[For previous blogs please visit “blog archive” to the lower left of this screen. Click on the small black arrows for a drop down list of all the blogs.]
I adored Rock Hudson. I’ve watched all of his movies, many times, and the entire television series, McMillan and Wife. In fact, the series is available on Netflix for “instant play.” I especially enjoy the Doris Day-Rock Hudson pairings. I have Pillow Talk and when I’m tired and need a boost I pop it in my DVD player and I’m taken away. I have no idea how many times I’ve watched Giant. In particular, I have an all time favorite movie scene from Giant, which I will share a bit later. I suspect there are some readers who already know the scene I’m talking about.
During most of his career no one knew he was gay. Perhaps the Hollywood insiders knew, and perhaps his intense die hard fans knew, possibly the gay community knew, but run of the mill fans did not. I was in the latter group. I’m here to say that when I found out, I was stunned. Yet, that knowledge, which meant I would never marry him and live in New York in a glorious penthouse and go to fancy restaurants and concerts and skiing in the winter and the Bahamas and have two kids, a boy and a girl, never diminished my adoration of this fabulous man. [Of the items on that wish list I did indeed eventually have a boy and a girl, but not by Rock Hudson. Sigh.]
Rock Hudson possessed an unusual talent. He was a tall, dark, and handsome guy with a booming voice and a strong male presence, yet he was tremendously comedic. It worked well because of his beauty. It was the same combination Lucille Ball exhibited. She was a beautiful woman with a sweet innocence in most of her films and on TV but in the blink of an eye could turn into a silly pile of goofiness. Seeing beautiful people switch effortlessly from stunning to hilarious works well. There are certainly funnier performers but they do not posses the combination that makes the attractive actor with comedy talents so unique. Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Doris Day, Rosalind Russell, Eve Arden. Hmm. I’m showing my age.
The world learned of Rock Hudson’s secret by the press release that he was dying of AIDS. AIDS was somewhat new to most of us though it was certainly popping up more frequently until Rock Hudson’s astonishing announcement when it then exploded upon our collective awareness. I recall discussions in the work place when we all learned of his pending doom and not all people felt sympathetic or empathetic. I’m afraid at that time knowledge of the disease was considered a “gay” disease when we now all know that it has no boundaries. Babies, women, children, the elderly, everyone can be candidates for the disease. Thanks to air travel the ground zero patient that brought it to this country happened to be gay. It could have come here via a hot college student who whored his or her way through travel on a summer vacation and spread it to college kids everywhere making it a college student disease. In fact, during that time there were secondary infections flying around the world but the flight attendant credited with its primary spread to this country was gay. It travels with promiscuity regardless of sexual preference. It infects accidentally with shared needles among addicts, sometimes blood transfusions, and sometimes simple accidents such as medical providers being pricked by a needle while assisting an AIDS patient. It’s a disease, not a doctrine.
Rock Hudson, being the major star he was, brought it out for the world to see. I’m sad to say that most people were more astonished that he was gay than that he was dying of AIDS. The fact he was gay, however, did not diminish my adoration of the man and his work nor has it ever. Actors play parts in films and plays. Their personal lives rarely reflect the parts they play. The better they are at their craft the more likely fans will lose themselves in the stories.
I understand he was close friends with his costars Doris Day, Susan Saint James, Elizabeth Taylor, and others. In fact, many women he worked with loved him not only as a strong romantic leading co-actor but because he was a tremendously fun and sincere person. He certainly appeared that way on talk shows and variety shows. Remember his appearances on The Carol Burnett Show? Unforgettable.
Today it’s hard, initially, to watch one of his movies without remembering the painful news of his pending doom. For those of us who loved him and knew so little about the horrific disease we were inconsolable. As the news grew in strength via the celebrity “news” mongers in the press, unlike the bunch we have today which make those earlier beasts pale by comparison, more was reported on the fact he was gay than was reported about HIV AIDS. With poor information and untrue beliefs being spread about AIDS it was nothing short of panic. For those of us who do not believe everything we see or read we waited for the storm to calm and over time we found the truth about Rock Hudson and about HIV AIDS. Calmer heads prevailed and today we are doing rather well with both issues. [We can do better.]
As I mentioned in last week’s blog on Tiger Woods, more than an estimated 33.2 million people live with the disease worldwide, and it has killed over an estimated 2.1 million people, including more than 330,000 children. Over three-quarters of these deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. Worldwide, heterosexuals have the most cases of AIDS with homosexuals next and the remainder a combination of drug users, blood transfusion recipients, and miscellaneous transfers of the disease via accidental needle prick, etc. The reason it spreads and spreads is because people continue to engage in promiscuous and unprotected sex and other unsafe behaviors (drug paraphernalia sharing) then often bring it home to their wives and/or husbands and/or significant others.
Rock Hudson bravely provided the world with a wake up call. Nothing like a major hunk movie star coming out of the closet AND announcing he was dying of AIDS to get our attention. And we needed it. Many of us paid attention and began behaving more safely in our personal intimate contacts. Had we not learned of his illness, and had the news not been about a man such as Rock Hudson, we might be years behind our necessary awareness level and behind in research dollars. Elizabeth Taylor’s deep friendship with Rock Hudson turned her into a courageous advocate for research. Her fame brought many dollars to that cause in an effort to discover ways to identify and stall the advancement of HIV into full-blown AIDS.
And now I’ll close by sharing one of my favorite movie scenes of all time, as referenced in the first paragraph, with Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor in Giant. In this scene Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, a married couple living on his huge ranch in Texas, have quarreled. She returns to her family’s elegant home in the east to be at her sister’s beautiful and refined wedding. Quite a departure from the rough and tumble ranch life she married into. Though his ranch is huge and he is wealthy, the differences in lifestyles are daunting. In the special scene I love he comes to the wedding to bring her back home to Texas and arrives just as the ceremony is taking place. He quietly stands behind Elizabeth Taylor just a few feet away but does not let her know he’s there. He’s edgy and in pain. She is sad watching her sister repeating the wedding vows that she herself had spoken not too long before. Slowly, she senses something. All Rock Hudson is doing in this scene is standing a few feet behind her, looking breathtakingly gorgeous. Elizabeth Taylor’s face, her fabulous face, changes as she becomes aware of his presence. She turns, seemingly in slow motion, and there he is. It was really difficult deciding who was more beautiful in that scene. A powerful heart stopping moment in movie history. Tremendous beauty, unforgettable magic, and in real life, a very brave pair of dear friends.
www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.]
