by Mark Griffin
Hudson invited Helmers to a party at Barnett’s house and the young man accepted. However, unlike some of his teammates, Helmers immediately clued into what was expected of him. After his sole visit, the halfback declined subsequent invitations to return to Lakewood Drive. Despite this, Helmers would hear from Hudson again. While at home during holiday break, he received a Christmas card from Rock: $200 in cash was enclosed. Along with the money was a note, requesting that Helmers call him when he had returned to Lexington.
It seems unfathomable that the same Rock Hudson who narrowly missed being exposed in the pages of Confidential, and who apparently married to ensure box office survival, would risk everything this way. Only a couple of years earlier, Phyllis Gates had warned Rock that his promiscuity was adversely impacting his career. “The whole town is talking about your activities,” Gates warned. “I’ve heard that one of the major studios doesn’t consider you a good risk anymore.”
But that was in Hollywood. In Lexington, behind closed doors, Hudson obviously felt that he didn’t have to be as discreet. After all, he was among friends—or so he thought. Though once again, Rock was in for a rude awakening. It seems that a professional athlete with whom Hudson had a brief weekend fling had stars in his eyes. “I got a call from him one day,” recalled Henry Willson’s secretary, Betty Butler. “He said he wanted to talk to Henry. I asked him why, thinking he was just another actor who wanted to sign with the agency. Instead, he told me that he had proof that Rock Hudson was a homosexual.”
In exchange for burying any incriminating evidence (rumored to be photographic), the ambitious young hunk wanted what any guy blessed with leading man good looks and backwater sex appeal wanted. “He wanted to be a movie star,” said Pat Colby, Willson’s assistant. After sizing up the athlete, Henry Willson could only agree that this jock had definite potential. As usual, Rock had impeccable taste.
With Willson pulling strings behind the scenes, the would-be blackmailer would go on to make his uncredited screen debut in a campy B-film. And thanks to Henry’s unique brand of damage control, Rock had dodged yet another bullet. Though at times, didn’t it seem as though Hudson wanted to be caught, wanted to be exposed? Had he convinced himself that personal betrayals and extortion attempts were a small price to be paid for occasionally being himself . . . for being human?
* * *
The next project to come Hudson’s way was a taut service drama originally titled A Man’s Castle. The story, which was eventually renamed A Gathering of Eagles, was set during the Cold War and concerned the stern, uncompromising wing commander of a Strategic Air Command Base just outside of San Francisco. Among the responsibilities on the commander’s “to-do” list is ensuring that all military personnel and equipment are prepared to go to war at any given moment. The psychological pressures that result from the commander constantly being in close proximity to “the red phone”—which connects him to base control—were examined in depth in Robert Pirosh’s screenplay.
Rock’s character, United States Air Force Colonel Jim Caldwell, is an exacting, hard-nosed taskmaster who believes that “nothing short of perfection is acceptable.” The ultimate alpha male, Colonel Caldwell is such a toughie that when his second-in-command, Colonel Hollis Farr (Rod Taylor), abandons his post to save Caldwell’s life, Farr receives a harsh reprimand and not so much as a thank-you.
On the domestic front, the constant strain that Caldwell is under begins to adversely affect his marriage to his British wife, Victoria (Mary Peach). The situation deteriorates even further after Caldwell makes the unpopular decision to force an aging, alcoholic colonel, Bill Fowler (Barry Sullivan) into involuntary retirement. After Fowler’s botched suicide attempt, Caldwell barks at him, “I sure had you pegged . . . You couldn’t even do a good job of blowing your brains out.”
To moviegoers who had become accustomed to a light and breezy Rock Hudson trading witticisms with Doris Day, A Gathering of Eagles would offer an almost startling contrast and provide its leading man with an important change-of-pace portrayal. The role of Caldwell’s long-suffering wife also marked a transition for British actress Mary Peach, who had recently appeared in comedies like Follow That Horse! and A Pair of Briefs.
“Brave wives are awfully dull and difficult to play, actually,” says Peach. Though in the original version of Robert Pirosh’s screenplay, Peach’s character was not only more complex but she was having an affair with her husband’s best friend. Once cameras started rolling, it gradually dawned on Universal executives that this meant that Rock Hudson was not, in fact, the ultimate object of desire. This could never do. As director Delbert Mann remembered, “As we got further into the shooting, the studio became concerned . . . so they mandated changes, which meant that it was the duty that was interfering in the marriage and not another man.”
“I think they cast an English wife because they didn’t think it would be right for an American to behave that way,” says Peach, who remembers her leading man as “lovely but nervous.” As production on Eagles progressed, Peach wondered why Rock’s sociability was limited to the set. He may have playfully referred to her as “Peaches La Tour,” but he left it to his secretary to take his costar on a tour of Nevada City. After a few weeks of shooting, she eventually discovered why he was so guarded about his private life.
“His dresser and my dresser were great friends,” says Peach. “And I said to my dresser, ‘Now just tell me if I’ve done something to offend him. He’s so polite, he’s so nice but I’ve only seen him when we’re working together.’ And the dresser said, ‘Well, you know . . .’ And I said, ‘Don’t I know what?’ And he said, ‘Well, you know, he’s got boyfriends . . .’ I said, ‘Well, fine, I’m married. So what’s the big deal?’ But in those days, you just couldn’t come out. Rock was genuine in every way but it was just this beastly thing that he had to pretend to be a heterosexual . . . He was just so stunningly beautiful and so, he had to pretend to be this great Romeo.”
Screenwriter Robert Pirosh felt that the cordial yet remote relationship between Hudson and his leading lady found its way onto the screen: “It was a classic example of miscasting . . . Julie Andrews was going to play the part, but the director, Delbert Mann, decided that . . . Andrews couldn’t act, she could just sing. And they brought in an actress from England whom nobody had ever heard of. Her name was Mary Peach. There was no rapport between her and Rock Hudson . . . Technically, it was a good film about the air force, and the relationships of the men were good. It was just the husband and wife’s relationship that didn’t work very well.”
Universal spared no expense in terms of providing the production with an air of authenticity. Beale Air Force Base in Marysville, California, doubled for the film’s fictional Carmody Base. The Air Force’s then Chief of Staff, General Curtis Lemay, allowed director Delbert Mann complete access to several key SAC facilities.
Despite the scrupulous attention to detail and Rock’s committed performance, A Gathering of Eagles came up short when it was released in June of 1963. Some critics noted more than a passing resemblance between Hudson’s latest and the WWII classic, Twelve O’Clock High. Eagles was basically Fighter Squadron some fifteen years later, with Rock promoted from anxious flyboy to commanding officer. Only a year after the release of Eagles, it’s straight-faced, earnest exploration of doomsday scenarios would be sent up in Stanley Kubrick’s devastating satire, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
It was while he was on location for A Gathering of Eagles that Rock received word that a friend had died. As Lois Rupert recalled, “Rock met me at his front door with the news . . . ‘Monroe is dead’ is all he said.”
Only five months earlier, Rock and Marilyn Monroe had posed for photographers at the annual Golden Globe ceremonies. In images captured of the event, Monroe, who was named World Film Favorite, is beaming as Hudson enfolds her into a protective embrace. With a shared history of abuse and exploitation, it was inevitable that these two should
be drawn to each other. Recognizing that he posed no sexual threat to her, Monroe had latched on to Hudson and had lobbied for Rock to costar with her in Let’s Make Love as well as her uncompleted final film, Something’s Got to Give.
Lois Rupert remembered that in the early 1960s, Rock regularly received late-night distress calls from Monroe as well as another troubled superstar. “If it wasn’t Marilyn Monroe crying on his shoulder, then it was Judy Garland,” Rupert recalled. “It was almost like they took turns. Marilyn would call one night and Judy the next. He was always very patient, very understanding with both of them, even though he wasn’t getting much sleep. I think he liked playing the big brother who comes to the rescue.”
Within ten months of Monroe’s death, 20th Century-Fox would release a hastily assembled documentary entitled Marilyn. Fox had initially approached Frank Sinatra about narrating, but when the studio wasn’t able to come to terms with the singer Hudson stepped in. Rock not only provided poignant commentary—both on and off camera—he donated his salary to help establish the Marilyn Monroe Memorial Fund at the Actors Studio.
* * *
When Universal took a look at the disappointing box office returns on A Gathering of Eagles, it was right back to a battle-of-the-sexes comedy for Hudson. Man’s Favorite Sport?, as Rock’s next effort was entitled, had started life as “The Girl Who Almost Got Away,” a short story that had appeared in Cosmopolitan.
Pat Frank’s tale concerned Roger Willoughby, a renowned fishing “expert” with a secret. At Cadwalader & Peel, the sporting goods house where Willoughby is employed, he is revered as the high priest of rods, reels, and lures. Neither his bosses nor his customers suspect that Willoughby is a complete fraud—for the author of The Compleat Angler has never been fishing in his life. When his superiors invite him to compete in a big tournament, Willoughby is overwhelmed. After confessing his secret to the daughter of a lodge owner, she gives Willoughby a crash course in fly casting while reeling him in romantically.
Slight as it may have been, the story caught the eye of director Howard Hawks, who envisioned a screen treatment as the first feature in a proposed three-picture deal with Paramount. In his heyday, Hawks had directed some of Hollywood’s finest comedies, including Twentieth Century, His Girl Friday, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. After a run of action films, Hawks was ready to return to his screwball roots. Man’s Favorite Sport? would be closely modeled on the director’s earlier masterpiece, Bringing Up Baby. In fact, Hawks hoped to reunite the stars of that picture—Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn—for this quasi-remake.
After Grant passed, Hawks squabbled with Paramount over casting and the director’s deal with the studio fell apart. Convinced that Man’s Favorite Sport? was a hot property, Universal executives were only too eager to acquire it along with Hawks as both producer and director. Instead of Cary and Kate, the film would now star Rock and relative newcomer Paula Prentiss.
As this was yet another comedy in which Hudson’s character was pretending to be someone he wasn’t, it should have been business as usual for Rock. Only this time, the tables would be turned off-screen as well. While Hudson admired Hawks and affectionately referred to him as “a rogue,” he was disappointed that the director seemed to be sleepwalking his way through their collaboration. “He made very many brilliant films,” Hudson said. “But it was like he’d given up. And, therefore, it was quite disillusioning. All of the jokes and comedic sequences were repeats of things he’d done in his various other films . . . I think the director reaches a dangerous time in his life when he feels that anything he does is the best. Without trying.”
Hawks had some misgivings of his own. Overlooking the fact that Rock had already headlined a string of hit comedies, the director decided that his leading man was, in fact, comedically challenged. Hawks didn’t seem to be looking for a performance so much as a full-fledged Cary Grant impersonation: “Rock tried hard, and he worked hard, he did everything he could, but Rock is not a comedian. When you have visualized one person in it, and you’re trying to get that, it’s an awful tough job because you just don’t come out right.”
For the first time in his career, Hudson was handed an outline of scenes instead of a complete script. He found it difficult to adjust to the sort of freestyle ad-libbing that Hawks encouraged. If this wasn’t unsettling enough, Hudson was also thrown by his leading lady. According to Rock’s secretary, he liked Paula Prentiss but found some of her work habits a trifle bizarre.
“Before she was signed, we had heard about her madcap antics when shooting a film, and then saw her do it,” Lois Rupert remembered. “She would walk into the shot, and just after the director yelled, ‘Roll ’em!,’ she’d jump up and down, make faces, and anything else she could think of—to let go of tension, I guess, but it threw Rock. He found himself flubbing his lines and having to shoot scenes over. To correct the problem, he did exactly the same thing to her. She was stunned. It was the end of her antics, at least on Rock’s show.”
Reviews of Man’s Favorite Sport? were mixed with overlength being cited as the film’s primary fault. A number of contemporary critics, such as the “devout Hawksian” Erich Kuersten, feel that Man’s Favorite Sport?, with its sly exploration of sexual ambiguity, is deserving of a reevaluation.
“This is really a comedy about the failure of artifice,” says Kuersten. “One comes away realizing that Man’s Favorite Sport? shares more than just character and setting similarities to Shakespeare’s plays. Like them, the superficial trappings and comedic elements of the story may be dated to the point of antiquity, but the underlying themes are still too progressive for most of society to recognize.”
* * *
It was in 1962 that Rock first spotted Lee Garlington. Twenty-four at the time, Garlington was in Hudson’s words, “a head turner.” Tall, blond, and virile, Garlington possessed the kind of striking looks and commanding presence that typically translated into a seven-year contract with a major studio.
“I wanted to be a western movie actor because Randolph Scott was my childhood hero,” Garlington says. “So, I landed in Hollywood in 1961 and realized that I was kind of pretty, which helped my chances but what I didn’t realize was that I didn’t have any talent. Not only that, but my family was slightly to the right of Adolf Hitler. I had been brought up ultra-conservative in Atlanta. So, when I hit Hollywood Boulevard, it scared the hell out of me. These people seemed so off the wall and avant-garde for 1961 that I really sort of freaked out. In those days, I was much too inhibited to become an actor but I wanted to get away from Atlanta and my domineering parents and strike out on my own. Because I loved westerns, Hollywood was the place I wanted to go.”
Once there, Garlington discovered that “Hollywood in those days was quite gay. I mean, in West Hollywood there was practically a gay bar in every corner and several of them had been there for years by the time I hit town.” Then, as now, a primary topic of conversation over cocktails was which movie stars were locked in the closet. “Rock Hudson certainly wasn’t the only gay star in Hollywood in those days but he was the one that everybody seemed most interested in,” Garlington says.
While working as an extra for the Universal television series The Virginian, Garlington heard more gossip about the studio’s top star. “Around the lot, everyone either knew or strongly suspected that he was gay,” says Garlington. “By that time, it was pretty much an open secret around town but because everybody loved Rock and they wanted to protect him, there was what I would describe as this conspiracy of silence going on. One of the reasons he wasn’t outed was because on the set, he treated the lowest level gaffer or script girl with respect and kindness and friendship. And, trust me, most of the big stars couldn’t be bothered.”
Typically, movie stars and extras didn’t interact unless a scene dictated it, but Garlington was determined to meet Universal’s resident heartthrob. “Word kind of got out among us peons that Rock Hudson was on the lot making a movie,” Garlington remembers. “The big sta
rs had their own private cottages, so I decided I’d go hang out by his. I figured I’d check him out if he came in for lunch. And sure enough, he did. As he walked by, he never once looked in my direction, which was kind of depressing. But when he came back out . . . I remember he was walking away and he suddenly turned and looked back at me.”
Rock liked what he saw. His interest piqued, Hudson did some checking. He asked around and found out who the handsome extra was—the one who had been loitering outside of his bungalow, pretending to be engrossed in Variety. When the word came back that Garlington was already involved with someone, Hudson held off in terms of pursuing him. “That was very much Rock,” Garlington says. “Never pushy. Never pulled movie star rank. He was always thoughtful and a real gentleman.”
The following year, Garlington gave up on acting and became a stockbroker. Around that time, there were also changes in his domestic situation. He broke up with the young man he had been living with and moved into his own apartment in West Hollywood. Once Hudson learned that Garlington was single, he came calling again.
“He invited me over and the first time I knocked on his door, I was terrified,” Garlington recalls. “Nothing happened that night but he understood what was going on and why I was so nervous. He was very understanding. Very patient. Then he invited me back again and we just sort of fell into a relationship. From the beginning, it was understood that I could not move in. That would be too dangerous. We also could not be seen in public together. Being gay and working for a stock brokerage company—the squarest of the square in Beverly Hills—I was playing a double role myself.”
Garlington remembers that on the rare occasions when he and Rock ventured out, everything had to be carefully choreographed. “If we wanted to go to a movie, Rock would call over to a theater in Westwood. He’d talk to the manager and they would reserve two seats on the very end, next to an exit door. They’d leave the exit door partially open and we’d slip in just as the house lights went down. After the movie was over, we’d have to jump up and run like hell. Otherwise, he would be mobbed by dozens of fans. They would circle around him, asking for his autograph. Then they would look over at me and say, ‘Are you somebody?’ And that used to piss me off. Once I answered, ‘Yeah, I’m Troy Donahue . . .’ and they believed it. For the first few weeks, all of the sneaking around and hiding we had to do was exciting but afterwards, it was hell.”
