July 25, 1985, 40 years ago: Yanou Collart, publicist for actor Rock Hudson, publicly confirms a rumor that had been swirling around show business circles: Hudson has AIDS, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. He was among the earliest mainstream celebrities to have been diagnosed with the disease.
Born on November 17, 1925 as Roy Harold Scherer Jr., in the Chicago suburb of Winnekta, Illinois, Hudson became a Hollywood star and heartthrob in 1954, in the film Magnificent Obsession. This was followed by Giant in 1956, in which he co-starred with Elizabeth Taylor and, in his last performance before the car crash that killed him, James Dean. In 1959, he began a series of romantic comedies with Doris Day, with Pillow Talk. In 1961, he starred with Italian bombshell Gina Lollobrigida in Come September.
His dashing looks, and his co-starring with Taylor, Day and Lollobrigida, although all of them were married to others, made people imagine that women fell over themselves for him, and that he was happy to oblige. But Hudson was gay, and while the general public didn't know, it was one of the worst-kept secrets in Hollywood. In 1955, to help quash the rumor, Hudson's manager, Henry Willson, convinced his secretary, Phyllis Gates, and Hudson to marry. It lasted only 3 years, because she found out the truth. Neither ever married again.
Not happy with the films he was offered in the 1960s, Hudson turned to television, starring with Susan Saint James in the NBC crime drama McMillan & Wife from 1971 to 1977. But his years of heavy smoking and drinking began to catch up with him. In 1981, he began filming The Devlin Connection, a private-detective series for NBC, but had a massive heart attack, and his recovery pushed the show back a full year. The momentum was lost, and it was canceled after just 13 episodes.
In December 1984, he began appearing on the ABC evening soap opera Dynasty. But, unbeknownst to his castmates, he had been diagnosed with HIV, Human Immunodeficiency Virus, which causes AIDS, the preceding June 5. It is not known if he got it through sexual transmission or through tainted blood in a transfusion from his heart surgery. Regardless, his Dynasty co-stars easily saw the decline in his health. When it became clear that he could no longer continue, he was written out of the series, and his character was later said to have died.
Hudson traveled the world, looking for a cure, or at least a treatment to slow the progression of the disease. Nothing worked. On July 16, 1985, he joined his old friend Doris Day for a Hollywood press conference announcing the launch of her new TV cable show, Doris Day's Best Friends. She was 63 (although she usually lied about her age, claiming to be 2 years younger), and looked terrific; he was 59, and looked 10 years older.
Like her contemporary Betty White, Day was
an animal-rights activist who especially loved dogs.
On July 18, he went to Paris for another round of treatment. On July 21, he collapsed in his room at the Ritz Hotel. His American publicist, Dale Olson, released a statement to the media that he had inoperable liver cancer, and denied that he had AIDS. But on July 25, Hudson's French publicist, Yanou Collart, admitted the truth. On July 30, he was flown back to Los Angeles, and spent a month at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. They released him to private hospice care at his home in nearby Beverly Hills, where he died on October 2.
Up until then, AIDS had been considered a disease of gay men only, which already wasn't true. Evangelicals considered it "God's punishment for homosexuality." As if gay people weren't facing enough bigoted nonsense.
Earlier that year, As Is, the 1st Broadway play to discuss AIDS, premiered. Its author, William M. Hoffman, said, "If Rock Hudson can have it, nice people can have it. It's just a disease, not a moral affliction." Comedian Joan Rivers, who had a devote gay fanbase, said, "Two years ago, when I hosted a benefit for AIDS, I couldn't get one major star to turn out. Rock's admission is a horrendous way to bring AIDS to the attention of the American public, but by doing so, Rock, in his life, has helped millions in the process. What Rock has done takes true courage." Actress Morgan Fairchild said, "Rock Hudson's death gave AIDS a face."
In a telegram Hudson sent to a September 1985 Hollywood AIDS benefit, Commitment to Life, which he was too ill to attend in person, he said: "I am not happy that I am sick. I am not happy that I have AIDS. But if that is helping others, I can at least know that my own misfortune has had some positive worth."
Shortly after his death, People magazine reported: "Since Hudson made his announcement, more than $1.8 million in private contributions (more than double the amount collected in 1984) has been raised to support AIDS research and to care for AIDS victims (5,523 reported in 1985 alone). A few days after Hudson died, Congress set aside $221 million to develop a cure for AIDS." Hudson's former co-star Elizabeth Taylor became a major fundraiser for AIDS research, as did openly gay rock star Elton John. Both began hosting fundraising "afterparties" following the annual Academy Awards.
But the stigma of AIDS still did not go away. It would take more, including the transfusion-induced illnesses of tennis star Arthur Ashe and teenager Ryan White, and the admission of the very heterosexual basketball star Earvin "Magic" Johnson, for people to understand that AIDS could happen to anybody.
President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy, both former actors and friends of Hudson's made no public statement concerning Hudson's condition. However, the President phoned Hudson privately in his Paris hospital room where he was being treated in July 1985 and released a condolence statement after his death.
Afterward, Reagan stopped ignoring AIDS, and asked Congress to increase federal funding for research into it. I call it "The Rock Hudson Principle": Conservatives never care about something that hurts others, until it begins to hurt someone they care about. (Then again, in 1981, Reagan was shot by a mentally ill man who should have had a gun, and nearly died, and in the 2020s, they still don't give a damn about gun control.)
The increased enabled new treatments to be developed, much of it under the National Institutes of Health, in a unit led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who would later lead the fight against COVID-19.
A personal note: Online, I've talked to a few people who claimed to have met Rock Hudson. Some of them said they knew at the time that he was gay. Others said they didn't know. But they all said he was a wonderful person. Certainly, he didn't deserve to suffer the way he did.
Just fwiw, I recall my father referencing Hudson as being gay prior to 1985, maintaining that it was a pretty open secret in Hollywood. This would have been, by recollection, in the 1970s. As this would have been a reference that happened in Wyoming, it must have been a very open secret.
ReplyDelete