All That Heaven Allows

by Mark Griffin

  Lost in the long, drawn-out mix is a solid, occasionally inspired Rock Hudson performance. In a scene in which Drager recalls how his father’s abuse first caused him to doubt the existence of God, Rock is genuinely moving: “My father would roar hell and damnation at me until he was hoarse . . . He’d beat me regularly trying to teach me to love God.” At one point, his eyes well up and he wears an expression somewhere between barely contained rage and sorrow. He’s equally superb in a climactic sequence in which the obstinate doctor is abandoned by his team and left for dead in a remote jungle post. Beneath the crazy man makeup, Hudson conveys a real sense of desperation, exhaustion, and paranoia.

  Though he had fully committed to what he perceived to be a worthy endeavor, Hudson would not be rewarded for his efforts. Upon its release in August 1962, The Spiral Road was widely panned. “Interminable” was the word most critics used to describe the 145-minute drama. The cast was alternately dismissed as either “routine” or “wasted.” Only Boxoffice—hardly an arbiter of cinematic excellence—considered Hudson’s performance “his finest to date.”

  After completing The Spiral Road, director Robert Mulligan started working on a project that Rock desperately wanted to be a part of—the highly anticipated screen adaptation of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize–winning bestseller, To Kill a Mockingbird. After guiding Hudson through the grueling challenges of The Spiral Road, Mulligan believed that Rock could convincingly play Atticus Finch, a compassionate Alabama attorney defending a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Although Universal acquired the rights to Mockingbird with Hudson in mind, producer Alan J. Pakula wanted Gregory Peck, who ended up not only filling the role but winning an Oscar for his portrayal.

  Another missed opportunity was a proposed collaboration between Hollywood’s most-sought-after star and America’s greatest playwright. “I had a producer friend, Paul Nathan, who was very interested in working with Rock,” recalls actor Earl Holliman, who had appeared with Hudson in Giant. “When Rock was still married to Phyllis Gates, Paul sent him the script of Summer and Smoke, hoping that Rock might want to do it because it had been written by Tennessee Williams. They were also trying to get Kate Hepburn for the female lead. Most actors would have jumped at this but Rock read the play and he said, ‘I didn’t understand it.’ I think Rock sometimes shortchanged himself. He was brighter than he would let on but that was one picture that he really shouldn’t have let slip away.”

  * * *

  It seemed appropriate that Rock Hudson would end up living in a house once occupied by the High Lama of Shangri-La. When character actor Sam Jaffe, who played the Lama in the 1937 classic Lost Horizon, decided to move to London, his luxurious estate, which was situated on a steep ridge overlooking Beverly Hills, suddenly became available as a rental. The timing couldn’t have been better. Rock was starting to have problems with some of his neighbors in Newport Beach, while Universal was starting to have problems with Hudson’s long commute to the studio in Burbank. Jaffe’s magnificent home seemed to be the answer to everything.

  Initially, Universal intended to lease the house for Hudson for a year—that is until Rock decided he had to own it. Spread out over three and a half acres and enclosed by cliffs on three sides, the 5,000-square-foot home offered privacy, sanctuary, and spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean and the San Gabriel Mountains. Lacking the capital to purchase the property himself, Hudson and Universal’s chief executives made a deal. If Rock agreed to renew his contract for another five years, the studio would buy the house for him. Several of his friends advised Hudson against this but he ultimately consented. After his bosses shelled out $167,000 to Sam Jaffe, Rock Hudson had his dream home.

  Originally, Rock wanted to call the house “Whiskey Hill,” but this didn’t seem majestic enough for either the sprawling Spanish-style mansion or its occupant, who had now inherited Clark Gable’s title as “The King of Hollywood.” From the beginning, 9402 Beverly Crest Drive would be known as The Castle. Some friends say that it was George Nader who christened it this, while others remember that it was Hudson himself who first referred to it this way.* Whatever the case, after years of bouncing around from one address to another, The Castle would become Rock’s primary home for the rest of his life.

  Even though it was love at first sight, Hudson knew that the house desperately needed a makeover. Working closely with architect Edward Grenzbach and designer Peter Shore, Rock’s extensive remodeling of The Castle would be conducted with great care and perseverance. In fact, renovations, both large and small, would continue on and off for the next twenty years. Rock’s “vision” was that the house should blend the natural and the architectural while emulating the unaffected charm and clean, classically inspired lines of Spanish colonial architecture.

  “I have to say that of all the houses that I’ve been in, anywhere in the world, Rock’s house was my most favorite,” says friend Ken Jillson. “It was the warmest, the most inviting. I remember it had just this one big wooden door. When you walked through it, you were in this magnificent Spanish hacienda. I mean, to this day, I could sketch out the floor plan from memory. That’s the kind of impression this house made on you. Once you had been there, you never forgot it.”

  In keeping with Mediterranean tradition, the horseshoe-shaped house was built around a courtyard, which was almost entirely canopied by an enormous olive tree. Even before entering the house, with its red clay–tiled roof, visitors were dazzled by the vibrant gardens. Clarence Morimoto, Rock’s Japanese gardener, had not only worked for Sam Jaffe but had also tended rose bushes for President Eisenhower and Charlie Chaplin.

  “Oh, my god, that house . . . it was just so beautiful,” says Cathy Hamblin, younger sister of Hudson’s longtime companion, Jack Coates. “Rock loved flowers and they were everywhere. There were azaleas. There were gardenias. It was so lushly planted. If you stayed over, Clarence would leave a little sprig of night blooming jasmine by your bed. I remember that Gypsy Rose Lee lived down the hill and you could hear the peacocks screaming all the way from her property. All of these things just made you feel like you were in another world. I’d look around at how stunning the house and grounds were and I’d think, ‘How do you live like this without having those gates locked? Where are your body guards?’ But the house was just like him. It just felt so open and accessible and welcoming.”

  Behind its thick, stuccoed walls, The Castle’s twenty-seven rooms had been furnished so that a Spanish Conquistador would feel right at home. “Over ninety percent of the furnishings in his house, he had shipped over from castles and churches in either Spain or Portugal,” says Hudson’s estate manager, Marty Flaherty. “I still have the receipts for things like 17th century andirons and 18th century torch holders. He had this thing about wrought iron. I won’t say that it was a fetish but it came close. There was wrought iron everywhere . . . candelabras and wall sconces. There were even these oversized balcony chairs that he loved that were wrought iron.”

  There were two living rooms, one of which housed matching nine-foot-long couches that had been specially designed for Pillow Talk to accommodate Hudson’s elongated frame. Once production wrapped, Rock asked Ross Hunter if he could keep them. “Everything in that house was big and rugged and manly,” says Cathy Hamblin. “There was all of this massive, hand-carved, gorgeous furniture. I remember the floor in his bar was in this herringbone pattern and it had all been cut out of two-by-fours. He told me he had done all of the work himself.”

  It was this kind of rustic, ultra-masculine style that prompted a friend to dub The Castle’s décor “early butch.” In fact, the house’s most obvious nod to showbiz glamour was its state-of-the-art movie theatre, which Rock slyly referred to as “The Playroom” (a tribute to the nocturnal activities that sometimes occurred there).

  “I couldn’t believe it when he showed me his incredible movie theatre, which blew me away,” says Ken Jillson, who was occasionally recruited to serve as projectionist. “The theatre had a
raised hardwood stage with electric title curtains. The projection booth was in another room and he had two 35mm projectors. He’d say to me, ‘Hey, I’m having some friends over. I’m going to run two movies and serve dinner in between. Why don’t you run one and I’ll run the other one.’ The friends turned out to be Carol Burnett, Liv Ullman, Roddy McDowall, and Nancy Walker . . . that’s quite an audience.”

  For someone who never cared for the stage name assigned to him, Rock delighted in christening virtually every part of his estate. His own bedroom was “The Blue Room.” The guest bedroom, boasting a color scheme best described as “bordello red,” was known as “Tijuana.” There was also “The Zsa Zsa Gabor Bathroom,” so named because of its over-the-top furnishings and dressing-room lighting encircling the mirror. Outside, there was “Ferndale,” which was often used as an outdoor urinal, and “Assignation Lane,” a shadowy, romantically lit pathway that was perfect for illicit meetings.

  On and off, Hudson would spend some twenty-three years turning The Castle into something very special—a place that reflected his tastes and uniqueness—a sanctuary where he could be himself. After years of roaming, Rock had finally found home.

  Chapter 13

  Strange Bedfellows

  Rock, Kathy Robinson, and Harvey Lee Yeary (the future Lee Majors) in the early 1960s. “Do you think Hollywood will spoil their marriage?” Hudson asked his secretary.

  Toward the end of their marriage, Phyllis Gates had said to Rock, “You have worked eight hard years on your career, and because of your abnormal sex drive, you are destroying yourself.” While Hudson was loath to admit it, at least on this score, his ex-wife probably had a point. “How do you resist a temptation when it occurs?” Rock had innocently asked Phyllis. “Paint, read, keep busy,” she responded. After they divorced, Hudson did find a hobby but, not surprisingly, it didn’t involve turning out watercolors in the basement. Instead, Rock’s hyperactive libido led him into one of the most outrageous and inexplicable episodes of his life. Provided that the rumors are true, of course.

  As with all things Rock Hudson, there is no definitive version of the story. Different people tell different tales of his alleged participation in a gay sex scandal involving the 1962 Kentucky Wildcats football team. “If you want to talk about queer ambiguity, Rock Hudson in central Kentucky is a great example of it because there are so many different stories floating around,” says Dr. Jonathan Coleman, an historian of sexuality at the University of Kentucky.

  What prompted Hudson to make repeated visits to Lexington at the very height of his career is a mystery. Was it a sudden interest in thoroughbreds that drew a busy movie star to a city known as the “Horse Capital of the World”? “The most common thing you hear is that Rock was in Lexington because of horses,” says Coleman. “The horse industry draws a lot of prominent folks to the area. Someone of Rock’s stature being in Lexington for that reason wouldn’t be that surprising.”

  Although Rock’s mother was known to “play the ponies,” Hudson himself is not remembered as an especially devoted horse fan. There is another frequently repeated (and socially acceptable) explanation for Rock Hudson’s interest in the “Bluegrass State.” While Elizabeth Taylor was on location in central Kentucky with MGM’s Civil War saga Raintree County, Hudson paid her an extended visit. The movie was largely shot in Danville and Paducah, but Rock took the opportunity to explore other parts of the state whenever Taylor was before the cameras. While sightseeing, he drifted over to Lexington and found it to his liking.

  The third and most plausible reason for Rock’s connection to Lexington has only recently come to light. “The story that most people haven’t heard is that Rock Hudson was friends with a gay couple from Chicago, John Hill and Estel Willson, and they opened The Gilded Cage,* which was Lexington, Kentucky’s first actual gay bar,” says Jonathan Coleman.

  “I knew a lot of the older queens in town and I heard that Rock Hudson was one of the owners of this gay bar,” says Lexington historian Robert Morgan. “That was the rumor going around for many years. What’s more likely is that he was close friends with the people who owned it. Probably their name was on the business but his fingerprints were in there somewhere with financing. Or, when he came to town, he laid a sizeable amount of money on the bar to basically make it his clubhouse while he was in town.”

  It may have been through his Gilded Cage connections that Rock became acquainted with James Barnett, who like Hudson, was a study in contradictions. A former wrestler turned professional wrestling promoter, Barnett was openly gay and remarkably successful in what was typically an uber-macho field. The Oklahoma native with rapier wit and dapper style had once been described as “the Noel Coward of the National Wrestling Alliance.” Those who knew Barnett remember him as an unforgettable figure—a rare individual who could discuss headlocks and choke holds as knowledgeably as he could expound on Picasso and Mozart.

  Barnett was well off, having been one of the pioneers of televised wrestling. Even so, he liked to give acquaintances the impression that he was even wealthier than one might have guessed. Whether he actually came from old money or not, Barnett—who was typically attired in a three-piece suit—exuded an air of “to the manor born.” So what if the Rolls Royce he rode around in was borrowed or that the driver was some college boy hard up for cash?

  After Barnett and his longtime companion, Lonnie Winter, moved into a luxurious residence on North Lakewood Drive in Lexington, it was not only open house but according to some, open season. The couple began inviting college football players, hoopsters, and other athletes over for parties.

  “This is how the whole scheme began,” says Shannon Ragland, who extensively researched the University of Kentucky scandal for his book, The Thin Thirty. “It didn’t begin quite as sinisterly as one might think. Jim and Lonnie had these amazing parties. The best food, the best drink . . . why wouldn’t you go? Initially, I don’t think it was a quid pro quo situation. At first, it was about getting these athletes comfortable and dependent . . . Obviously, Jim and Lonnie were interested in the better players—the stars, if you will, but they took what they could get. At these parties, they kept an eye out for boys of meager means or ones that seemed . . . conflicted.”

  In addition to plying the young jocks with lobster, unlimited booze, and stag films, Jim and Lonnie showered their favorites—or at least the more obliging athletes—with expensive gifts: suede jackets, leather shoes from Milan. This was heady stuff for a poor boy from Louisville or Harlan. “Of course, Lonnie and Jim’s interest in these footballers wasn’t altruistic,” says Ragland. “They wanted to have sex with these guys. And they were willing to spend from their considerable fortune to accomplish that goal.” Some of the athletes enjoyed the free food and drinks without succumbing to the sexual advances of their hosts; other guests were more amenable.

  At some point, the exchange of sexual favors for lavish gifts detoured into what Ragland describes as a “more pedestrian and base prostitution scheme,” with respect to the more willing young men. Each year, new team members were invited to the house on Lakewood Drive in an effort to indoctrinate them. Amazingly, the entire scheme was anything but a carefully guarded secret. “Everybody knew about Jim and Lonnie,” says Ragland. “It was well known among central Kentucky college athletes that this was going on. As crazy as it sounds, it was not a secret.”

  While not denying that the parties occurred, historian Robert Morgan and others take exception with the portrayal of Barnett and Winter as diabolical predators: “The way that the story has been presented is that these naïve young men accidentally fell in with this band of vicious homosexuals, who were exploiting them. I know people who were at these parties and that’s not the way it was at all,” says Morgan. Referring to the most receptive of the college guests, Morgan explains, “One not-so-old queen I know was at these parties and involved with a lot of the football players. People that were there have said that everybody was having fun and really enjoying the sex.”


  As incredible as it sounds, the number one box office attraction in the world may have joined the party in the early 1960s. Among the locals, it soon became common knowledge that Rock Hudson was a regular guest at the Lakewood Drive house.* A social climber without equal, Jim Barnett loved nothing more than to be able to announce to his athletes, “Rock will be joining us this weekend . . .” Whenever Hudson arrived at the Cincinnati Airport, Barnett would dispatch a Rolls Royce (borrowed from his commentator, Sam Menacker) to pick him up. While several University of Kentucky players have confirmed that Hudson regularly attended the parties, they have been reluctant to say more.

  “I never had a player admit to me, ‘I had sex with Rock Hudson . . .’ although I never asked one either,” Ragland says of his interviews with surviving members of the Kentucky Wildcats. “I had very credible people describe to me what was happening, though.” Several players recalled that it wasn’t a rare event for Hudson to pay a late-night call to Wildcat Manor, as the team’s dormitory was known. A shiny Cadillac would pull up, ready to whisk new recruits off to Lakewood Drive. “One of the key justifications that I heard repeatedly from athletes was what they did with him didn’t make them ‘queer,’” says Ragland. “In fact, they thought they were pulling something over on Rock. To these guys, getting together with him was just an opportunity to make some quick cash.”

  Some players went along for the ride, others did not. John Helmers, the team’s handsome halfback from Owensboro, remembered that one night he was summoned to the dorm’s communal phone. Rock Hudson was waiting. As Ragland puts it, “This would have been as unthinkable then as it would be today if a freshman footballer picked up the phone and Tom Cruise was on the line, asking him out on a date.”