"I'm tired of sustaining a life that is not mine"
He was one of the greatest leading men in Hollywood. Two months before dying in 1985 he confessed that he had HIV, then fatal. In addition to the disease, he was the victim of stigmatization.
"I have AIDS. I went out and threw it to the dogs. That's what they want." As soon as he regained consciousness in his room at the Ritz hotel in Paris after a blackout, Rock Hudson called his French publicist and friend Yanou Collart and asked her to write those two words in a terse and forceful press release. It was July 22, 1985, and a legion of journalists, photographers, and the curious had stood guard at the door of the old 5-star palace. The same one that twelve years later Lady Di and her boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed went through to kill each other, aboard his Mercedes Benz, in the Tunnel of the Soul moments later.
The reporters' questions were recurring: is he sick? He died? are they going to admit him? Hudson himself cleared up the doubts. His state of health was terrible. He was serious. In addition to HIV - a deadly disease at the time - he had liver cancer that could no longer be operated on. The end was inevitable and he was near.
He paid $250,000 for an Air France plane to take him, as the only passenger, to Los Angeles, where a helicopter was waiting for him and transferred him to the UCLA hospital. There he was received by his doctor, Michael Gottlieb: –Rock, should we say publicly that you have AIDS? He asked her, doubting that the confession made in Paris had been believed. –If you think he will help with something, yes. Forward.
On July 30, 1985, Burt Lancaster, one of the few friends he had left (in those years the mere word AIDS was frightening), read Rock's last message: “I'm sick of sustaining a life that is not mine. I am not happy that I have AIDS, but if these words can help others, at least I will know that my misfortune has a positive value.
He died just two months later, on October 2, at the age of 59, after battling against the then impossible: defeating that scourge detected in 1981 that they called The Pink Plague, attributed only to the H-S community of San Francisco.
But the death of Rock Hudson was, especially for the vast brotherhood of moviegoers, a double shock: the goodbye of an idol, and the confirmation that the impossible... happens.
Because Roy Harold Scherer Jr. –such his real name–, born on November 17, 1925, in Winnetka, a town in Illinois, was on the screens and in the darkness of thousands of rooms around the world no less than a modern Greek god –one meter 96 above sea level!–, smiling, mischievous, seductive, one hundred percent heartthrob, and the perfect ideal of an unforgettable genre: the American romantic comedy of the 50s and 60s, with a couple modeled to measure: the eternally blonde with blue eyes and unbeatable smile Doris Day.
They were brought together (1959) by director Michael Gordon in Midnight Confidence, and they followed Pajamas for Two (1961), His Favorite Game (1963), and Don't Send Me Flowers (1964). always with the same and more than an effective scheme for crowds: a modicum battle of the S- that ends in crazy and happy love. with a third key character: the perfect comedian Tony Kendall.
However, not all the way was roses. Rock went through the United States Navy in World War II and settled in Los Angeles, but before 1949, when a producer at Universal Studios realized that he was a diamond in the rough, he was a mail carrier, truck driver, taxi driver, and bounced in dozens of castings...
Once discovered, the diamond in the rough, the unexcavated gold mine, he endured exhausting classes in acting, dancing, singing, fencing, boxing, and horse riding, because beyond his face and bearing, Mother Nature had not endowed him with the talent to face the cameras. He was just what in those years, in any corner of Buenos Aires, we would call "a very attractive boy." Or, in a suburban and envious key, "What a face that h... of... carries!".
But, without becoming a great actor, he made fifty films: from Combat Squad (1948) to Ambassador to the Middle East (1984), and rode through all genres: war, western, police, drama, tragedy, and espionage, directed by greats –Raoul Walsh, Anthony Mann, George Stevens, Howard Hawks–, and next to the Major Constellation: James Stewart, Lauren Bacall, James Dean, Liz Taylor, Ernest Borgnine, Julie Andrews, Mia Farrow, Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum … (is it necessary to continue?)
Oh, and a single Oscar nomination: Cast, for Giant (1956). But the devil wagged his tail in 1954: the so-called yellow press – “which sometimes tells the truth”, according to Rodolfo Walsh, began to spread rumors about Rock's H-S: in those years and in that business – where vice was not allowed nor uncultivated scandal – red alert!
And a desperate solution: on November 9, 1955, in a secret wedding, he was forced to marry Phyllis Gates, his secretary. A bonbon for the two top gossip columnists in Hollywood: Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper (the latter, a scoundrel at the service of Randolph Hearst and the FBI, who denounced them as communists and ruined the lives and careers of great talents: among them, the brilliant screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, later vindicated).
The honeymoon was in Jamaica. But two years later – too long due to excessive naivety? – Phyllis discovered the truth: an ever-present friend whispered to her that Rock slept with a man, in Italy, while they were filming A Farewell to Arms, about the novel by Ernest Hemingway.
The divorce, like the wedding, was quiet, four years later. And it didn't take Phillys that long to write the book My Husband: Rock Hudson. The story in which she described as "a martyrdom of lies, strange male calls, marital violence, absence." And this confession: “I was very much in love. I thought Rock would make a wonderful husband. He was charming, and his career was red hot… how many women would have said no to him? She did not remarry, and she died on January 14, 2006.
Three decades after the end of Rock, Lee Garlington, then a 77-year-old retired stockbroker, appeared on the scene, saying “He was sweetheart, and I adored him. We were together from 1962 to 1965. When I met him, I was very nervous, but he offered me a beer… and then it happened! I spent the night with him and left at six in the morning. Rock never asked me to keep it a secret, but one day a fan walked in and found us sleeping together. Since then we started to be more cautious. We used to go to the premieres of films together, but always with a female company. I later learned that he said, 'My mother and Lee were the only people I really loved.'
Slowly, for fear of contagion -it was not known then how it was transmitted-, his friends moved away. But Liz Taylor –perhaps the star who loved him the most– went to see him at the hospital where he passed the critical phase before dying in his mansion in Beverly Hills, without fear, dressed and made up to face the cameras, and she kissed him on the cheek! mouth!
Even today, when the battle against AIDS is almost won if the correct instructions are followed to the letter, the world will not be able to forget the latest photos of that indestructible-looking man from Illinois who was turned into a wraith by the virus. However, he still dared to smile... that's why they call dignity. The dignity of a brave man.
