Rock Hudson: The Gentle Giant

by David Bret

  With several weeks to go before shooting began on the new film, Rock flew to Paris with Betty Abbott and his co-star, Barbara Rush, who had separated from husband Jeff Chandler. They stayed here for a few days before hiring a car to tour Southern France and Italy. In Europe, Rock was able to shrug off those inhibitions imposed on him of late by Hollywood stardom. He dated men openly in Paris, Rome, Florence and in Venice, where he began a passionate affair with “Massimo”, a twenty-one-year-old Italian actor, a relationship which would endure, off and on, for more than twenty years.

  The locations for Captain Lightfoot were shot in Clogerhead, a village in County Louth, and moved to Powerscourt, a large country estate in County Wicklow, for the interiors. Set in 1815 the story centres around the struggle between Irish peasants and the English authorities. Rock plays Michael Martin, aka Captain Lightfoot, who robs wealthy Englishmen and gives the money to the poor, until he goes on the run, and joins forces with the infamous John Doherty (Jeff Morrow), aka Captain Thunderbolt.

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  There were rumours that Rock might have been having an affair with his love interest in the film, Barbara Rush, but Rock only had eyes for one man—Massimo, who had an uncredited part in the production.

  Off-set, Rock and Massimo spent a lot of time with Rock’s stunt double in the film, a young Irishman named Tommy Yeardye, then the lover of Diana Dors—though he will chiefly be remembered as one of the co-founders of the Vidal Sassoon hairdressing empire. Yeardye (1930-2004) had been born into a family of peasant farmers but raised in Mill Hill, London, by his mother who had moved here in search of work. To help out at home, as a child he had earned pennies taking photographs of tourists around Leicester Square and Piccadilly. As a teenager he had hustled for sex in gambling joints such as Winstons, in Bond Street, where he had amassed a clientele of wealthy women—and allegedly a few men—whilst brushing shoulders with several kingpins of the criminal fraternity, including the Krays and the Charlie Richardson gang. Softy spoken but hard as nails, six-foot-four and tipping the scales at 200 pounds, Yeardye was a serial poser, nicknamed “Mr Muscles” by friends. In the summer of 1954, whilst visiting his family in Ireland, he answered a newspaper advertisement placed by Universal, in search of an actor to double for Rock. The two men were exactly the same size, height and weight and Rock took to him at once, stopping short of becoming lovers only because of Yeardye’s jet-black hair—Rock’s lovers always had to be blond. A few weeks after completing Captain Lightfoot, Yeardye was hired as stuntman for the much less enterprising Dick Turpin: Highwayman, though his and Rock’s paths would soon cross again.

  Whilst Rock was in Europe, Jack Navaar stayed put at the Grandview house—as much his as it was Rock’s, though the Universal chiefs took exception to “Mrs. Hudson”—opening the

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  door to callers and driving around town in his lover’s blatantly recognisable yellow convertible. Initially, Henry Willson attempted to resolve the situation by pairing Navaar with a young employee, Phyllis Gates, an attractive brunette who soon would add even more confusion to the already complex Hudson-Willson equation.

  Three weeks Rock’s junior, Phyllis Lucille Gates (1925-2006) had been born and raised on a farm near Montevideo, a small town in Minnesota, to an Anglo-German father and a Norwegian mother. Following brief spells and varying occupations in Minneapolis, Kansas City, Miami and New York, she had moved to California at the end of 1953, and shortly afterwards had been engaged as Henry Willson’s private secretary, though initially she does not appear to have liked him very much, observing in her 1987 memoir, My Husband, Rock Hudson:

  His exquisite grooming could not compensate for his basic unattractiveness. His face was a misshapen mask: the weak chin, the fleshy lips, the bulbous nose, the wide-apart lifeless eyes, heavy eyebrows and receding black hair. You could understand why he made a career of discovering and exploiting beauty.

  In her book, Phyllis refers to Jack Navaar as “Bill McGiver”, and tells of how, when she asked Willson for time off so that she could visit her parents in Minnesota, Willson came up with a suggestion that would save her air fare—one of his clients, a failed actor named Navaar, was driving out to the Midwest to spend some time with his family, and he would be able to drop her off in Montevideo, then pick her up one week later and bring her back to California.

  According to Phyllis—who it is now known was well aware of

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  Willson’s recruitment techniques and the fact that most if not all of his male clients were gay or bisexual—Navaar failed to tell her that he and Rock were living together until they were several days into their journey…and even then she claimed in her book not to have worked out the obvious, she writes because Navaar treated her as though they been going steady. He kept up the charade, later confiding in Sara Davidson how he had developed a tremendous crush on Phyllis, adding:

  I could understand why Rock thought he could fall in love with her, because I could. She knew how to make a guy feel fabulous. She had a marvellous 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.

  Navaar also claimed that throughout the trip, he and Phyllis had checked into hotels as husband and wife, but though they had slept in the same room they had never shared a bed. By the time they reached Montevideo they had become so close that Phyllis asked Navaar to stay with her before they moved on to Kansas, where they attended both gay and lesbian parties. The fun continued, as discreetly as was possible, when the pair returned to Los Angeles. They were seen regularly at Camille’s, a women’s venue near Laguna Beach, where Navaar claimed that Phyllis had gone off with a woman and not been seen for two days, and in Santa Monica’s Tropical Village, one of Rock’s favourite watering holes.

  When Willson realised his plan had backfired, he called Rock in Ireland and ordered him to end his relationship with Navaar before it was too late and he was exposed by the press. Without asking Rock’s permission, the manager stopped Navaar’s weekly

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  allowance, which Rock had been paying since setting up home with him, and forbade Phyllis Gates from seeing him again. Rock’s behaviour towards the man for whom he had once declared that he would have given up everything was equally heartless. He insulted Navaar over the telephone—calling him “dirty faggot”, and threatened him with physical violence should he still be hanging around when he arrived home.

  Within twenty-four hours, one of Willson’s cronies had relieved Navaar of his lover’s car, confiscated his keys to the Grandview house, and removed all evidence that he had ever been near the place. Such actions were quickly relayed to Confidential’s Robert Harrison—if not by Navaar himself then by friends who had quite rightly decided that Rock and his manager deserved all that was coming to them. The story, like its predecessor, never made it to the printed page because once more Willson traded Rock for someone else—really rubbing salt into the wounds, for this time the scapegoat was George Nader, who had just completed Robot Monster, listed in The Golden Turkey Awards as one of the worst films of all time. Nader, who spends much of his on-screen time flexing his muscles and looking lost had, according to Harrison’s ever-dubious sources, been involved with one of the other actors.

  Again, the exclusive was spiked following a large pay-off from the studio, and when Harrison threatened to divulge to Universal who had set Nader up in the first place, Willson sent his heavies to Harrison’s office to threaten him with a fate worse than death, should he ever let on what had happened. Once Rock realised that even one of his closest friends—a supposed model of discretion—was not safe from the gutter press, he swore that he would never again risk living with a man, a promise he would stick to for another twenty years.

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  Rock and James Best having a giggle on the set of Seminole. Barbara Hale, sitting next to Rock, was edited out of the picture by some of the more salacious tabloids who wanted to give the impression that Rock and Best w
ere an item.

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  As Harun, in The Golden Blade.

  With Jane Wyman in Magnificent Obsession.

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  Whilst movie magazines ran stories

  like this, aware that Rock was gay…

  …the studios tried to throw them off the scent by

  releasing photographs such as this, taken in Ireland

  whilst he was making Captain Lightfoot.

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  Rock, Massimo and Barbara Hale, meeting fans whilst filming

  Captain Lightfoot.

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  3: “Why Aren’t You Married, Bick?”

  “If you’re cast in crap like Taza, it doesn’t matter if you experiment with a scene and it goes wrong. Who’s gonna notice? But if it works, you can use it in a better film. Like Giant, perhaps.” Rock Hudson.

  In August 1954, Rock returned to Hollywood, thinking himself free from Robert Harrison’s threats, but instead found himself reeling at the horrendous headline penned by Louella Parsons, “Rock Hudson: Will He Put His Career Ahead Of Matrimony?”

  Parsons might just as well have told her readers the truth—there was enough innuendo in her column to finish him once and for all. Worse still was a follow-up article in Movie-TV Secrets:

  Rock Hudson. He is handsome, personable, intelligent, and a top-salaried actor. So what’s wrong with Rock where the fair sex is concerned, we ask?

  Henry Willson realised that if he was to save his and the studio’s most prodigious investment, he would have to act fast and actually supply Rock with a wife. His one stumbling block in this respect was finding one who would not be recognised by Rock’s peers, particularly the ones he had “serviced”. Neither would any ordinary “lavender” bride suffice in this instance. As the archetypal ultra-macho, wholesome boy-next-door type, Rock Hudson would be expected to fall in love, become engaged, and marry a woman from a background similar to his own—certainly not some glamour-puss or movie-queen. And of course, to prevent a repeat of the Parsons feature, it would have to be a whirlwind romance. Once again, Willson provided the ideal candidate: for the second time, Phyllis Gates was brought in to play the gay man’s “beard”, this time on a permanent basis.

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  Rock went along Willson’s devious plan, complying implicitly with his every instruction. So too, it is now known, did Phyllis. For her, there was much to be gained financially in making the leap from humble secretary to the wife of a wealthy matinee idol, whether this was to be a “lavender” marriage or not. Thus the press were told that the Hudson-Gates “affair” had begun innocuously enough in June 1954 when, having met her several times in her capacity as his manager’s secretary, Rock had asked her out on a series of dinner-dates which had subsequently been cancelled, usually because of last-minute interviews with movie magazines. This had enabled him to fuel the gossip columns by explaining that his fans were so important that he had had to let his girlfriend down.

  Phyllis claimed in her book, My Husband, Rock Hudson, that she had seen things differently and recalled telling Willson, “I don’t enjoy having people make dates with me and then cancel them. Tell your number one client to stop bothering me.”

  Responding to her obituary in the Los Angeles Times, The Advocate wrote: “To read that and other newspaper whitewashes of her memory, you would have to believe that Gates was a loving Brokeback Mountain wife.” The editorial then quotes Henry Willson’s biographer, Robert Hofler, who claimed that the two-hundred or so people he had spoken to had all said the same thing: Phyllis had been a lesbian who before arriving in Los Angeles had “cruised the ports of Miami looking for Jo Carstairs”—this was the infamous oil heiress who had spent millions on racing cars, speedboats, and even owned a private island to which she had taken her female conquests.

  Phyllis Gates began penning her memoirs the moment she learned that Rock was dying of AIDS, and she was clearly out to give the impression that she had been dragged to the altar, when all the time she had known exactly what she had been doing, and

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  seen those vital dollar signs above a non-existent marital bed.

  In the meantime, the charade continued. Rock fabricated the story that he had “just happened” to bump into Phyllis whilst she had been out buying Christmas decorations, but instead of sticking to this story, she writes that he had been with a lover he had introduced as “Craig”. Bearing in mind that she claimed not to have known that Rock was gay until after they were married, by making such a statement she shoots herself in the foot big time. Craig was 23-year-old William Reynolds, contracted to appear in Rock’s next film, All That Heaven Allows. This very scenario would be incorporated into its plot—with Rock’s character being with a female companion. Not only this, the character played by Rock’s leading lady, Jane Wyman, is called Cary Scott—which Rock was convinced had been devised as an in-joke reference to his favourite real-life gay couple, Cary Grant and Randolph Scott. It was as if the scriptwriter was deliberately inviting the press to make something of the situation.

  This time, Phyllis says, Rock kept his dinner appointment, bringing along Henry Willson and a male friend—one assumes, reading her diatribe, so that the all-powerful Svengali and Rock’s latest squeeze could witness his miraculous transformation from gay to straight by the time the waiter came in with the dessert. After this, she adds, they began dating regularly and sleeping together...yet even when discussing their “physical” relationship she never misses out an opportunity to bring Rock down, as she concludes, “His big hands were amazingly gentle as he began to explore and I fell completely under his spell. The love act itself was sublime, passionate, though it ended sooner than I would have liked. I figured Rock had been overly excited.”

  Like any dutiful son, Rock took his new “girlfriend” to meet his folks—though Kay, aware of his sexuality and upset over his split from Jack Navaar, must have seen through the charade. The

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  press were alerted by Henry Willson that his client’s relationship with his curvy young secretary was “hot”, with Willson well aware that moralists would attack Rock for his “out of wedlock practices”—but that at least he would be at the centre of a scandal involving a woman, and hopefully be free from attack from the likes of Robert Harrison. With the latter still pestering Jack Navaar, Rock must have been relieved when the story about him and Phyllis broke in the Hollywood Reporter early in 1955.

  This “exclusive” coincided with Universal being approached by MGM, who offered them $1 million for a six-month loan-out of their biggest draw which would commence immediately Giant had been completed, and would involve him appearing in two films. The offer was refused: shooting was about to begin on All That Heaven Allows, Rock’s second pairing with Jane Wyman. To make up for his disappointment and resentment, Universal raised Rock’s salary to $1,250 a week and loaned him the $38,000 for a house that had recently taken his fancy. On top of this he was given $10,000 to furnish it to his requirements—a task he assigned to Phyllis, seeing as she was going to be expected to share this “love nest” with him.

  Though not as successful as Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows is a moving tale of small town bigotry, narrow-mindedness and prejudice, highlighted by Frank Skinner’s haunting score, beautifully photographed wintry landscapes, and lots of stylised searching reflections. Rock plays Ron Kirby, a freelance gardener relegated to anonymity by snobbish clients until he inadvertently charms his way in the affections of wealthy widow Cary Scott. When she announces that they are to marry, their relationship is condemned by her grown-up children, along with most of the townspeople. The plum-line comes from her son, Ned (William Reynolds) who cattily observes, “I think all you see is a good-looking set of muscles,” yet another in-joke

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  if Reynolds was Rock’s lover at the time. The pair therefore end their affair and sink into a pit of self-inflicted misery for having listened to so many naysayers: Ron sulks alone in a snowy wasteland, whilst Cary takes
her best friend’s advice and settles for the perfect antidote to middle-class domestic boredom—a television set given to her as a Christmas gift from her offspring, who clearly consider this more beneficial than being in love. The salesman explains, as the camera captures her jaundiced close-up and forlorn expression reflected in the screen, “All you have to do is turn that dial, and you have all the company you want right there on the screen—drama, comedy, life’s parade at your fingertips.” The lovers are reunited, however, when Ron is hurt in an accident and Cary nurses him back to health, by which time she has found the belated courage to stand up to her oppressors.

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  The two-bedroom property that Rock had recently bought was at 9151 Warbler Place, off Sunset Boulevard. Surrounded by tall trees and with a several-hundred-foot ivy-clad rock face as its backdrop, the building resembled a hunting lodge, though the features that most impressed Rock were the wealth of interior woodwork, heavy rustic beams, the huge floor-to-ceiling barbecue—and the automatic gates that would keep out fans and, more importantly, snoopers.