by Mark Griffin
“About a week after I met him, he would come and visit me and bring along a full bottle of Scotch and polish that off in one sitting,” says Dawson. “At the time, he had just gotten divorced and he was living in West Hollywood, in a very modest little apartment on Cahuenga Boulevard. I had met Phyllis Gates at parties and she was not only a lesbian but a very butch lesbian and a clever one, too . . . When they divorced, Phyllis got everything.”
At one point, Hudson introduced Dawson to Henry Willson. After sizing up the new man in Rock’s life, Willson saw dollar signs. “I remember him saying during that initial meeting, ‘You ought to quit teaching and let me manage you . . .’” Dawson recalls. “He was a very strange man and I’m glad that I didn’t have to be dependent on him for work as Rock was. I can’t imagine what some of Henry’s boys went through . . . I remember there used to be this restaurant at the corner of Fountain and La Brea called Panza’s Lazy Susan and Henry Willson was given carte blanche there for some reason. It’s where he would take all of his new recruits—these gorgeous boys with the made up names. He would show them off like trophies.”
More than sixty years after it took place, Dawson could still vividly recall the San Francisco premiere of This Earth Is Mine. “The night of the premiere, Rock and I had been playing around in the bedroom and really getting into it and we lost track of the time. I remember we jumped in the car and just made it to the theatre. I must say that I found it a very odd experience watching him passionately kiss Jean Simmons on screen and only an hour before, we had been doing . . . well, what we had been doing.”
Dawson says that after only a few months into his involvement with Hudson, the relationship began unraveling. “By summer, I had started to lose interest. Rock had no formal education, so that really limited us in terms of conversation. Also, we were spending more time trying to keep him from being exposed than anything else. It was exhausting. At one point, I decided to head off to Fire Island without him. I said, ‘Let’s play it loose for a while . . .’ and I think that really hurt him. That was pretty much the end of everything for us.”
With Pillow Talk wrapped and his latest affair over, Rock was ready for a new challenge—it was called television. Hudson had already made a few tentative forays with appearances on The Steve Allen Show and an episode of Climax!, in which he played himself in “The Louella Parsons Story.”
Now CBS wanted Rock to launch their new weekly series, The Big Party by Revlon. The premise was simple—a celebrity would host an “informal gathering” in their home and invite other stars over for some cocktail chatter and a sing-along around the piano. Forty years before the advent of the reality show, The Big Party would give viewers the feeling that they were eavesdropping on some fashionable soiree in Beverly Hills or crashing a chic gathering in a Manhattan penthouse. The show’s sponsor, Revlon, believed that Hudson possessed the right mix of man-about-town suaveness and Midwestern innocence that would make him the perfect host.
In a way, The Big Party was an attempt to re-create the success of The Big Show, a popular radio program of the early 1950s, which featured a variety style format. The NBC radio broadcast had been hosted by the great lady of the American stage, the gravel-voiced and grand-mannered Tallulah Bankhead. Teamed with Hudson, could Bankhead do for television what she had done a decade earlier over the airwaves? For The Big Party, Rock and Tallulah would welcome an eclectic roster of guest stars (“alphabetically listed to avoid temperament”) that included Sammy Davis, Jr., social satirist Mort Sahl, and the queen of MGM’s aquatic spectaculars, Esther Williams.
The irreverent tone of The Big Party was set in the show’s opening moments when Rock, installed in his “little room at the Waldorf,” phones Tallulah and suggests grabbing a bite before the bash. “Shall we say dinner at the Colony?” Hudson asks. “Rock, that sounds wonderful. Should we dress, daahling?” To which Rock replies, “Of course, darling, it’s not that kind of colony.” The New Yorker’s John Lardner thought that Hudson gave “an interesting performance,” and a convincing one, which managed to maintain the illusion that he was hosting an actual party. Variety left the party early, finding it “painfully contrived” while “Hudson’s hosting left something to be desired. Certainly he didn’t contribute toward easing the awkwardness when, on occasion, the going got rough and the party became tedious.”
Rock couldn’t have agreed more, telling the Los Angeles Times, “It sounded like a great idea, but it turned out awful.” And after only a handful of episodes, the party was over.
* * *
Two to Make Hate, Death Is My Middle Name, and My Gun, My Life! were just a few of the preposterous titles that Universal’s marketing department had proposed for the studio’s adaptation of Howard Rigsby’s western novel, Sundown at Crazy Horse. If the titles veered toward the outrageous, so did the plot.
Brendan O’Malley, a poetically inclined outlaw, is being pursued by Sheriff Dana Stribling, who has a warrant for O’Malley’s arrest. Stribling’s dogged pursuit isn’t strictly business, as the young man O’Malley murdered happens to be the sheriff’s brother-in-law. Both the lawman and the desperado end up at a Mexican ranch owned by Belle Breckenridge, an old flame O’Malley deserted some fifteen years earlier. Now married to a cattleman, Belle has a beautiful sixteen-year-old daughter named Missy. After O’Malley has an affair with Missy, he learns that he is actually the girl’s father. In light of this revelation, O’Malley walks into a gunfight with Stribling, only his gun isn’t loaded.
“Strange on the range” is how critic Leonard Maltin would describe the finished film, which was ultimately titled The Last Sunset. More than a decade before Chinatown, The Last Sunset featured an incestuous relationship as a climactic plot point. Though in the early 1960s, even the subtlest suggestion of incest flew in the face of everything the Motion Picture Production Code stood for. Despite the extremely controversial content, star Kirk Douglas was intrigued by Rigsby’s story and determined to bring it to the screen through his own Bryna Productions.
Blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, whom Douglas had hired to write the script for the still-to-be-released Spartacus, would write the screenplay. Douglas noticed early on that Trumbo seemed distracted by yet another assignment: Director Otto Preminger had promised Trumbo a screen credit on his Palestinian war epic, Exodus, something that the writer had been denied throughout the McCarthy era.
Trumbo’s attention may have been divided, but he did his best to portray Brendan O’Malley’s incestuous liaison as sensitively as possible. Even so, his script for The Last Sunset still raised eyebrows and the ire of Lauren Bacall, whom Douglas had hoped would play Belle. And she wasn’t the only one.
If Rock had expressed concerns that Pillow Talk was a bit too risqué for his teeny-bopper fans, he was thoroughly revolted by The Last Sunset. Were his bosses at Universal kidding? They were not. After Douglas agreed to have Hudson’s part beefed up so that Rock’s top billing seemed justified, the studio announced that two of the biggest male stars in Hollywood would finally be teamed on the screen. After Bacall’s turn-down, Douglas lobbied for Ava Gardner to play Belle, but eventually Oscar-winner Dorothy Malone was cast instead. Then the search was on for a director.
“I have to do your picture, and I have to do it better than any picture you have ever made before,” director Robert Aldrich wrote in a letter to Douglas in late 1959. As Aldrich had proven that he could handle both Westerns (Vera Cruz) and melodramas (Autumn Leaves) with equal skill, Douglas invited him on board. Production began in Mexico in May of 1960. Most of the location shooting would take place in Aguascalientes, which literally translated means “hot waters,” an entirely appropriate designation given all that was in store. Almost immediately, there were heated exchanges between Douglas and Aldrich.
“I was only a teenager at the time but I was old enough to understand that my father was under a great deal of pressure,” says Adell Aldrich. “My understanding is that somebody—who shall remain nameless—didn’t sti
ck to the script . . . Somebody thought that another actor was getting better lines than he got. As my father had rehearsed with the entire cast for two to three weeks prior to going to one of the hottest, most godforsaken locations known to man, somebody could have expressed all of this back in Hollywood. But somebody did not.”
According to Douglas, Aldrich showed up with a small platoon of screenwriters, with whom he was collaborating on various future projects. An enraged Douglas demanded that Aldrich’s collaborators be sent packing. As far as the star was concerned, the script most in need of attention at that point was the one for the film they were about to shoot.
“Dalton Trumbo . . . quit his concentration on The Last Sunset to concentrate on the Preminger picture and by the time he came back to our film, it was too late to save it,” Robert Aldrich recalled. Trumbo’s biographer, Bruce Cook, described the final draft of the script as “uncharacteristically haphazard in conception and execution.” If the half-baked screenplay and skirmishes between director and producer weren’t already tipping the production toward disaster, there was an unusual uneasiness between the two stars.
“I had a problem working with Rock Hudson that I did not understand at the time,” Kirk Douglas recalled. “He avoided any kind of direct contact with me. I was aware of how difficult it must have been for him—his costar also the producer, the boss. I tried everything I could to make him feel comfortable. But Rock always had a strange attitude toward me, never dealt with me directly . . . I’m glad I didn’t know, until I read Rock’s autobiography, that he was most attracted to blond, blue-eyed, rugged men.”
But was it sexual tension or just plain tension? Some of Rock’s lovers remember him saying that he hadn’t exactly relished the experience of working with the quick-tempered Kirk Douglas. Off-screen, there couldn’t have been two more diametrically opposed people—Douglas being all take-charge intensity, while Hudson was more laid back. On-screen, their acting styles also went in completely different directions. Douglas’s showy, take-no-prisoners approach stands in sharp contrast to Hudson’s quiet stoicism. There was no question whom director Robert Aldrich preferred: “Rock Hudson emerged more creditably from it than anyone. I found him to be terribly hard-working and dedicated and very serious; no nonsense, no ‘I’ve got to look good.’ Or ‘Is this the right side?’ If everybody in that picture, from producer to writer to other actors, had approached it with the same dedication, it would have been a lot better.”
When it was released in June of 1961, The Last Sunset was found wanting. “A routine combination of Hollywood actors and Western film clichés is put forward in The Last Sunset,” wrote Bosley Crowther in the New York Times. “The actors all go through their assignments as if they were weary and bored. We don’t wonder. After only an hour’s exposure to them, we were weary and bored, too.” In a review entitled “Ha, Ha, Ha,” Newsweek’s critic noted, “This is not so much an adult Western as a smiling Western . . . Through gun duels, dust storms, quicksand, Indian fighting and cattle-rustling, everybody keeps smiling—except, sad to report, the audience.”
In recent years, contemporary critics have reevaluated Sunset and drawn connections between it and the work of one of Hudson’s favorite auteurs: “Aldrich’s film is in some senses an attempt to transpose to the Western genre the elements of Sirkian melodrama—same studio, similar casting, and a plot about sexual neurosis,” noted a reviewer for Time Out London.
The critical reassessment came too late for several of the film’s principal players—none of whom remembered the picture fondly. “[It is] as frightful a piece of shit as one can imagine,” said Dalton Trumbo. “I chant several excuses to myself each night before toppling off to sleep: I agreed to do it without the slightest idea my name would ever be on it; the script was shamelessly juggled during the course of shooting . . . it was distorted by entry into the cast of Rock Hudson. Even so, it wasn’t a very good script to begin with, and the critics have dealt me some pretty harsh and wholly justified slaps.”
In later years, whenever a reporter turned the topic of conversation toward his film career, Rock would speak at length about Giant, Pillow Talk, and even A Farewell to Arms, but if the subject of The Last Sunset was broached, he would clam up. When interviewer Ronald L. Davis asked about the movie in 1983, Hudson managed a few kind words for director Aldrich, before admitting, “That’s a film that’s kind of difficult for me to remember, because I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t like it, so I kind of conveniently put it out of my mind.”
* * *
Henry Willson was holding court at the Mocambo one night when Rock suddenly turned to him and said, “Hey, there’s your next big star. Right over there.” Hudson’s discovery was a fresh-faced, blue-eyed blond from Montana named Glenn Jacobson. If the young man’s Nordic features and sturdy physique weren’t enough to land him a bit part as an elevator operator in Rock’s next comedy, Jacobson had yet another qualification to recommend him—he was a sailor. For Henry, it was like the Second Coming of Guy Madison. Even at first glance, Willson thought that Jacobson exuded an endearing, boy-next-door quality. If he seemed just-off-the-bus, that’s because he was.
“That night, my navy buddy and I took a bus to Hollywood,” Jacobson recalls. “We chose to go in our navy uniforms as we thought maybe people would be nice to us and buy us drinks. As it turned out, that’s exactly what happened. We ended up at the Mocambo and I got the feeling that very few, if any, military guys ever went in there in uniform. You’d have thought that two giraffes had walked through the door or something from the way people stared.”
Within minutes, a waiter appeared and told Jacobson and his friend that the pleasure of their company was being requested at one of the VIP tables. “I was a bit tipsy at that point and feeling kind of bold,” says Jacobson. “So I told the waiter, ‘Whoever it is, tell them to come over to us.’ The next thing I know, Henry Willson is standing there saying, ‘I’m having dinner with my client, Rock Hudson. Would you care to join us?’ I didn’t know who Henry Willson was but, of course, I knew Rock Hudson and I wasn’t about to turn down that invitation.”
Earlier in the evening, Mickey Rooney had bought Jacobson and his buddy drinks at Ciro’s and thanked them for their service. Jacobson’s newfound friends at the Mocambo were equally nice, but they seemed to appreciate a sailor in uniform for entirely different reasons than Rooney had. “Henry took me aside and told me that he thought I had something. Just from seeing me from across the room, he was convinced that I had this great potential as an actor. I had never given any thought to a movie career and wow, it was all being planted in my head one drunken night in the Mocambo.”
True to his word, Henry made the rounds with his new recruit the very next day. Eventually, Willson landed Jacobson small roles in Up Periscope and Operation Petticoat. Robert Arthur, Petticoat’s producer, had promised Jacobson a more substantial role in his next picture, Come September, which starred Rock Hudson. All Jacobson needed to do to seal the deal was meet with the star. Privately.
“As I was walking over to Rock’s house, I was thinking—man, if he tries to go too far in this meeting, this is not going to fly with me. I mean, Henry told me many times that I was the only client he handled that he didn’t handle at the same time. He actually told me he admired me for that. But I was worried that Rock might be a different story. When I got to his place, he put a beer in my hand, which spooked me a bit . . . I really liked Rock and considered him a friend but I didn’t want things to become awkward between us.”
Instead, Jacobson said Hudson got right down to business: “Rock told me that he didn’t think I would end up on the picture. I said, ‘No, no. I’ll expect that I’ll be on it because the producer told me that he was looking forward to working with me in Rome.’ Then Rock said, ‘Gee, Glenn, we’re very dear friends and I want to keep it that way but I think I know someone else who is better suited for this. We have another guy in mind.’ He seemed to be testing me. Henry had already told me that Rock li
ked to have a playmate with him when he went on location. Someone of his own ilk. I got the picture and it really hurt. It hurt for a long time. I talked with Henry about it later and he said, ‘Yeah, I know that Rock felt bad but that’s the way these things work.’”
* * *
After a decade of nonstop hard work and single-minded determination, Rock Hudson had not only achieved his dream of becoming a star but he was now the star—the most popular, the most profitable, and the most celebrated. As the 1960s dawned, he had an Academy Award nomination to his credit along with a room full of Golden Globes, Photoplay Gold Medal Awards, and Bambi Awards (Germany’s own Oscar). The Theatre Owners of America had named him “Actor of the Year” three times and he had already received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
As he was averaging three pictures a year, there was rarely a time when Rock wasn’t working or preparing to work. Though whenever he managed to find some leisure time, he played just as hard as he worked. Despite the fact that Hudson, Henry Willson, and Universal did everything possible to protect their collective investment in “Rock Hudson,” the star himself frequently threw caution to the wind and attended what the FBI characterized as “large-scale homosexual orgies,” which the bureau and LAPD vice officers surreptitiously monitored.
Writer Robert Harmon attended a smaller scale, but no less memorable, gathering in 1960. “A friend and I were hitchhiking into Hollywood to see what kind of mischief we could get into,” says Harmon. “This man who picked us up said, ‘Would you like to go to a party?’ And we said, ‘Sure, why not?’ We got to this place, which was like a frat house on the USC campus. When we walked in, it was obvious what was about to happen. I don’t mean that everyone was naked. In fact, no one was but it just had that look about it. I just stood by the door as I was too paralyzed to leave, mainly because I saw so many movie stars. I was a movie-star-freaky kid, so this whole scene was completely overwhelming to me.”
