All That Heaven Allows

by Mark Griffin

  Chapter 12

  Pillow Talk

  The Winning Team: Rock, Doris Day, and Tony Randall in Pillow Talk (1959), the first of three blockbuster comedies for the trio.

  (Courtesy of Universal Studios Licensing LLC)

  No one wanted to book it,” remembered producer Ross Hunter. “The big movie chains all sadly told me, after seeing the picture that sophisticated comedies like Pillow Talk went out with William Powell. They also said that Doris and Rock were things of the past who had been overtaken by newer stars.” In hindsight, it’s hard to believe that the same Oscar-nominated Pillow Talk that grossed $7 million, unfastened Doris Day’s cinematic chastity belt, and allowed Rock Hudson to play gay on-screen was considered hopelessly passé by America’s theatre exhibitors.

  And though it seems inconceivable now, after making more than forty feature films, Hudson had never once appeared in a bona fide comedy. After slogging his way through A Farewell to Arms, Twilight for the Gods, and This Earth Is Mine, Rock—like his devoted fan base—was desperately in need of a good laugh. Even so, when Hudson was first presented with a script entitled Pillow Talk,* he was apprehensive. Considering how hard he had worked to be taken seriously as an Oscar-nominated dramatic actor, would appearing in a suggestive sexcapade single-handedly negate years of time and effort? Then, too, what if he just wasn’t funny? Hopefully, the script would be amusing enough so that nobody would notice.

  The screenplay by Stanley Shapiro and Maurice Richlin concerned Brad Allen, an oversexed songwriter who woos assorted Eileens and Yvettes with romantic ditties he’s custom-tailored especially for them. Brad’s constant crooning over the phone incurs the wrath of Jan Morrow, the demure interior decorator with whom he shares a party line. As disembodied voices, they squabble ferociously, but once they meet in person there are sparks of a different kind.

  The characters were ingratiating. The dialogue was clever. The farcical situations seemed reminiscent of Irene Dunne and Cary Grant at their best (The Awful Truth, My Favorite Wife).* And there were enough double entendres and risqué exchanges to keep it hot for 1959: “Mr. Allen, this may come as a shock to you but there are some men who don’t end every sentence with a proposition.”

  If Pillow Talk was in some ways a throwback to an earlier era of cinema, in other ways it was looking straight ahead. Bubbling beneath the glossy sheen of the picture is a surprisingly sharp reevaluation of gender roles and an exploration of the kind of themes that Betty Friedan would address in The Feminine Mystique only four years later. “One of the most interesting ways of looking at it is, it’s both daring and nervous at the same time,” says film historian David Thomson. “It takes a step forward and half a step back.” What Pillow Talk needed and got was a leading lady who perfectly embodied the cultural shift from conservatism to liberation.

  Doris Day had appeared in a succession of charming but steadfastly old-fashioned musicals. From Romance on the High Seas to April in Paris, the parade of wholesome, unfailingly sweet ingénues that Day had portrayed had cemented her screen image as a saintly but sexless Goody Two-shoes. “The World’s Oldest Virgin” was the title she inherited from Borscht Belt comedians.

  “I felt that it was essential for Doris to change her image if she was going to survive as a top star,” producer Ross Hunter remarked. “No one realized that under all those dirndls lurked one of the wildest asses in Hollywood.” Even so, Day was careful not to go too far in terms of retooling her girl-next-door image. “I liked those scripts about the man-woman game as long as they were done with style and wit and imagination. In my vocabulary, vulgarity begins when imagination succumbs to the explicit.” How would audiences, who had grown accustomed to Day as America’s singing sweetheart, accept her as a contemporary career woman decked out in slinky designer gowns courtesy of Jean Louis?

  For his part, Rock realized that it was high time that he loosened up his image. Still, he remained hesitant about signing on, especially when he learned that his solemn, Maalox-chomping director typically made pictures with titles like An Act of Murder and The Secret of Convict Lake. What’s more, Michael Gordon hadn’t directed a feature film in nearly a decade. In 1951, he was blacklisted after he refused to name names when he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee. When Gordon appeared before the committee a second time in 1958, he informed. Pillow Talk was the director’s ticket back to Hollywood. That is, if he could talk a certain leading man into cooperating.

  “In Ross’s office, I met the director,” Hudson recalled. “Michael Gordon is a very intense guy . . . And I thought to myself, That man is going to direct me in comedy . . . light, airy fairy comedy? So, I said, ‘Mr. Gordon, I am nervous about one thing. I have never played comedy. How do you play comedy?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Just treat it like the very most tragic story you’ve ever portrayed.’”

  And so, Roy Scherer of Winnetka, Illinois, met Doris Kappelhoff of Cincinnati, Ohio. And in the tradition of Tracy and Hepburn, one of the screen’s great romantic teams was born. As they got to know each other, Hudson began to refer to Day as either “Eunice Blotter,” “Maude,” or “Miss Adamant of 1959.” She called him “Ernie.” The made-up monikers were far more in league with the straightforward, down-to-earth types they both happened to be.

  If their off-screen rapport was exceptional, their on-screen compatibility was even better. For starters, they looked terrific together. Day’s sunshiny, platinum blond femininity contrasted perfectly with Hudson’s dark, square-jawed virility. They were living, breathing Barbie and Ken dolls. As gleaming showroom models of traditional postwar gender ideals, Rock and Doris were famously described by Time as “a couple of 1960 Cadillacs that just happen to be parked in a suggestive position.”

  “The reason why they blended so well together was that it was this great ying-yang combination of her enormous energy and his detached bemusement,” says film historian Thomas Santopietro. “He’s this solid presence—a rock, as it were—and she’s this pretty all-American girl, so they were the right melding of personae and personality. And, of course, the camera doesn’t lie, and we all know they liked each other so much in real life, and that came through on the screen.”

  Every great screen couple needs a third wheel and Broadway’s Tony Randall would play Day’s uptight suitor, the kind of never-gets-the-girl role usually inhabited by Ralph Bellamy or Gene Raymond. Before being cast in Pillow Talk, Randall had recently starred in both the stage and film versions of George Axelrod’s satire, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (which had originally been titled Will Success Spoil Rock Hudson? to Rock’s great delight).

  Whether she was starring in a dramatic biopic like Love Me or Leave Me or a musical extravaganza like The Pajama Game, Day was a skilled, versatile, and often underrated actress. Though her considerable talents were not lost on her costar. Hudson would later say that he learned all about comedic timing from his leading lady. “I honestly don’t think I taught him anything he didn’t already know after all his years in the business,” says Day. “Between scenes, we’d walk and talk and laugh and I guess our comedic timing grew out of our friendship and how naturally funny we were together.”

  Tony Randall encouraged Hudson to watch the dailies of the first scenes they had shot with Day. After only a few minutes, Rock began to relax. “He discovered, with delight, that he had a real flair for comedy,” said Randall. “He came alive in it. He couldn’t contain his smile. He was bubbling. He began to have fun and the results are magical.”

  At one point in Pillow Talk, Rock’s playboy composer, Brad Allen, masquerades as Rex Stetson, a Texas longhorn who seems more than a little light in the saddle. Telltale pinky extended, he sips his martini while revealing a mother fixation and more than a passing interest in Day’s interior decorating. “It must be very exciting working with all them colors and fabrics,” Rex enthuses, sounding like Bick Benedict’s swishy second cousin.

  In Pillow Talk, audiences were treated to the ultimate round of an illusi
on-on-an-illusion. With Rock Hudson in the lead, a predominantly gay man is playing a straight man who is impersonating a gay man. “I don’t know how long I can get away with this act,” Hudson’s character says to himself at one point. Wink, wink. Starting with Pillow Talk, a steady stream of what seem like self-reflexive in-jokes turn up in Hudson’s films. They are so plentiful, in fact, that independent filmmaker Mark Rappaport would gather them all together in 1992 for his witty semidocumentary Rock Hudson’s Home Movies. Though in 1959, when Pillow Talk was still in production, even these tongue-in-cheek asides were no laughing matter.

  As film historian Richard Barrios has noted, “In the original script, the gay allusions in the Rex masquerade were fairly explicit until the Production Code Administration cautioned Universal against going into this prohibited area, an admonition which makes gayness sound a bit like a nuclear test site. In the film as released, Rex’s assumed sexuality was alluded to coyly.”

  The Production Code Administration succeeded in toning down the Rex Stetson scene, but not another sequence that would emerge as Pillow Talk’s most iconic. In February of 1959, Geoffrey Shurlock cautioned the studio, “The entire sequence of Jan in her tub and Brad in his—employing the device of a trick screen—is unacceptable. The basic ingredient which we feel makes this sequence excessively sex suggestive is the fact that the two people seem to be facing each other in their separate tubs.” Ross Hunter knew a brilliant sight gag when he saw one and the producer stood his ground. The tub scene not only remained in Pillow Talk but became a symbol of an entire era.*

  When released in October of 1959, Pillow Talk broke box office attendance records and was endorsed by the Federation of Motion Picture Councils (which described the sex comedy as “a good, wholesome film, to which you can take your whole family”). The picture also brought its leading man some of the best reviews of his career.

  “The most exciting thing is that . . . Rock Hudson undergoes the metamorphosis from stock leading man to one of the best light comedians in the business,” declared Jack Moffitt in The Hollywood Reporter. “He has acquired a playfulness reminiscent of Cary Grant with a puckish ability to handle droll double entendre gags equal to Gable’s . . . his new found light touch should keep him at the top for years to come.”

  The New York Times named Pillow Talk one of the Ten Best Films of 1959 and it was nominated for five Oscars, winning for Best Original Screenplay. Despite Rock’s outstanding personal notices, it was his costar who received an Academy Award nomination. “Being nominated for an Oscar for my role in Pillow Talk was a very pleasant surprise,” says Day. “And, not only that, but there was this whole other wonderful reward, which was the great fun we had making that movie together. Most importantly, Rock and I became dear friends and that is something I will always cherish.”

  * * *

  More than anything else, it was the need for privacy that motivated Rock to move from Malibu to Newport Beach in the summer of 1958. “Thank God, my beach home in Newport is not on the route of any of the tourist buses, whose driver points out the movie stars’ homes,” Hudson told Pete Martin of the Saturday Evening Post. “People down there pay no attention to me.”

  Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Wherever he went, Rock inevitably became the center of attention and his new surroundings were no different. Almost immediately, Hudson became a charter member of Lido’s super elite—a group of fun-loving, hard-drinking actors, directors, and writers that Rock’s publicist, Roger Jones, dubbed “The Newport Bums.” Among its principal players were a few high-ranking members of Hollywood royalty. This included one of Rock’s idols, Tyrone Power, then in his early forties and married to his third wife, Deborah Minardos.

  “Rock had a monstrous crush on Tyrone Power,” says Lee Garlington, who would later become Hudson’s partner. “He said that he idolized him as the epitome of a movie star. He wanted to be just like him . . . the whole nine yards.”

  “I don’t know anybody who knew Ty who didn’t love him,” Hudson said. “I don’t just mean like him—love him.” For the rest of his life, Rock would express such reverence and affection for Power that several of Hudson’s partners questioned whether the two men had actually been lovers. While some of Rock’s friends were convinced that he had a brief but intense affair with Power, others dismissed the idea, insisting that the relationship was a close friendship and nothing more. Whatever the case, only a few months after Hudson had befriended him, Power suffered a major heart attack while filming Solomon and Sheba in Madrid. The actor’s death, at age forty-four, made headlines around the world. Two months later, Power’s third child and only son was born. Rock was asked to be Tyrone Power, Jr.’s godfather.

  Another friendship that Hudson forged during his days in Newport Beach would prove to be more lasting. Rock felt an immediate rapport with legendary actress Claire Trevor and her husband, film producer Milton Bren. Trevor’s career had peaked a decade earlier, when she won an Oscar for playing Gaye Dawn, the gin-soaked girlfriend of gangster Edward G. Robinson in Key Largo. Rock would always say that the scene in which Trevor agrees to warble her way through “Moanin’ Low” in exchange for a drink, was one of his all-time favorite movie moments.

  Hudson admired Trevor not only for her scene-stealing abilities but for her intelligence, humor, and innate sophistication. A dedicated art collector, Trevor herself had taken up painting. In fact, not long after meeting Rock, Claire began working on a large, surrealistic portrait of him, which would eventually be titled “The Rock Hudson Story.”* It depicted Hudson not as a dramatic actor but as the song and dance man that he had always longed to be.

  According to Roger Jones, there was another actress—one he preferred not to name—who was so obsessed with Rock that she followed him to Newport Beach, hell-bent on becoming the next Mrs. Hudson. Renting a house only a couple of blocks from the one Rock had purchased on Via Mentone, the leading lady kept close tabs on her “intended.” In a letter to Hudson, Jones recalled that across the gender lines, “The whole ‘Newport Bums’ crowd was after you, but she was determined to get you.”

  After it became obvious that Hudson was perfectly content with the male companionship that he had found on Lido, the actress packed up and moved out. As Jones would remind Hudson in his letter, “Later, when she moved back to town, she told people how much she disliked the ocean and ocean life, and was so glad to be back in Hollywood. What a wife she would have been to you, huh?”

  As much as he cherished his time there, Rock’s halcyon days in Newport Beach did not last. He was starting to be harassed. More than once, he thought he had heard gay slurs chanted when a group of teenagers passed by his house. He did his best to shake this off. But nothing could have prepared him for the very public humiliation he suffered when he was out sailing one afternoon.

  Rock and his favorite shipmates, publicists Lynn Bowers and her partner, Pat Fitzgerald, were heading back to the mainland after a visit to Catalina Island. As they approached Newport Harbor, a group of teenagers partying on the shore spotted the Khairuzan, which they immediately recognized as Rock Hudson’s boat.

  Some of the young ladies began shrieking, excitedly waving their arms and calling out Rock’s name. They couldn’t believe that their heartthrob was in such close proximity. In response to this, the boys in the crowd became jealous of the “competition” from the handsome matinee idol. Suddenly, one male voice loudly yelled out, “Faggot!” It was as though the word had been shot across the bow of Hudson’s boat, landing squarely at his feet. Soon, a group of teenage boys were chanting “Fag-got!” Then it seemed like everyone on the beach had joined in. Within minutes, Rock’s carefree outing had turned into an ugly scene. A kind of mass shaming. What hurt most of all was that Rock recognized some of his own neighbors in the crowd. They were shouting out “Faggot!” along with the others.

  After that incident, it wasn’t long before Rock left Newport Beach, turning the house on Via Mentone over to his mother, who would m
ake her home there with her third husband, Joe Olsen.

  * * *

  Well before Rock’s divorce had become final in August of 1958, the gossip columns and fan magazines had started devoting considerable space to his rekindled “romance” with Universal script supervisor Betty Abbott. Even so, the authors of some of these articles felt obliged to inform the public that although Rock was “still sweet on Betty,” he exercised the bachelor’s prerogative by continuing to play the field.

  Then in February of 1960, Photoplay trumped the other fanzines by promising readers an exclusive—“Rock Hudson’s Best Girl Reveals All.” In a splashy four-page spread, the lady in question revealed that her favorite moments with Rock were spent at home. “There are times I curl up on the couch with my head in his lap, and he’ll smoke and read and there won’t be a word for an hour, just a sort of lazy closeness.” Hudson’s lady love turned out to be neither Betty Abbott nor Vera-Ellen but his dog, Tucker, who “told” her story to writer Jane Ardmore. So much for front-page exclusives. In reality, there was a new man in Rock’s life.

  “Rock was making Pillow Talk when I first became involved with him,” says Bill Dawson, who was Hudson’s boyfriend for a brief time in the late 1950s. “I remember he told me that his muscles ached from carrying Doris Day around all the time . . . It was in the early spring of ’59 when Henry Willson’s secretary, Pat Colby, called me and said, ‘I want you to meet somebody . . .’ I was teaching in those days and I said, ‘I’m sorry, but I must be in bed by nine. I have to get up very early.’ Pat said, ‘Bill, if you pass this one up, I’ll never forgive you.’ They were looking for a safe, trustworthy companion for Rock and they figured I was a good candidate, I guess.”

  The son of a vaudeville performer, Dawson had been working as a teacher for several years. In 1955, Dawson applied for a teaching position with NATO and spent time working overseas in France and Germany. Upon his return to America, Dawson continued teaching but his daily workouts resulted in a successful sideline career as a beefcake model for publications like Physique Pictorial. Hudson liked what he saw.