Rock Hudson: The Gentle Giant

by David Bret

  In television you have to remember that what you’re doing will come out of a little box. So you have to exaggerate and play everything bigger than life. You can’t be subtle or your character will get lost. On the big screen the slightest move—the lifting of an eyebrow, the curling of a lip—comes across like a blasting horn because it’s magnified twenty times. The same thing will register zero on TV...We also had a different director on every show, and he’d say to me, “Come in the door, go over to the fireplace and put a log on.” And I wanted to say, “Well, I can’t do that. I just did that on the last show with the other director! So I went to the office and told the producer, “The director’s doing stuff that I don’t think is any good.” And he said to me, “You don’t understand—you have to direct!” And the scripts became progressively worse as the seasons wore on. They weren’t particularly funny and we had to ad-lib a lot of them. That’s dangerous. Comedy should be proven, well-worked out—not done off the cuff.

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  In the summer of 1974, Rock and Carol Burnett took I Do! I Do! On the road. There were short seasons in Washington, where they took an evening off to perform some of the routines at the White House, and in St Louis where some of Rock’s relatives lived. Tom Clark arranged for Rock’s mother to be flown out from California, and organised a family reunion—which made Rock cringe because, for Kay’s sake he said, he had been forced to acknowledge a bunch of strangers. Clark later repeated (to Sara Davidson) a conversation he claimed he had had with Kay at this time, which intimated that Roy Scherer may not have been Rock’s father. Whether Rock knew this is unclear, though he was certainly aware of his mother’s flighty past, and probably would not have put anything past her.

  This sudden appearance of so many family members he had never heard of until now—people who could legally make claims on his estate, should anything befall him—filled Rock with such trepidation that upon his return to Hollywood he contacted his lawyers and had them draw up a will leaving virtually everything to Tom Clark, and to Mark Miller and George Nader should Clark predecease them. And in the event of all three dying before him, there was a codicil instructing that his estate should be divided amongst his favourite charities.

  Rock’s next film was a Grand Guignol-meets-Machiavelli schlockfest which saw him following in the horror footsteps of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Embryo was directed by Ralph Nelson. Co-starring were Barbara Ferrara and Diane Ladd—the latter would portray Rock’s mother in the television biopic, Rock Hudson. “There’s a little bit of Frankenstein, a little bit of Svengali, a little bit of Seconds, but overall it’s like no other film I’ve been offered,” he told David Castell. “Obviously there is some horror, some bloody moments, but only where the script absolutely calls for it.”

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  Like Pretty Maids All in a Row, on account of the insensitive handling of its subject matter Embryo is hardly likely to appear in any Hudson retrospective. It is tacky, tasteless, camp in the extreme during its closing scenes, but compulsive viewing all the same. The opening credits inform us that what we are about to see is not science fiction, but “based on current foetal growth outside the womb medical technology”. Rock plays scientist Paul Holliston who experiments with a growth hormone, placental lactogen, which he tests on a puppy—enabling it to reach adulthood in mere days. And needless to say, it is not long before he is experimenting on a human foetus, with what may only be described as very unpleasant results.

  Meanwhile, there was an allegedly not-so-friendly parting of the ways between Rock and Susan Saint James when her contract with Universal expired and she refused to negotiate another unless the studio agreed to a substantial salary increase. Some reports alleged that Rock had threatened to boycott the series unless she was forced out, though there is no evidence to support this. Nancy Walker also left the show while John Schuck announced that he only wanted to appear in the occasional episode. Rock’s contract with Universal had one year to run and initially the studio considered supplying him with a replacement Sally. This, he declared, in the days when character face-changes in American soaps were not as commonplace as they are today, would succeed only in making the series even less credible than it already was. Therefore an uneasy compromise was reached. Sally was killed off in a pre-episode plane crash.

  Retitled McMillan, the series featured a new-look Mack: a little greyer around the temples, chain-smoking and hard-drinking, and falling for a different woman at the end of each episode, while off set Rock was still enjoying his “token fucks” with blond studs who seemed to be getting younger. There was a new

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  sidekick in baby-faced Steve DiMaggio, played by Richard Galliland, who later appeared in The Waltons—while the ubiquitous, whisky-loving housekeeper had been replaced by her equally bossy sister, Agatha, brilliantly portrayed by comedienne Martha Raye. The fact that Raye (1916-94), a top name in Hollywood for forty years, had received a special Oscar in 1969 for entertaining the troops in the Korean and Vietnam Wars went a long way towards Rock suggesting her for the part.

  The end of the road for McMillan was heralded by an episode entitled Affair of the Heart, in which Stephanie Powers played a district attorney with whom Mack falls in love. The pair got along so well that Rock told Universal that he wanted her as his sidekick in the next series. Powers, however, was committed to a number of other projects, including the Hart To Hart television series with Robert Wagner. Rock reacted by announcing that the current batch of McMillans would therefore be his last.

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  With Marilyn Maxwell.

  With Susan Saint James in McMillan & Wife.

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  9: Threes On Their Knees

  “He would try to pass himself off rather touchingly as being interested in gay rights whenever I was around him. Clearly, Rock didn’t have a clue about gay rights.” Armistead Maupin.

  In November 1975, Rock’s friends organised a bash at the Castle to honour his fiftieth birthday. Guests were asked to wear fancy dress, and for some reason most of them turned up as Arabs. A few hours before the party, Rock and Tom Clark had a lover’s tiff, and though they made up at once, Clark laughingly swore to have his “revenge”. When all the guests were assembled, Rock descended the staircase—camp-like to the strains of “You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby”, wearing nothing but an oversized nappy. Later Rock put on Clark’s present—a customised tee-shirt with the slogan, “Rock Is A Prick”.

  A few weeks later, Rock took I Do! I Do! To London, on the face of it not a wise move, for critics were still recoiling from the abysmal revival, seven years previously at the Lyric Theatre, with Ian Carmichael and Anne Rogers. Rock was not to know this, and in any case most of the tickets had been sold before he left Los Angeles. It opened on 21 January 1976 at the Phoenix Theatre—in a “Hollywood” season that included Louis Jourdan and Glynis Johns in 13, Rue de l’Amour and Charlton Heston in Macbeth. Carol Burnett was taking a break from the production and Rock’s leading lady was Juliet Prowse. The reviews were exceptional, even if the star became bored with it all halfway through the run, as he explained to David Castell:

  Juliet and I have got to the point where our minds wander during the songs. I remember Carol giving me some advice. She said one night she was in the middle of a number…and she caught herself wondering about what

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  to buy in the market. She was so shocked that she wrenched herself back into the show, and it was only then that she blew the lyric. The advice was, always go with the dream. So I find myself thinking, “Shall I eat Italian tonight? Shall I start with avocado?”

  Rock’s customary geniality was tested during the London run by one unnamed critic, who observed, “Hudson wasn’t as bad as I hoped he would be.”

  “That’s really below the belt, and that’s just where I’ll hit him if we ever meet up,” Rock told Castell. “I don’t know why there are critics at all, let alone why they should be paid for exercising their egos.”

  With another jo
urnalist—distinguished British film critic and historian Roy Pickard, then writing for Photoplay—Rock was less interested in discussing the play than he was in confessing that he was still in mourning for James Dean:

  The last words I said to Jimmy Dean came from a line in the movie because after that very shot he had to get away from the set and race his Little Spyder up the freeway to get killed. “You’re through, finished,” was the line I said to him. “You’re all washed up!” I’ve often wondered, you know, if Dean had stayed alive whether he would have remained the cult figure he became so quickly. What would have happened to him? Would he have developed as an actor? Somehow I don’t think so. But those words were prophetic, weren’t they? Even now, twenty years on, they still give me a shiver.

  Whilst he was in London, Rock and Tom Clark explored the city’s gay nightlife—dashing off to a different pub, or club, most

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  nights after the show. One of his favourites was the Bang Disco, in Charing Cross Road, Here, according to my late friend Peter Burton—then working as the club’s doorman, but who later became one of British gay cultures most feted writers and representatives—he made no attempt to hide his identity:

  People would point and exclaim, “Wow, it’s Rock Hudson!” Then they’d walk up to him for a chat and always find him so utterly at ease and charming. There was absolutely no pretending. Everyone respected him for that. But neither I nor any of my friends ever saw him picking up. He was there just for the ambience!

  After London, I Do! I Do! played three-months in Toronto, and though the reviews were mostly poor, all that mattered so far as the promoters were concerned was that the box-office was doing big business. Not so, Rock’s next venture: John Brown’s Body, based on Stephen Vincent Benet’s 1929 Pulitzer-prize-winning poem, and the play that had brought about his fascination with Tyrone Power. Co-starring Leif Erickson and Claire Trevor, the production was a flop—not through any fault of the cast, for the notices were exceptional, but simply because it toured at the wrong time, the summer of 1976, stopping off mostly at college and university campuses which were closed for the holidays.

  Meanwhile, as Rock’s fans were watching the final episodes of McMillan, Universal offered him a substantial salary increase for “just one more” series of America’s sexiest detective, regarded as a welcome antidote to the cynical Banacek and grungy Columbo. Rock rejected the deal, declaring that enough was enough. He then threw caution to the wind by accepting the part of King Arthur in the stage version of the musical Camelot. Richard Burton and Julie Andrews had triumphed with this in the

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  mid-sixties on Broadway, but the film version had been a woeful exercise in miscasting, when they had been passed over in favour of Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave, affording it a place in Michael Medved’s Golden Turkey Awards. Rock’s interpretation of the title song and “How To Handle A Woman” were in a class of their own. Camelot opened in Dallas, then played seasons in Massachusetts and Long Island. Most of the critics agreed it was the best thing he had done on the stage so far.

  As the tour of Camelot was drawing to a close, Rock asked Mark Miller to organise a “Beauties” party, the likes of which had not been seen at the home of a Hollywood star since Rudolph Valentino’s all-male love-fests of the twenties. Fifty of the dishiest hunks in town were hired to splash around the pool, and “drape and drool” around the garden areas wearing the skimpiest, flimsiest swimsuits. There were no prizes for guessing which closeted Tinsel Town lovers of yesteryear Rock was referring to (Cary Grant and Randolph Scott) when he told Armistead Maupin, “The brunettes are all called Grant, the blonds are called Scott!” Maupin created the Tales of the City novels which recount the adventures of that infamous group of residents at 28 Barbary Lane, and their friends. The first of these had recently begun its serialisation in the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1978, Britain’s Gay News observed:

  Like Trollope’s Barsetshire, Maupin’s San Francisco is an imaginative creation that is immediately recognisable. His larger than life characters have the compulsive attraction of soap opera heroes and heroines and his plots, Dickensian in complexity, move from one cliff hanger to another. The whole potent brew is mixed with equal measures of wit and pathos, which constantly move the reader between laughter, excitement and tears.

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  Maupin and Rock met in San Bernadino in 1976, during the tour of John Brown’s Body—ironically introduced by Jack Coates and his new lover, champion diver Steven Del Re. According to Maupin—on the face of it, physically not at all Rock’s type—it had not taken Rock to fall for him and they had embarked on a brief affair which began in Rock’s suite at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel. Years later (quoted by Patrick Gale in his biography of Maupin) the writer recalled their “first time”—of how, after rolling around with him on the floor, Rock had pulled out a small case embossed with his initials:

  He had a personalised Rock Hudson poppers case! And I completely lost my hard-on. I was so overwhelmed at the notion that I was about to go to bed with Rock Hudson. Not to mention that I’d just seen the baby’s arm hanging between his legs. And we sat on the couch together and he put his arm around me and said, “You know I’m just another guy like any other guy?” And all I could say to this was, “No, you’re not. And I’m Doris Day.”

  The great observer and himself an undisputed gay icon, Armistead Maupin is believed to have based his Barbary Lane characters on real-life acquaintances, and his books poignantly cover those all-important years from San Francisco’s hedonistic pre-AIDS seventies through to the less intoxicating, self-conscious, safe-sex nineties. Central to the plot are the transsexual landlady Anna Madrigal, and Michael Tolliver, the indefatigable “Mouse” who is perpetually in search of the big romance of his life. This comes in the form of hunky gynaecologist Jon Fielden, whom many believe could not have been based on anyone but Rock.

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  In 1993, when the Tales of the City novels were adapted for British television, Fielden was played by William Campbell, a very tall, smoulderingly attractive actor whose “connection” of sorts with Rock had occurred eight years previously when he had portrayed Steven Carrington’s lover in Dynasty. In one Tales of the City scene, Fielden visits one of the bathhouses favoured by Rock. Sauntering through the steamy corridors, he smugly cruises the dozens of muscular studs who are lusting after him, then disappears into a cubicle to have sex with a mysterious stranger who, Hudson-style, is unceremoniously dumped when Fielden realises that he is becoming too fond of him.

  Maupin is also thought to have based another of Mouse’s lovers on either Rock or Maverick actor James Garner, though in more recent interviews the writer has maintained that the closeted actor referred to in the novels as “Blank Blank” was actually an amalgam of all the closeted gay stars in Hollywood.

  Soon after the “Beauties” party—which features in Tales of the City with Rock described, though not by name, as “Truly magnificent—a lumbering Titan in this garden of younger, prettier men”—Rock began shooting his first television min-series. Wheels was a ten-hour epic drama based on the 1971 best-selling novel by Arthur Hailey. His co-stars were Anthony Franciosa, Ralph Bellamy, Blair Brown, and Lee Remick. Rock played Adam Trenton, a wheeling and dealing adulterous automobile executive from Detroit. When TV Times’ Doug Thompson visited the set, Rock told him:

  He’s not the usual hero and he’s very complex. Married to the boss’s daughter he’s ambitious, mercenary, loving. He’s manipulative, fair, dishonest. Honest, too. He’s whatever’s necessary. He badgers, pushes, pleads, blackmails to save his company. At the same time things

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  are happening in his personal life which affect his relationship with his wife and their two grown-up sons.

  Rock maintained that Wheels was the most complicated production he had ever worked on, on account of the length of the script, and the scenes being shot out of sequence. Yet after “five years’ hard labour” as Stewart McMill
an, he had now found his niche. He told Thompson, “Because mini-series have a limited run, they’re better written and the effort is stronger. I’d like to do more. I don’t want to do big movies any more.” While shooting the series, he visited an adjacent lot to watch Gregory Peck, another legend famed for “good guy” roles, filming The Boys From Brazil, a rare occasion when he played a villain. Rock was amazed by Peck’s portrayal of an evil Nazi, and only wished he could have been offered such a meaty role instead of the “dross” constantly flung his way by studios that were afraid of taking risks. He told Photoplay’s Vernon Scott:

  I don’t think the public would have difficulty in accepting me as a menace. I killed and scalped John McIntire in Winchester ’73, then there was Pretty Maids in a Row. I’d love to play more villains. There are a lot of anti-hero roles these days and I’d welcome a chance at some of them. There must be a reason Peck and I haven’t been offered villain parts. Maybe it’s because no one thought we could play them with conviction. I imagine personal appearance has something to do with it. A sinister appearance does give an actor a better chance to play a mean guy…but sinister facial characteristics certainly aren’t mandatory. Ernest Borgnine and Charlie Bronson started out as villains and eventually wound up playing good guys. Sometimes it’s

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  to everyone’s advantage for an actor to play against type. Playing straight leading men is boring, boring, BORING! I’d love to play the heavy, the guy who can swear or smack the leading lady without losing his status as hero.