All That Heaven Allows

by Mark Griffin

  By early December, it was clear that it was all over. “I remember one day, Mark Miller pulled me aside and said that Roy wanted me to move my things out of the house. And I said, ‘Well, let him tell me himself.’ But he didn’t. I thought, ‘Little Tony Melia, you don’t want to stay where somebody doesn’t want you . . . leave.’ And that’s exactly what I did.”

  * * *

  “Have you heard the one about Prince Rainier and Tennessee Ernie Ford?” Rock would often ask a new acquaintance. Among Hudson’s inner circle of close friends, comedienne Carol Burnett was one of his favorites, and an anecdote concerning her very regrettable brush with royalty would become a fixture in Rock’s repertoire.

  In August of 1967, Hudson had invited 400 Hollywood luminaries, including Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda, Debbie Reynolds, and Groucho Marx to an “informal” Mexican-themed party at his home. The lavish soiree was in honor of Carol Burnett. “He just said, ‘Well, you’re going to be doing your [CBS] variety show soon, so let me throw you a big old bash . . .’ And that’s what he did,” Burnett says.

  While Burnett was the evening’s sole honoree, many of the show business elite had also turned out to welcome Princess Grace and Prince Rainier of Monaco, who were visiting Los Angeles. For Burnett, who had grown up a starstruck kid addicted to double features, the party was heady stuff. “Of course, I was just a wreck,” Burnett says. Although the arrival of Her Serene Highness and Prince Rainier had been signaled with a traditional bullfight processional played by the Guadalajara Kings, Burnett had somehow missed their grand entrance.

  “Princess Grace and Prince Rainier still hadn’t arrived yet to my knowledge, so I went up to the bar to get a glass of wine. There was this gentleman standing there and I said, ‘Hey, you Ol’ Pea Picker, you!’ because that’s what you always called Tennessee Ernie Ford. It was his catchphrase. Well, it turns out that it was really Prince Rainier standing there. He didn’t know what to say and he just stared at me like I was . . . something else. I was so embarrassed. When I told Rock, he howled. He absolutely howled.”

  Hudson had first worked with Burnett in 1966 on her CBS variety special, Carol and Company and they instantly clicked. “I remember thinking . . . not only is he wonderful to look at but he’s also got some good comedy chops,” says Burnett. “He was just a lot of fun to be with, which is why we kept inviting him back when we were doing the weekly show.”

  In 1973, Burnett was approached about headlining a West Coast production of the Tony Award–winning Broadway musical I Do! I Do! Based on Jan de Hartog’s play, The Fourposter, the show revisited fifty years in the lives of a married couple.

  “Gower Champion wanted me to do it,” Burnett recalls. “Right away, I said, ‘Let’s get Rock Hudson!’” As the husband and wife were the only characters in I Do! I Do!, Hudson and Burnett would be on stage continuously. Rock had several challenging solo numbers to sing, including “I Love My Wife” and “The Father of the Bride” and, at one point, Hudson even had to execute a soft-shoe while barefoot. All of this, not to mention holding his own opposite Burnett, who, in addition to being the first lady of television comedy, had won raves for her Broadway debut in Once Upon a Mattress. Despite Hudson’s initial trepidation about performing live, Burnett says that Rock quickly got over his stage fright.

  “Well, right from the beginning, he took to it like a duck to water . . . It was hard work but we had so much fun rehearsing. There were times when Gower had to sit on us because we’d look at each other, especially during the opening song, where they walk toward each other singing and we’d crack up. It became like giggling in church.”

  During a week of tryouts in San Bernardino, the show not only sold out every performance but both stars garnered encouraging reviews. From there, it was on to opening night in Los Angeles, complete with a who’s who of Hollywood occupying nearly every seat in the orchestra section. Including Doris Day in the front row.

  “When we first opened, Rock could be a bit of a devil,” Burnett remembers. “After we’d do the opening number, the curtain would come in and we had to get into bed. While we were waiting for the lights to come back up, he’d say, ‘You’ll never guess who’s in the audience tonight. You just won’t believe it.’ And I would scream at him before the lights came up, ‘Don’t you dare tell me!’ He loved to know who was in the audience. The last thing I wanted to know was that some big star was sitting out there but he just loved to tease me.”

  The four-week run of I Do! I Do! would break box office and attendance records for the Huntington Hartford and the reviews were uniformly outstanding. A year later, in the summer of 1974, Hudson and Burnett kicked off a national tour of I Do! I Do! at the Dallas Music Hall. This was followed by performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington and the St. Louis Municipal Opera Theatre.

  “In St. Louis, there was an audience of about 20,000 people,” Burnett says. “What was weird about that one is that we were playing in an outdoor theater. Rock and I had to change the scenery during the blackout and, of course, in the summertime it doesn’t get dark until after nine o’clock at night. So, the entire audience was watching us run around like crazy people while we were arranging the scenery and bumping into each other. But I guess the audience was used to that. They really made us feel welcome. It seemed like everyplace we went that summer, it was just terrific. And Rock was like nobody else.”

  * * *

  “I have this unforgettable image of Tom Clark in my mind,” says Armistead Maupin. “He’s in The Castle’s master bedroom, sitting up in this enormous four-poster bed with his silk sleep shade up over his forehead while he’s watching his requisite morning episode of The $10,000 Pyramid . . . It was like Mrs. Vanderbilt reclining in her boudoir.”

  It was 1973. Tom Clark had officially taken up residence at 9402 Beverly Crest. For better or for worse, Clark would become the central figure in Rock Hudson’s life for the next decade. Tom was now on board as both domestic and business partner to Rock, while also acting as his traveling companion, closest confidant, and full-time drinking buddy.

  Now that he was out of Henry Willson’s clutches and free from his contractual enslavement to Universal, Hudson felt it was best to keep his management team close to home. After hiring longtime pal Mark Miller as his secretary, Hudson then appointed Clark as an officer of his production company, Mammoth Films. Several intimates registered surprise that Hudson, who had always carefully compartmentalized every aspect of his life, now seemed to be indiscriminately mixing the personal and the professional.

  “Rock always had this weak personality. He was easily swayed, easily influenced,” says Lee Garlington. “Mark Miller was his friend, then he becomes his secretary. I mean, I liked Mark—but please. Then Tom Clark moves in on him and starts taking over. Next thing you know, he’s Rock’s lover. Now, if there’s any one person that is not Rock’s type, it was Tom Clark.”

  Once he was ensconced in The Castle, Tom wasted no time in ascending the throne and ordering a top to bottom renovation of Rock Hudson’s life. Like Phyllis Gates before him, Clark felt that Rock’s lifestyle was too laid-back, too ordinary, too middle-class. “You’re a movie star, goddamn it! Will you act like one” was to become a familiar refrain echoing down the halls.

  Under Clark’s watchful eye, rooms were remodeled, furniture rearranged, buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken confiscated. Although it embarrassed Hudson, a vintage Rolls-Royce would now be at his partner’s disposal. “It didn’t bother me at all,” Clark would say with a shrug, “but I was to the manor born.” If Hudson and Mark Miller had once sat down to informal lunches with the household staff, those days were over. “Tom is obviously rankled by the ‘servants’ being at the same table,” George Nader noted in his diary. “He is a real study. He is beginning to use ‘our’ in all his sentences. Tom believes he is Queen of The Castle.”

  Although he could be high-handed and sometimes condescending, it was Clark who would arrange for all of Hudson’s employees to receive a subs
tantial (and long overdue) raise, along with a generous bonus. Before Tom arrived, Rock had been completely hands off with the staff—so much so that it was easy to forget that he was the head of the household.

  “He never questioned anybody,” says Marty Flaherty, who worked at The Castle for over a decade. “You could say or do anything you wanted. I mean, Rock was so laid back that he answered his own front door. Then Tom came in and things changed. Tom was the ‘wife’ that Rock needed in his life. He took care of all of the details a big star like Rock didn’t have the time, the interest, or the knowledge to do.” Because Hudson was so easygoing and non-confrontational, he could never bring himself to reprimand anyone.

  Tom, on the other hand, had no problem laying down the law. If an issue came up involving a staffer, it would now fall to Clark to do the heavy lifting—as in the case of Hudson’s longtime housekeeper. Leatrice Lowe, whom everyone called “Joy,” had worked at The Castle for years and Rock considered her family. They had been through a lot together, including a harrowing episode in 1965 during the Watts Riots.

  As the south side of Los Angeles erupted into violence after an altercation between an African American motorist and the police, Joy expressed concern about a friend of hers named Peggy, who lived in war-torn Watts. Fearing for her life, Peggy had barricaded herself inside her home. Rock sprang into action. Getting behind the wheel of his new Town & Country station wagon, Hudson embarked on a dangerous rescue mission with Joy, her young son, and a menacing-looking German shepherd named Fritz in tow.

  Making their way past police barricades and rioters armed with Molotov cocktails, Rock and company finally reached Peggy’s front door. After the terrified woman climbed aboard, they raced back to Beverly Hills. As Joy later recalled, “We drank a lot that night, and laughed. When you finish something like that, you feel your nerves.”

  Nearly a decade later, there was still a lot of drinking going on, to the point that Joy would disappear into her room for days, leaving her domestic duties unattended. Accustomed to overlooking his housekeeper’s chronic benders, Rock never said a word about the unmade beds or overflowing ashtrays. Never one to remain silent, Tom angrily confronted Joy, who responded by hurling a container of cottage cheese across the room. It wasn’t long after this episode that Rock made the painful, though inevitable, decision to let Joy go.

  Other cast changes at The Castle followed. Before Tom arrived on the scene, Rock had palled around with his stuntman, George Robotham, wardrobe man Pete Saldutti, and makeup artist Mark Reedall. Clark decided it was time to upgrade the invitation list. Among the new regulars would be producer Ross Hunter and his partner, art director Jacque Mapes; Danny Kaye and his wife, Sylvia Fine; Nancy Walker and her husband, singing teacher David Craig. Instead of a stuntman, Rock now found himself seated beside Olive Behrendt, an elegant Los Angeles socialite and patron of the arts.

  Roddy McDowall, who had appeared with Rock in Pretty Maids All in a Row, would also become a familiar face around The Castle. Although he had been spared Henry Willson’s special brand of star-making, McDowall had endured the same kind of heterosexualizing in the press that Hudson had. “Calling All Girls” was the title of a 1950s fan magazine photo spread that depicted Roddy and Tab Hunter as “eligible bachelors” scouring their little black books in search of female companionship.

  In reality, McDowall was even more deeply closeted than Hudson. Discreet and unfailingly professional in public, Roddy could finally relax and let his guard down at The Castle, where his encyclopedic knowledge of films—both classic and campy—would be fully appreciated. McDowall would also find love at The Castle. Rock had hired a young man named Jimmy Gagner to transfer his film collection to videotape. Shortly after McDowall and Gagner were introduced, an affair developed and Jimmy would end up moving in with Roddy.

  As for his own domestic partnership, Rock seemed convinced that in Tom Clark he had finally found the deeper emotional bond he had long been searching for. As Hudson told George Nader, “I’ve always been looking for a Mark,” referring to the long-term, mutually satisfying relationship Nader shared with Mark Miller. “I’ve never found it, and I hope I can with Tom.”

  Friends of the couple weren’t so sure. Rock’s former roommate, Bob Preble, gave Tom Clark a mixed review: “He took control of Rock but he also got Rock drinking very heavily, as he was an alcoholic.” Others, like actress Elaine Stritch, were initially on the fence about Clark but eventually warmed to him: “At first I wasn’t quite sure of Tom, but then I got to know him. I think he was genuinely very, very attached to Rock and really loved him.”

  Broadway star Judy Kaye, who would befriend both Hudson and Clark, recalled that Tom was a constant in Rock’s life. “You better believe he was completely present,” says Kaye. “You didn’t get Rock without Tom . . . Sometimes they battled hugely, but even so you could tell that they really cared about each other a great deal. Of course, this was before things really went south later on.”

  Over time, as both Hudson and Clark’s alcohol intake increased, some of the darker undercurrents in the relationship became more readily apparent to others. Instead of being a supportive partner to Rock, Tom sometimes came off like an abusive parent. “In the early days of their relationship, I think Rock saw the value of having somebody around like Tom, who was two steps ahead of him,” says Armistead Maupin. “That’s always the value but that’s always the danger—that someone you trust can take over your life and suddenly be in charge of you. Tom could be awfully unpleasant and publicly nasty to Rock. He’d call him ‘the matinee idol.’ He would do this in front of Rock and the whole point of it was to stress that Rock wasn’t a matinee idol anymore.”

  Just as Hudson had named his own alter ego “Charlie Movie Star,” he would give Clark’s brutally honest, boozed-up evil twin a not-so-affectionate nickname: “Little Tommy Truth.” Fueled by one too many Scotches, Little Tommy would unload on Rock, venting all of the bitterness and resentment that he had been stockpiling over the years. And if Tom would never be Rock Hudson, he would make certain that Roy Fitzgerald fully understood that he would never be Rock Hudson again either. The emotional complexities involved in having a partner who was best friend, fallen idol, and punching bag all rolled into one were enough to keep Clark’s glass perpetually full. And the put-downs spewing forth.

  “I would say that mentally, it was really an abusive relationship,” says Hudson’s friend, Ken Maley. “Tom was really high maintenance. Very volatile. You really didn’t want to engage him if he had been drinking . . . Most of the time, it wasn’t what other people would think of as a happy, compatible relationship, but compatibility can mean a lot of things. In their case, I think it was this explosive relationship, which to Rock, may have been better than nothing.”

  One of Rock and Tom’s most memorable stand-up, knock-down arguments occurred while they were in the midst of preparing for Hudson’s fiftieth birthday party in 1975. Guests were asked to come in costume, and Tom and the entire staff at The Castle worked overtime transforming several rooms in the house for a grand celebration. The larger of the two living rooms was converted into an elegant dining room, with silver candelabras topping eight tables. The smaller living room became a 1920s speakeasy, complete with a dance floor. Rock hadn’t been consulted about the preparations and this led to an epic screaming match with Tom, capped by an angry exchange of fuck yous.

  All seemed to be forgotten by the time the guests arrived, however. Carol Burnett and husband Joe Hamilton were flappers; Mark Miller, Buddy Hackett, and publicist Rupert Allan were a trio of Arabs straight out of Hudson’s clunker The Desert Hawk. As a band launched into the opening strains of “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” Rock descended the staircase wearing an oversized diaper, to the delight of everyone present. After greeting his guests and mingling for a while, Hudson disappeared upstairs. When he returned, he was wearing Tom’s birthday present: a T-shirt bearing a special message that paid tribute to their latest blowout. In bold
letters, it read: “Rock Is a Prick.”

  * * *

  Before embarking on a fifth season of McMillan & Wife, Rock would spend his hiatus working on a new movie. Entitled Embryo, the thriller marked Hudson’s return to the science fiction genre, which he had last visited with Seconds a decade earlier. Rock’s character, Dr. Paul Holliston, is a recently widowed medical researcher and a modern-day version of Doctor Frankenstein. After developing a revolutionary growth hormone that rapidly accelerates the maturation process, Holliston begins experimenting on a fourteen-week-old human fetus. Within a matter of weeks, the infant has evolved into a profoundly intelligent and stunningly beautiful woman, whom Holliston names Victoria.

  Unaware of her sinister side, Holliston proudly introduces Victoria to his coworkers and friends, passing her off as his new research assistant. The mysterious beauty with the Mensa-level IQ impresses everyone except Holliston’s very suspicious sister-in-law, Martha, who finds his superhuman assistant too good to be true. When Martha starts asking too many questions, Victoria injects her with an experimental drug, triggering a fatal heart attack.

  Victoria seduces Holliston but afterward is racked with pain. Realizing that she has become addicted to one of Holliston’s experimental drugs, Victoria discovers that she will die without the antidote—pituitary gland extract from a newborn fetus. Which is where Holliston’s expectant daughter-in-law comes in.