up." He appeared right after Rock had a car accident, and when Rock needed surgery to remove a lymph node.

Preble says, "My work takes me all around town and sometimes it's like a light bulb going off. I'll think, I need to see Rock."

The last time Preble dropped in, unannounced, was an afternoon in June of 1984. Rock and Mark Miller were sitting alone in Mark's office. Rock had just found out, and was telling Mark, that he had been diagnosed as having AIDS. Within minutes, Bob Preble was knocking at the door. Rock looked at Mark in dismay.

"How does he know?"

While Rock was getting to know Mark Miller and George Nader, he was not romantically involved with anyone and wanted to be. With that in mind, in 1952, Mark and George, who had moved to a house by the beach in Venice, invited Rock to dinner with a young man they'd met. Jack Navaar. Jack had just returned from army service in Korea and was floating. He had met Henry Willson, who had offered to represent him and had tried to change his name to Rand Saxon

Jack was flattered and exhilarated that Rock was pursuing him, but he was not entirely comfortable in a homosexual relationship. When I met Jack, in 1985, he was married to a younger woman, they were raising three small children and considering having a fourth. Jack had become a clothing manufacturer. They lived in a gracious home in a rural part of South-em California...

Jack said that when he had been in high school, he had fallen into a homosexual relationship, "and in those days, if you had sex with a man, that put you in a category from which you could not deviate. You were a fruitcake, and destined to be that all your life. But I had had relations with women and part of me still wanted to."

When he met Rock, his parents were getting a divorce, "my family was falling apart and Rock made me feel secure and loved." In May of 1953, when Preble moved out of Avenida del Sol, Rock and Jack started hving together. But they found a new place, a two-story house on Grandview, because, Jack told Rock, "I don't want to live in the same house where you lived with Bob."

They went to movies constantly—Lana Turner was Rock's favorite star.

They had a private code, "1-2-3," which meant "I love you." When people were around. Rock would rap three times on a counter, or nudge Jack three times under the table, or say, "One two three."

One night, Rock and Mark said they had a surprise. They went into the bedroom, asked George to turn on the record player, and when the music started, out came Rock and Mark with nothing on but two neckties tied around them like bikini tops and bottoms. Rosemary Clooney and Marlene Dietrich were singing a duet, and Rock and Mark did a dance and mouthed the words: "I want the name, age, height and size of you . . ." Rock played Marlene and Mark played Rosemary Clooney. George started laughing, but Jack yelled, "Stop! Turn it off. It's not funny!"

Recalling the incident, Jack says, "I didn't like anything to do with drag or camp. I didn't like homosexual humor." He was embarrassed, he says, if Rock wanted to hold his hand when they were driving, or if they were at a movie and Rock would call him "Baby." Jack says, "I was afraid that the people behind us might hear."

Shortly after Rock and Jack began living together. Rock was tested for the lead in his first major film, Magnificent Obsession. The director, Douglas Sirk, had already signed Jane Wyman, who was then married to Ronald Reagan. Universal didn't have many top male actors under contract, so Sirk felt he had to develop one. He watched Rock in Iron Man and said, later, "He was far inferior to Jeff Chandler, but I thought I saw something. So I arranged to meet him, and he seemed to be not too much to the eye, except very handsome. But the camera sees with its own eye. It sees things the human eye does not detect. You learn to trust your camera—it's the only thing in Hollywood which never let me down."

Rock was treated differently by everyone after Magnificent Obsession. He told Mark and George, "A lot of folks say I've changed, but I haven't. Other people have changed to me. Before, I was considered a movie star, but now, people stare at me with their mouths open in . . . total awe."

But Rock did change. Mark says, "Before, Rock would answer the phone, 'Hiya!' Now, it was a deep, 'Hello? This is Rock Hudson speaking.' He became an instant authority on everything. He could walk on water."

Jack Navaar watched as Rock lost his bashfulness and began to bask in the limelight. "If Rock burped, everyone laughed hysterically, as if it was the greatest burp they'd ever heard." Rock described the transition from insecurity to confidence in an interview with Hedda Hopper. "When you're very tall—I was six feet by the time I was fourteen—it gives you a sort of inferiority feeling. I guess I started coming out of it when people would recognize me. 'Why, you're Rock Hudson, aren't you?' Suddenly I began to feel, what the heck! I haven't anything to hide—so I stood up."

The White House State Dinner thing and his conversation with Nancy is dealt with in a short story I read last year called "Charlie Movie Star" which imagines the hookup he had while he was in D.C. that weekend (with a younger guy named Gus). He picks him up at the legendary Tracks in Navy Yard (Southeast D.C.) As this biography states, it was right before he learned he had AIDS and this young later had to be contacted by one of Rock's "people" to go get tested or checked out (not sure there was actually a test at that point in '84).

There's a really funny section when Jack Navaar is flipping through Rock's script (in a flashback scene) for "Magnificent Obsession" and is like, "This is such trash!"

The fan magazines began to complain that Hudson was not married. They needed to keep presenting him to their readers as "husband material." How to explain the fact that he was never coupled with any of the beautiful women he took to parties? How many times could they show him with Betty Abbott or Marilyn Maxwell and speculate "Friends say they may be getting serious"? They solved the problem by running headlines like SCARED OF MARRIAGE? and TOO BUSY FOR LOVE. They quoted Rock: "I'm looking for happiness, but I don't think I'm quite ready for marriage yet." The implication was, he just hasn't met the right girl.

Confidential wanted to do an expose of Rock's homosexuality and offered Bob Preble money for information and pictures. Eventually, someone from the magazine would offer Jack Navaar $10,000—a large sum in 1954 —to talk about living with Rock. Jack called Henry Willson and told him Confidential was after Rock. "We're aware of that," Willson said. "Thanks for your support."

No story was ever published, and the rumor at Universal was that the Studio had traded information about another of its stars—Rory Calhoun —to kill the piece on Rock. In the mid-fifties, articles were published that Calhoun had served time in jail for burglary and auto theft when he was younger.

Nader says, "We lived in fear of an expose, or even one small remark, a veiled suggestion that someone was homosexual. Such a remark would have caused an earthquake at the Studio. Every month, when Confidential came out, our stomachs began to turn. Which of us would be in it? The amazing thing is that Rock, as big as he became, was never nailed. It made me speculate that Rock had an angel on his shoulder, or that he'd made a pact with the devil, because he seemed under supernatural protection."

R141

R27 "Rock said he wanted to send an anonymous letter to three people he'd had sex with in the months prior to learning he had AIDS. One of the letters was sent to a twenty-two-year-old man in New York, who had had a fling with Rock after his dinner at the White House and guessed immediately that it was he.."

Rock and Jack began to quarrel more frequently during this period. "I couldn't go anywhere with Rock—even to dinner—without people watching him and trying to get near him," Jack says. "I was jealous of the acclaim and attention he was getting, but I also liked it. Thousands of people wanted him, but I was the one that Rock Hudson wanted."

Jack says he often provoked the fights, and gave Rock "every reason to throw me out. One night, I literally kicked him out of bed."

Jack had been encouraging Rock to go out more socially because it was good for his career. Rock accepted a date to escort Joan Crawford to a party, but came home at three in the morning. "I'd been worried about him and he came home stinking drunk," Jack says. "I was angry he was with Joan Crawford and I wasn't. We got in bed, he started snoring, and I was so furious, I just rolled over and kicked him onto the floor. I told him to get his ass out of the house, I didn't care where he slept."

Rock started walking down Grandview Drive, and Jack threw the keys to the car after him. "I told him to go sleep in his big fucking dressing room that the Studio had just built for him."

When tempers cooled, Rock asked Jack, "Would you be happy if I gave up all this shit, because I will. We'll move to the Midwest." Jack said no. "Rock didn't mean it, and besides, I didn't want to move to Chicago with Roy Fitzgerald and open a florist's shop. I wanted Rock to have his career, but I wanted one too."

Yep, that's it, R143. In the short story, the guy he fucks after the White House is named Gus and he meets him at Tracks.

Rock told Mark Miller about an incident with Jack that made him so angry he would use it through the years when he needed to call up rage for a film. Rock was working late at the Studio. He called home and Jack said he didn't beheve Rock was working. If he wasn't home in thirty minutes. Jack was going to toss Rock's record collection over the hillside. Rock finished work, raced home and saw Jack hurling his 78 records of Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Dinah Shore, Duke Ellington over the deck and hearing them shatter on the rocks below. Rock went crazy. He told Mark, "All I have to do to get insanely angry is to visualize those records flying down the hill." Jack Navaar says he has no memory of the incident.

While Rock was traveling through Europe, Jack Navaar was spending time with a young woman named Phyllis Gates, who worked as a secretary for Henry Willson. Jack had met Phyllis in Henry's office and they had started going out to lunch. "I had a tremendous crush on Phyllis," Jack says. "I could understand why Rock thought he could fall in love with her, because I could have. She knew how to make a guy feel fabulous. She would say, 'No, honey, you don't want to eat that for lunch, you should have this because it's better for you.' She was much more attractive in person than in her photographs, she had a marvelous laugh and an incredible personality—you'd meet her and in ten minutes, you'd feel you were the most important person in her life. It was a talent."

....When they returned to Los Angeles, Jack found he was in trouble. Rock called from Venice, Italy, angry and accusatory. He had heard reports that Jack was using the house for drinking parties; that Jack had left the house unguarded and it had been robbed; that police had come to the house frequently; that Jack had been seen driving Rock's Lincoln convertible filled with unruly people yelling obscenities.

The more Rock grilled him, the angrier Jack got, and the long-distance call ended badly. Jack's checks stopped coming, and when he called Rock's business manager, he was told there was no more money for him. Jack turned to Henry Willson, but Henry implied that Rock and Jack's relationship was threatening Rock's career, and it would be in Rock's best interest if it were ended. "The Studio is capable of taking extreme measures to protect a property," Willson said.

"Everyone turned on me, including Phyllis. She disappeared," Jack says. "Everyone treated me like I was dead meat. I felt like dead meat, and I didn't want to live like that. So I did exactly what they wanted me to do. I dumped the keys at Henry's office and moved out

When Rock returned from Europe, he found the house on Grandview emptied of all traces of Jack Navaar. Rock had started living with Jack before he became a major celebrity. After Jack left. Rock became more cautious. "He went way into the closet, and didn't start coming out for fourteen years," Mark Miller says. Rock would not live with a man again until the late sixties, when social attitudes had loosened and his position as a star seemed safe.

After Giant, Rock and Elizabeth remained close friends, although they did not work together again until The Mirror Crack'd in 1980. Rock was to become close with many of the women he starred with—Doris Day, Carol Burnett, Juliet Prowse—and almost none of the men. John Foreman, who was Rock's agent after Henry Willson and who later produced Prizzi's Honor, says, as a rule, major male stars are not friends. "They steer clear of each other in a room. It's almost like two male dogs that meet on the street—they'll fight or avoid each other. They rarely become pals. It has to do with the nature of the beast that becomes a star. They're intensely competitive, and they don't have close male friends who are also stars."

So began what Mark and George were to call the "Impossible Years" with Rock, when he became, in his own words, "Charlie Movie Star."

Rock developed a slight swagger when he walked; he became more pompous, and everything was on his terms. If he wanted to see a friend, he would unilaterally set the time—"Come here at seven on Thursday." He would choose the restaurant and pay, he would never let anyone else pay. If he was invited to a party, he had to approve the guest list ahead of time. Mark and George began referring to Rock as "the movie star" or "the M.I."—the matinee idol. He was rude to waiters, and at home, when he had guests, he would take the seat nearest the phone. If it rang, he would say, "Hold it, nobody say a word." He would talk to the caller, then hang up and say, "Okay, you can go ahead now."

Have enjoyed reading this OP thank you. Would have been nice if you had included some pics of these men so close to Roy Fitzgerald-Rock Hudson. Maybe every three or four posts to show who these individuals/locations are. Would have loved to see pics of the Castle, the Playroom, Jack Nazaar etc.

My mother was a young bride in the '50s and I remember growing up that she was in love with Rock. To her he was the perfect husband, and actually my father looked like him. Yet I recall overhearing gossip when her bridge club got together that he was a "homo". I came out in the early '80s at the onset of GRID and then AIDS, and when Rock's diagnosis was revealed, my mother personalized the infection.

While never discussed, I believe her thoughts were that if a glamourous Hollywood Icon could be hit with the disease, then I was suddenly more susceptible. I think she believed that it only affected the lowest classes. A couple months following Rock's death my mother took her own life.

Anyhow, my parents were quite liberal in their beliefs, even telling us whilst growing we should live with a woman before marrying her! (I had many much older cousins who had shotgun weddings and split later). As often happens, I rebelled against my parents' morals and became quite the prude, no casual anal, fucking was only with committed partners and always as a top. Intercourse with partners in the '80s was always without condom, and I have been negative since first tested in '86.

Two longterm partners over twelve years, and single since '01, and haven't fucked a man since, though I do have a number of toys to employ regularly, as I wank at least once a day.

Rock often said he wanted to write a book called How to Be a Movie Star. There were rules:

1. Movie stars never make reservations; they walk into a restaurant and get a table.

2. Movie stars don't put money in parking meters; they never get tickets.

3. Movie stars never do bad things—it was somebody else's fault.

4. Movie stars never go to the door or answer the phone. (Rock violated this constantly.)

5. Movie stars never ask the price. This can have bizarre consequences, as when Rock was buying a birthday present for Nancy Walker and chose a blouse. As an afterthought, he picked up a scarf and told the saleswoman, "Throw this in too." When the bill came, he discovered that the scarf had been hand-painted by Salvador Dali and cost a thousand dollars.

6. Movie stars have naturally perfect bodies, they don't work out.

7. Movie stars never carry money. Rock demonstrated the wisdom of this when he drove Princess Grace home from a party at Rupert Allan's in the late sixties. Her Serene Highness was staying at the home of Kitty and Mervyn LeRoy, but the LeRoys had left the party early and Grace and Rock had stayed on, drinking, until, Rock said, "We were ripped to the tits." Grace said, "I can't go back to the LeRoys' like this," and Rock said, "Let's go to Ollie Hammond's, they're open late." So Grace in her long gown and Rock in his tuxedo were shown to a booth at Ollie Hammond's. When the check came, Rock turned to Grace. "I'm sorry, I don't carry money."

Rock developed an obsession with privacy; he disliked the press, interviews, publicity, and refused to give reporters any information about his affairs off screen. He believed his private life was his own business, and that it was a mark of dignity not to speak about it. He acquired a reputation for being wooden, a poor interview, so colorless and ungiving that it was almost a waste of time to ask him questions. One writer described him as "a windup doll"; another said he was "the most difficult star to know in Hollywood—always pleasant but totally nonrevealing." If he consented to interviews. Rock amused himself by making up anecdotes, some of which he repeated so often that he forgot he had made them up

Rock had an aversion to giving autographs. Most of the pictures sent to fans through the years were signed by Mark Miller. When Rock appeared with Carol Burnett in / Do! I Dot, he was startled to find that after the show, Carol would sit at a card table signing autographs. She said she felt she owed it to her fans, but Rock said, "You owe them the best performance you can give. You don't owe them this."

Rock was seeing numerous men, but he discovered that as a major movie star, it was increasingly difficult to get laid. People were awestruck, afraid to make the first move. They assumed that Rock was deluged with partners and wouldn't be interested. It was true that Rock could have his pick of the most beautiful young men in the country, and he used this to full advantage. But when a liaison was arranged, many young men were so self-conscious they couldn't perform.

They may have had fantasies about Rock Hudson, but when they were face to face with the real person, all they could think was "I'm in bed with Rock Hudson!" Rock told a friend, Jon Epstein, "I wish I could go to bed with a bag over my head, because when people go to bed with Rock Hudson, they're so nervous they can't do anything. It's a waste." It would take a special person with a strong ego to be a match for Rock, and in 1959, Rock had not found that person

Rock was developing a mental discipline that would allow him to control his thoughts and feelings. He did not call it "positive thinking," he never showed any interest in psychology or religion, but he had an extraordinary ability to wipe from his mind any matter that disturbed him. He could will a problem out of his thoughts so that it no longer existed.

George Nader says, "That was how he handled problems—he tuned them out. He had a marvelous way of deciding that something simply had not happened." If a friend gave Rock unpleasant news, a veil would drop over his face. He would fall silent, or change the subject, or go on talking as if he had heard nothing. Rock was able to maintain a calm assurance that whatever was happening was right.

Rock became close to Marilyn Maxwell.... In 1963, Marilyn had an ovarian cyst that burst and she came close to dying. She went to her brother's house in Armonk, New York, to recuperate, but she felt awkward there, and Rock flew to New York and brought her back to his house, where he cared for her until she was better. Marilyn said, "He left a picture to bring me home with my son. He really, literally, saved my life. He is without question the best friend I've ever had."

At Christmas, Rock called Jean Greenberg, who was Marilyn's secretary for twenty-six years, and asked for all of Marilyn's clothing sizes. Rock ordered a mannequin made up to look like her and dressed it from head to toe with presents: a white knit suit, a hat, gloves, stockings and shoes, a purse with money in it, jewelry, even underwear. On Christmas Eve, he left clues and notes around the house and Marilyn had to hunt until she found the image of herself, fully outfitted.

Jean Greenberg says, "I know for a fact they were having an affair. Marilyn confided everything in me, and she talked about it in detail. She was in love with him. She said he always told her he loved her but he wasn't in love with her."

When Rock was making The Spiral Road, he called Marilyn from Surinam and she told him how much she was missing him. "Why don't we get married?"

"Sure, I'll marry you," Rock said. "But you have to let me have my other life too. If you can put up with that ..."

Marilyn brooded about it for months. At times, she thought it could work and they would be happy. She and Rock talked about having a child, and building a nursery over the garage. But on reflection, she knew it would make her miserable if Rock was also seeing men. She told him she was jealous and couldn't handle the situation. But they continued to be lovers, on and off", and devoted friends

Imagine being blessed with such a beautiful appearance only to have to live in paranoia of your career--and livelihood--being taken away for indulging. Even in his late 50s, just before the disease's symptoms started to take a toll, he was breathtakingly beautiful.

There was a time, not even very long ago, where Movie Stars also had no bodily functions -- so no shots of bathrooms, no applying deodorant (shaving was okay, masculine), no bad breath/toothpaste ads, no gross variety medicine either. (I worked for a manager of a relatively big TV star in the late 80s and he wasn't allowed to do any of these things either).

Sounds silly but I kind of prefer it to these days where I get to watch actors on the toilet and actresses/stand-ups discussing every bowel movement. Puke.

Just so sad that he was one of the first. And so sad for all of those who died early, before effective drugs made living with HIV/AIDS a reality.

He thought he was relatively impervious to the disease. He had fucked so many guys, he thought that because he hadn't been part of that first "wave" of deaths, he was in the clear.

Mark Miller, Hudson's secretary and partner of George Nader appears in so many of these stories, but it appears that this Mark Miller is not the actor Mark Miller.

It is mentioned somewhere above that he had left his own career, but it's never specified what that career was.

Any information or pictures on him?

Despite Rock's claims about wanting privacy at home, he refused to lock the doors or shut the gates to the Castle. If a staff member locked the front door. Rock would shout, "Who locked the goddamn door? I want it open!" George Nader says, "There was always the chance of an encounter that way. He wanted the world to enter. He hked the excitement of the unknown."

When Rock came home from work, he would ask, "Any calls? Anything juicy in the mail?" He wanted to see letters from fans who included photographs of themselves. When the door bell rang, Joy says, "He'd be at the door faster than the dogs. When the phone rang, he'd grab it.

In 1962, the year Rock acquired his house, a young man named Lee Garlington was working as an extra on a TV show. The Virginian, being shot at Universal. Lee had come to California the year before from Atlanta, where he had been raised in a wealthy, conservative family. He had gone into the army and come out with a flattop and a desire to be an actor.

"Once I hit town, that was it," Lee says. "No way I was going to be anywhere else but right in the middle of Hollywood. It was so gay! There were bars, and people walking up and down the street and it was very exciting. I thought, all you had to do was be pretty and you could be discovered like I heard Rock Hudson was."

Lee found work as an extra at Universal, where he heard Rock was shooting Man's Favorite Sport. "I'd heard about this man so much. In the gay subculture, he was talked about all the time—how he was gay and very handsome and a kind person, well liked. So I decided, by golly, I'm gonna see this man."

Lee was twenty-five, tall and blond, and he had no gay mannerisms—the exact type Rock was most attracted to. On one of his lunch breaks, Lee went to the cottage that had been pointed out to him as Rock's private quarters. He stood outside the cottage, pretending to read Variety. Lee recalls, "My God, it just so happened that he walked past me, walked into his cottage and I got a chance to see him."

Lee stood vigil until Rock came out a half hour later. Rock walked by again but did not look at him. "I thought, man, I really made an impression. I was too shy to say anything. I practically had the Variety in front of my nose." Rock walked about fifty yards down the street, stopped, turned and looked back at Lee over his shoulder. Then he walked on. That was the only acknowledgment Rock gave Lee that he had noticed him, and for months Lee kicked himself for not having seized the opportunity.

In 1963, Lee gave up on acting and took a job with a stockbrokerage firm in Beverly Hills. He had been living with another young man, but they broke up, and as soon as Lee had moved out and found his own apartment, he received a call from an acquaintance. "There's somebody who would like to meet you."

"What are you talking about?" Lee said.

"Someone well known."

"Who is it?"

"Rock Hudson."

Lee was flabbergasted. It had been six months since that brief passing look at the Studio. How had Rock found out who he was and where he lived? Lee learned, later, that Rock had wanted to make contact sooner, but had heard Lee was "involved" and had waited until he was on his own.

The mutual acquaintance invited Lee to go up to Rock's house and meet him. "I was scared to death," Lee says. "We talked, and had a couple drinks, and then we tried to play around but I was so intimidated that nothing happened. I mean, zero. I thought, oh, well, he'll never want to see me again. But he was patient. He understood I was nervous and it wasn't that big a deal to him that we couldn't have sex."

Rock began seeing Lee several times a week, and Lee overcame his shyness. Lee would drive up to the Castle after work in his 1963 Chevy Nova, sleep there, and at six in the morning, he'd get in his car and let it roll down the hill so Joy and the neighbors wouldn't find out he'd spent the night. But Joy knew. Years later, she told Lee, "You wasn't pullin' any wool over my eyes."

Rock and Lee became the major person in each other's life. Lee wanted to live with Rock, but "that was out of the question. He was concerned about his image, but I would have moved in in a second." Rock admired Lee's independence. He was working hard to become a broker, he never asked Rock for anything, and when they traveled together, he insisted on paying his way. They rarely went out to parties or dinners; they stayed at the Castle, talking, watching movies, and Rock drank what Lee considered an excessive number of martinis while Lee struggled to keep up.

"Rock was fun, he was always in a good humor, I never saw him get angry at anyone," Lee says. Six months after they met, Rock gave Lee a gold keyring with the key to his house. It was inscribed: "At the end of the first quarter the home team was ahead and at the end of the half the visitor is ahead damn it. R.H."

In 1964, Rock and Lee went on a trip through the South. Rock thought the Studio might object if they knew he was going off traveling with another man, and in a drunken moment, he said he would go to the head of the Studio and tell him, "I'm gay, I have a lover and if you don't Uke it, shove it up your ass."

"No way are you going to do that!" Lee said. When Rock had cooled, he decided simply to leave quietly with Lee and tell no one. They flew to New Orleans, tourist class, because Lee was paying his way. Lee told Rock, "I can't afford first class. I know that's what you're used to, but all I've got is tourist class and I barely have that." Rock said, "Okay, fine," and sat with Lee in the tourist section.

Lee says he was overwhelmed by Rock—his fame, money and power— and struggled to maintain his own identity. "It was hard to handle. Since the fifties, I'd gone to the movies and seen him as this hero, larger than life. After I met him, I would watch him do love scenes and know exactly what moves he was going to make, because he did the same things with me."

Lee expected Rock to be strong and heroic in real life. "He was so big and towered over me, I wanted him to be a father figure, but he wasn't. He was shy—when the phone rang, he'd grab a cigarette. He could not speak on the phone unless he had a cigarette in his hand. He drank too much and was really sort of passive. He was easily controlled by the people around him, by his hangers-on, and I found myself dominating him."

Disappointed that Rock did not match his image of a strong paternal figure, Lee began to seek out men younger than himself, where he could be the father. "Also, I was attracted to people who were smaller than me, so I was not that attracted to Rock sexually."

On the sly, Lee had affairs with men in their early twenties, but he felt guilty and began developing an ulcer. One night. Rock called Lee at his apartment, wanting to come by, and Lee had a young man with him. "Rock was devastated. I tried to hide it, but I couldn't, he knew what was going on."

Lee went up to the house and told Rock they would have to break up. Rock got drunk and cried. "I think it was the first time anybody dared break up with him, a huge movie star," Lee says. "It was all my fault, not his."

Lee was to drift in and out of Rock's life for nine years. Perhaps it was because Lee was elusive, but Rock became obsessed with him and was always eager to start up again. It became one of those back-and-forth relationships that was never resolved. Lee would go off and have an affair, then break up and Rock was "waiting in the wings. We'd have lunch or dinner and decide to take a trip, but then I'd split again."

They went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and in 1971, to Banff" and Lake Louise in Canada. Lee worked as a stockbroker for many years, then started a medical-electronics company that he built into a successful enterprise, sold it and invested his profits in real estate. He went back to college for a Ph.D. in psychology, and at present, he is counseling coordinator at a community clinic.

Before Rock died, he told Mark Miller that Lee Garlington was one of the people in his life he had truly loved. I told this to Lee, and tears came to his eyes. He had to cover his face. He had not seen Rock since 1973, and had been unable to make contact with him after he learned he had AIDS.

"After Rock and Tom Clark got together, I was frozen out. I never got a hostile word from Rock, but I was given the feeling from Tom that I was not welcome. I was told Rock had been so hurt by me that I had no right to be his friend anymore. Since it had been my fault, I was embarrassed, and I just sort of drifted out of the picture."

Lee said he wished he had been more mature when he had known Rock. "I didn't have enough sense to realize what a wonderful man he was and to hang in there. If I'd been older and had more sense, we probably would be living together today."

In 1962, after fourteen years with Henry Willson, Rock gathered the nerve to extricate himself and change agents. He had been disgruntled with Henry for many years, but had stayed because of loyalty and fear of Henry's response. Henry was not developing projects for Rock or aggressively seeking good roles. "He sat back and waited for the phone to ring," Rock said. Rock signed with John Foreman at C.M.A., who said Rock was "virtually unexposed around town. No one knew him, casting directors weren't thinking of him. He didn't go out much or entertain. Henry Will-son wasn't interested in hustling and I was.

In the sixties, the trend in entertainment shifted from glamour to realism. Television had reduced the stature of stars: They were no longer mythical and larger than hfe, but tiny figures who appeared in a box in the living room. The new male stars were referred to as "the little uglies"— Dustin HoflFman, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Richard Dreyfuss—who were excellent actors but not knights. "You couldn't put them on a white charger," Rock protested. "They'd tumble off and make a mess." They were ordinary guys who performed in ordinary stories.

Rock was one of a dying breed—a movie star built by the studio, promoted by fan magazines, whose looks had been more important, initially, than his acting ability. There was nothing lifelike about him. "How could he suddenly play a smaller than life, utterly realistic figure?" John Foreman said. "You can't imagine Rock Hudson and Al Pacino on the same planet, let alone in the same film."

These were the years of social and political upheaval in the country, and Rock actively disliked politics. He thought of himself as a patriotic American, and voted Republican. But he would never take part in a political discussion, let alone a movement. He did not endorse candidates or attend functions, and he never gave money to a campaign. He watched the Vietnam protests and civil unrest on television with bewilderment. The closest he came to any direct involvement was during the Watts riots of 1965

On that summer night in 1965, Rock stood on the deck with Joy and watched the smoke rise up over the ghetto, where blacks were looting and setting fires and there were gun battles between police and residents. Joy was worried about her best friend, Peggy, who lived in Watts. She called Peggy and found she had no electricity and little food in the house and had barricaded herself in. Rock said, "Tell her we're coming."

By the time they pulled up to Peggy's house, Joy was sweating and her teeth were clenched. They honked, Peggy ran out, got in the car and said, "Let's get out of here." Rock sped back to Beverly Hills. Joy told him, "If the Studio knew where you were just now, they'd have flipped." When the group reached the Castle, they went straight to the bar. Joy recalls, "I said, Roy, fill 'em up, please. We drank a lot that night, and laughed. When you finish something like that, you feel your nerves.'

In 1964, after seven years in the number-one position. Rock dropped to number-two "Name Power Star" in the Motion Picture Film Buyers' poll. In 1965, he dropped to the top ten, where he remained in 1966. Then in 1967, he fell off the chart completely.

The irony was that Rock was hitting his stride as an actor just as he was losing his popular standing. In 1966, he appeared in Seconds, which showed a depth and brilliance to his acting that he'd never had the opportunity to display. It was neither a romance nor a comedy, but a dark, cautionary tale.

The film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in the spring of 1966. Rock stopped in Hamburg to visit Mark Miller and George Nader, who had moved to Germany in 1964 when George signed a contract to make eleven pictures in which he played Jerry Cotton, an FBI agent who was a kind of German James Bond. Mark and George met Rock at the airport, and as they drove back to town. Rock said, "I want to tell you something, right off. I am now a world-famous star."

They looked at him quizzically. "Good. Good."

"I mean it, you guys. I'm a world star."

"Wonderful," George said. "How was your flight?"

Later, when Mark and George were alone, they wondered what had gotten into Rock. "We knew he was a world star. He delivered the news as if it was the word of God come down from the mountain, etched in stone. It was hard to take. This was the guy we used to buy dinner for from tips Mark earned at the drive-in. We went back too far and had seen too much to have him pull this."

Mark flew with Rock to Cannes, while George stayed in Germany to work. Paramount arranged for Rock to take Pamela Tiffin and for Mark to take another actress, Edra Gayle, to the screening of Seconds. They drove to the Palace of Fine Arts in separate limousines, and sat in separate sections. When the film ended, the audience booed.

The M.C. came on stage and said, "Mesdames et messieurs, we have a surprise: in the balcony, Monsieur Rock Hudson." It was an awkward moment for Rock, but the booing changed instantly to cheers and applause as people rose to their feet. It was disconcerting, but later Mark realized, "They were applauding him for his previous films."

Rock and Mark went to different parties, and met back at the Carlton Hotel at four in the morning. "Shit," Rock said. "I thought I had a hit."

Mark told him the first half hour of the film, before Rock appeared, was slow and dull. "It's gonna kill you. Can't you get them to reshoot it?" No, Rock said, that was not possible. The film was released in America and quickly disappeared. Over the years, however, it began to acquire a cult following, and Rock started receiving awards and praise from film societies and universities. In time. Rock came to like it again, and to count it among his best work.

In the summer of 1966, Rock terminated his contract at Universal and became, at last, a free agent, free to make pictures anywhere and to choose the roles he wanted, not those dictated by the Studio. But his latest films had not been hits, and he found himself dressed up with nowhere to go. The phone did not ring with offers. Rock grew despondent; he had been accustomed to working all the time. Was the wild ride over?

It was about this time that Rock came out of the "impossible stage" and returned to being the Rock Hudson his old friends had known. "He came down off his high horse," George Nader says, "just in time to jump into the bottle."

Rock started drinking heavily every night. He would not eat until ten or eleven, because he wanted another Scotch and soda and would not drink after eating. When he invited friends for dinner, they'd start dropping hints and then ask outright to be fed, but Rock would say, "Oh, let's have another drink." Joy told people, "If you're invited here for dinner, you better eat first." When Tom Clark was asked why Rock was drinking so much, he said, "He can't stand it that he's no longer number one."

Rock was becoming close to Tom Clark, who worked as a publicist at M.G.M. They had met in 1964 at a bridge game, and Rock had begun to have dinners with Tom and his longtime companion, Pete De Palma. Shortly after leaving Universal, Rock went to the Far East with De Palma, and while in Hong Kong, Rock received a disturbing call from his business manager, Andy Maree. Rock did not understand finance and had no interest in understanding it—he left the handling of his money completely to Maree. He was taken unaware, then, when Maree told him, "You're down to fifteen hundred dollars in the bank. You better come home and get to work."

om Clark told Rock that Martin Ransohoff was producing a picture at M.G.M. called Ice Station Zebra. "God, I'd love to do that," Rock said.

"Why don't you come out to the studio and have lunch with me, then walk into Marty's office and say, 'Hi, I'm Rock Hudson and I would like to do Ice Station Zebra. ' " Rock took Tom's advice, his agent also lobbied, and when Laurence Harvey backed out of the starring role. Rock got the part.

The picture gave Rock a lift—he was still a star—and he exhibited a boyish excitement about the technical aspects of the production:

While Rock was shooting the picture, in 1967, he met an unusual young man who would prove Rock's match for silliness and giggling. He would be the first man to live with Rock since 1954, and the Castle would come alive with laughter and play.

"I love to smoke. I keep hoping someone will discover it's a healthy habit because the smoke kills all the germs in your system. I love to drink, and I hate exercise. I don't mind going out on the side of a hill and chopping down a tree, but I hate organized exercise. I built a gym in my house but I never use it. I don't even like to walk through it."

R157

Mark Miller appears and talks in this Rock Hudson documentary

Thank you, R169.

Aww, I love that Watts Riots story.

In the video linked at R169, Mark Miller says that Hudson received a letter from a guy he (Hudson) had had sex with in New York. The letter came 6 months after the encounter. In the letter the sender wrote that he was very, very sorry but he had just discovered he was HIV positive which he did not know at the time of the encounter with Hudson.

See the 21:18 mark of the video linked at R169.

On a lighter note...

Hudson and Nancy Walker's tango from an episode of McMillan and Wife.

I wonder how many times they broke up laughing before they finished this scene.

His first roommate, Bob Preble, was cute.

[quote] Rock was tested for the lead in his first major film, Magnificent Obsession. The director, Douglas Sirk, had already signed Jane Wyman, who was then married to Ronald Reagan.

No, she wasn't. Magnificent Obsession started pre-production in 1953. Wyman had been divorced from Reagan since 1949; he was already married to Nancy Davis at this time. If this book can't even get a simple fact like this correct, which is easily checked, it makes me wonder about its other facts.

Who was the silly giggling boy from the last excerpt?

Gosh, this really is sad. It does sound like he had a good life before he got sick.

I wonder if Nancy Reagan really did make a phone call to the American Hospital on his behalf? I had always heard she did not and that was part of why I disliked her so much!

Here’s a photo of Lee Garlington at the link.