by David Bret
10-12: Had Rock concealed his AIDS status from Christian? Had he been under duty to reveal this status to him? And had he concealed his AIDS solely to coerce him into having high-risk sex?
13-15: Between 8 June 1984 and late-February 1985, had Christian been unaware that Rock was concealing his AIDS status from him, and because of this concealment had they had sex between these dates, as a result of which Christian had suffered emotional distress?
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16-19: Had Rock behaved outrageously, purposely to cause Christian emotional distress, and had emotional distress occurred as a result of this outrageous conduct?
20-21: In knowing that Rock had AIDS, had Mark Miller been aware that Rock and Christian had been engaging in high-risk sex, and had Miller denied between June 1984 and February 1985 that Rock had AIDS?
22-26: Had Miller lied to Christian, and had this lie been with the intention of coercing Christian into having high-risk sex with Rock, and was Christian unaware that Miller was lying and therefore willing to engage in high-risk sex, believing that Rock did not have AIDS?
27-28: Had Christian been justified in believing what Miller had told him, and had he suffered emotional distress as a result?
29-30: Had Miller conspired with Rock to hide the latter’s AIDS status between June 1984 and February 1985 in order to coerce Christian into having high-risk sex?
31-32: Had Christian had high-risk sex with Rock between these dates, which he would not have consented to had he known the truth, and as a result of this had he suffered emotional distress?
33-36: Had Mark Miller behaved outrageously, as a result of which Christian had suffered emotional distress?
37: What amount of damages should be awarded to Christian to compensate for the emotional distress caused him by Hudson and Miller?
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The jury were instructed to study each question meticulously, and move to the next question on the list only when a minimum of nine of their members had agreed upon a “Yes” or “No” response. They retired on the afternoon of Thursday 9 February, and returned to the court the following Tuesday morning to query several points before retiring again. The next day their foreman Charles Garelick announced the verdict. In a unanimous response to 23 of the 37 questions (and an average of 10-2 on the other 14) the jury had decided that Rock Hudson and Mark Miller had conspired to hide the truth about Rock’s AIDS from Marc Christian, that Christian had been coerced into having high-risk sex, that subsequently he had suffered severe emotional stress, for which substantial damages should be paid. By a ten to twelve majority, these were fixed at a staggering $14,500,000.
The so-called “Rock Hudson Trial”, however, was not over—for the court now had to decide whether Marc Christian should be awarded “punitive” damages—not from the Hudson estate, but from Mark Miller personally. The hearing was set for the next day, 16 February, and Harold Rhoden predicted that the outcome of this would set a worldwide precedent for future “innocent victims” who, like his client, might be duped by unscrupulous partners into having unprotected sex. To set an example, Rhoden urged the jury to ignore Miller’s declared assets of only $100,000, to find him guilty and force him to fork out a minimum $14,500,000 to equal the sum that had been awarded from Rock’s estate.
The jury declared that Rhoden’s demands were deemed to have been way over the top, and Justice Geernaert capitulated. Even so, Miller was devastated to learn that he would still be expected to pay Christian $7,250,000. The verdict, and Christian’s $21,750,000 windfall, caused a furious reaction amongst leaders
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of the world’s gay communities. They had been winning their fight against public condemnation of AIDS victims and now a Los Angeles court had cited the disease’s most famous casualty as an example of “fuck-em-and-be-damned” irresponsibility. Leading the outcry was Ben Schatz of the National Gay Rights Advocates, who fumed in his statement:
Since Marc Christian freely engaged in unprotected sex and never became infected, the amount he has been awarded seems hysterical. This decision could send a message that if people contract AIDS through unprotected sex, then it’s somebody else’s fault and not their own.
Schatz was right. Henceforth, many AIDS sufferers would no longer be regarded as victims of a malady that had caught them unawares, and which most of them were trying to combat by promoting and practising safe-sex techniques—but stigmatised and persecuted as selfish, cold-blooded killing machines—a persecution that persists in some homophobic circles to this day, and which in unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
Needless to say, whilst Marc Christian was being feted by the “straight media” and making more chat-show appearances, the opposition applied for a retrial. Robert Mills claimed to have acquired “startling new evidence” that, just after Rock’s death when Christian had been supposedly worried sick about getting AIDS, he had engaged in a sexual relationship with an Orange County fitness instructor named Gunther Fraulob, who had furnished Mills with a sworn statement to this effect. Mills also claimed to be in possession of “substantial evidence” that Christian had met and conversed with some of the jurors during the hearing.
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In his announcement of 21 April, Justice Geernaert dismissed Robert Mills’ application for a retrial, but reduced Christian’s compensatory and punitive damages to $5 million and $500,000 respectively, the latter on account of Mark Miller’s financial status.
Marc Christian MacGinnis died at the Providence Medical Center, in Burbank, on 2 June 2009, aged fifty-six. His death was not announced publicly until six months later—his sister, Susan Dahl, claimed that this was because of Christian’s wish for privacy, which of course had not bothered him twenty years earlier when he had dragged Rock’s name and reputation through the mud. Some of the tabloids rumoured that he had died of a drugs overdose, but the actual cause of death was a pulmonary ailment brought about by his heavy smoking. History also repeated itself when there was a lengthy court battle over his $1 million estate between Dahl and Christian’s partner of ten years, Brent Beckwith. That, as they say, is another story.
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Appendix II: How Did Rock Get AIDS? A Defence
There are three ways of contracting HIV: via infected blood as the result of transfusion or the sharing of syringes; by inheritance if either parent of a child has been infected; and in the majority of cases via unprotected sex. Rock Hudson was promiscuous, but no more so than many heterosexual contemporaries, and like them had a busy love-life for no other reason than he was a wealthy, successful, good-looking man living in a glamorous, affluent community teeming with willing bed mates.
That Rock was gay and extremely sexually active throughout his entire adult life should not see him regarded any differently than had he been straight. Unlike their heterosexual counterparts, until the onset of AIDS during the early eighties all that gay men had to worry about was contracting mostly curable venereal diseases and, unless they were bisexual, they did not have to agonise over getting partners pregnant. Other gay and bisexual stars such as Cary Grant, Robert Taylor, Montgomery Clift and Rudolph Valentino had been no less “busy in the bedroom” than Rock. They did not have to worry about AIDS because in their day the disease had not existed—likewise in Rock’s halcyon days as a leading man, when the bedroom traffic had been at its busiest. One must however point out that, promiscuous or not, Rock could have still have been one of the unlucky ones. Today, in a more sexually educated world, one would of course have expected him to be more responsible in taking the necessary precautions regarding safe sex.
The true gay revolution, certainly in the United States, began during the summer of 1969 with the death of Judy Garland and the Stonewall riots in New York’s Greenwich Village. Tired of being picked on, gays started fighting back, and gay pride started
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taking hold. Rock Hudson was involved in the insurrection insomuch as, in his forties, he was no longer the massive star he had once been and risks coul
d now be afforded. For twenty-five years the fear of career assassination had confined him and to the closet and if he could still not come out, at least there seemed less of a reason for his being quite so “in” as he had been.
Like some of the more outrageous personalities, later in life Rock frequenting the more colourful but less reputable clubs and watering holes brought to life in Armistead Maupin’s Tales of The City novels, and the drawings of Tom of Finland. He is not on record as having actively participated in any of their goings-on. He simply wanted to be in an environment where everyone licked his side of the stamp, without shame or reproach.
It is thought that Rock became HIV-positive around 1981, the pre-condom age where gay sex was concerned and at a time when the condition was unrecognised. Indeed, by the time he developed full-blown AIDS some three years later, society in general was still largely ignorant of the disease or how to attempt treatment. Had Rock those other poor souls who succumbed to an early grave been as sexually active nowadays as back then and purposely not employed safe-sex techniques, then society might be justified in denouncing them. However, as Rock and his generation were unaware of the killer in their midst, they should not be judged as they were by moralists and religious organisations of the day, as well as the tabloids, to have been visited by the “wrath of God” simply because they were thought of as immoral on account of sexual preference.
As there is no record of Rock ever being involved with drugs other than strictly for medicinal purposes it was generally assumed that he could only have acquired HIV status through sex, particularly as this side of him was cruelly and needlessly dragged through the courts after his death allowing tabloid hacks
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full vent to “educate” their readers in every aspect of gay sex, paying special attention to rich and vulgar terminology—but almost always omitting to mention the word love.
In fact, this is not as clear cut as it would appear. Where gay sex is concerned, as has been pointed out many times in this book, there are two high-risk areas: unprotected anal intercourse where tissue tearing takes place, enabling infected semen to enter the bloodstream—and oral sex, where the person executing the blow job has cuts or open sores to the mouth, throat or gums. Rock is known to have enjoyed both giving and receiving, though so far as anal sex was concerned he is thought to have rarely been the passive (much more at risk) partner, something he blamed on his star status. Rock told several close friends (including Jon Epstein, the producer of the McMillan series, see quote, Chapter 6) how many of his lovers were, initially at least, so overwhelmed to be having sex with him that they were too nervous to achieve or sustain erections and that subsequently he always “ended up on top”. Given the fact, therefore, that most of Rock’s trysts were one-night stands, one may only assume that he spent more time “on top” than he would have preferred.
Rock remains the biggest of the early mainstream stars (there were many A-list gay porn stars, most famously Casey Donovan in August 1987) to die of AIDS, along with Liberace, who died in February 1987 and Freddie Mercury, who died in November 1991. An interesting comparison between the two is that, whilst Rock was almost always the active sexual partner, the opposite applied to Freddie and his intimates. Whilst none of Rock’s lovers who died after him succumbed to AIDS, there are few of Freddie’s who did not. This suggests that Rock may not have been joking when he told Gay Times’ Kris Kirk, during a trip to London, “I like to make sure the baby’s been pulled out of the crib before I let it puke!”
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The result of any enquiry is of course inconclusive. Prejudice and ignorance resulted in Rock’s remains being treated like trash. Yet even had there been an autopsy, there would have been no way of discerning how or when he had become ill. There is, however, another much more likely source of infection, mostly overlooked by those blinkered members of our society who are incapable or unwilling to see beyond Rock’s so-called unconventional lifestyle—and which Rock himself believed to have been the cause of his malady.
In 1981, he had undergone open-heart surgery.
Although the purpose of this essay is not to condemn or apportion blame, during his bypass operation, Rock was administered at least one blood transfusion from stock that had not been screened for HIV. This had nothing whatsoever to do with medical malpractice, but simply because the condition was in its infancy and virtually every health authority in the world was as yet unaware of its existence. The tennis player Arthur Ashe, and the wife and child of Starsky & Hutch actor Paul Michael Glaser all acquired HIV in such an accidental manner and subsequently died of AIDS, as did thousands of others on both sides of the Atlantic. One has to bear in mind that Rock curbed his sexual activities soon after his operation when his health began to fail and upon learning that he had AIDS, and that he did begin to practice safe sex. Also, taking into account the previously mentioned fact that none of his lovers have died of AIDS or, so far as is known, acquired HIV status, there is a very strong possibility that Rock Hudson did not get AIDS from sex.
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Appendix III: Filmography
The following represents Rock Hudson’s complete output on celluloid, so far as is known given the large number of productions he appeared in before stardom beckoned, when he was largely unbilled. Some prints are of varying length: the running times stated are the ones most commonly seen in prints distributed for their original cinema release, whereas televised prints vary depending on censorship.
Fighter Squadron (Warner Bros, 1948).
Director: Raoul Walsh. Script: Seton Miller, Martin Rackin. Photography: Wilfred Kline, Sidney Hockox. Music: Max Steiner. With Robert Stack, Edmund O’Brien, Henry Hull, John Rodney, Tom d’Andrea, James Holden, Walter Reed. Rock (unbilled) played “Second Lieutenant”. 96 mins.
Undertow (Universal, 1949).
Director: William Castle. Script: Lee Loeb, Arthur T Horman. Photography: Irving Glassberg. With Scott Brady, Bruce Bennett, Peggy Dow. Rock (“Roc Hudson”) played a detective. 71 mins.
Peggy (Universal, 1950).
Director: Frederick de Cordova. Script: George W George, George F Slavin. Photography: Russell Metty. With Diana Lynn, Charles Coburn, Charles Drake, Charlotte Greenwood. Rock (6th billing) played Johnny “Scat” Mitchell. 78 mins.
I Was A Shoplifter (Universal, 1950).
Director: Charles Lamont. Script: Irwin Gielgud. Photography: Irving Gassberg. With Scott Brady, Charles Drake, Anthony (Tony) Curtis. Rock (unbilled) played a store detective. 74 mins.
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One Way Street (Universal, 1950).
Director: Hugo Fregonese. Script: Lawrence Kimble. Photography: Maury Gertsman. With James Mason, Dan Duryea. Rock (unbilled) played a truck driver. 79 mins.
Winchester ’73 (Universal, 1950).
Director: Anthony Mann. Script: Robert L Richards, Borden Chase. Photography: William H Daniels. With James Stewart, Dan Duryea, Shelley Winters, Stephen McNally, Charles Drake. Rock (10th billing) played Young Bull. 88 minutes.
The Desert Hawk (Universal, 1950).
Director: Frederick de Cordova. Script: Gerald Drayson Adams, Aubrey Wisberg. Photography: Russell Metty. With Yvonne de Carlo, Carl Esmond, Richard Greene, Jackie Gleason. Rock (5th billing) played Captain Ras. 77 mins.
Shakedown (Universal, 1950)
Director: Joseph Pevney. Script: Martin Goldsmith, Nat Dallinger. Photography: Irving Glassberg. With Howard Duff, Brian Donlevy, Peggy Dow, Lawrence Tierney, Bruce Bennett. Rock (8th billing) played Ted the doorman. 80 mins.
Double Crossbones (Universal, 1950).
Director: Charles T Barton. Script: Oscar Brodney. Photography: Maury Gertsman. With Donald O’Connor, Helena Carter, Will Geer. Rock appeared as an extra. 76 mins.
Tomahawk [GB: Battle of Powder River] (Universal, 1951).
Director: George Sherman. Script: Sylvia Richards, David Jarrett. Photography: Charles P Boyle. With Van Heflin, Yvonne de Carlo. Rock (8th billing) played Burt Hanna. 82 mins.
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Air Cadet [GB: Jet Men of the Air] (Universal, 1951).
Director: Joseph Pevney. Script: Roderberg, Robert L Richards. Photography: Clifford Stine. With Gail Russell, Stephen McNally, Alex Nicol, James Best. Rock (7th billing) played “Upper Classman”. 94 mins.
The Fat Man (Universal, 1951).
Director: William Castle. Script: Leonard Lee, Harry Essex. Photography: Irving Glassberg. With J Scott Smart, Julie London, Teddy Hart, John Russell. Rock (3rd billing) played Roy Clark. 77 mins.
Iron Man (Universal, 1951).
Director: Joseph Pevney. Script: George Zuckeman, W R Burnett. Photography: Carl E Guthrie. With Jeff Chandler, Evelyn Keyes, Stephen McNally, Jim Backus, Steve Martin, Joyce Holden, James Arness. Rock (4th billing) played Speed O’Keefe. 82 mins.
Bright Victory [GB: Lights Out] (Universal, 1951).
Director: Mark Robson. Script: Robert Buckner, Baynard Kendrick. Photography: William H Daniels. With Arthur Kennedy, Julia Adams, Peggy Dow, Will Geer, Jim Backus, James Edwards, Nana Bryant. Rock (unbilled) played a soldier. 97 mins.
Here Come the Nelsons (Universal, 1952).
Director: Frederick de Cordova. Script: William Davenport, based on the radio series The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet. Photography: Irving Glassberg, With Ricky and David Nelson, Barbara Lawrence, Ann Doran, Jim Backus, Gale Gordon, Paul Harvey. Rock (5th billing) played Charlie Jones. 76 mins.
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Bend of the River [UK: Where The River Bends] Universal 1952.
Director: Anthony Mann. Script: Borden Chase, William Gulik. Photography: Irving Glassberg. With James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Julia Adams, Jay C Flippen, Henry Morgan. Rock (3rd billing) played Trey Wilson. 91 mins.