by Mark Griffin
Initially, Natalie Wood, who had appeared with Rock in One Desire, was set to play Marina. “I was a huge Natalie Wood fan growing up,” Sandler says. “My god, she’s iconic and I jumped at the chance . . . Then one day I got a phone call from Richard Goodwin and he said, ‘Natalie just left the movie.’ I was crushed. She and Guy Hamilton didn’t get along. They argued and she didn’t feel she could work with him. I was very downhearted. Then he said, ‘Don’t you want to hear the good news? We just signed Elizabeth Taylor.’”
Taylor was then in her post–Richard Burton caftan-wearing period and eager to get back to work. “At that point in her career, she was married to John Warner, the senator, and as it turned out, not thrilled with living in Washington,” says Sandler. “She liked the part, she liked the movie but I think more importantly, she wanted to get away from Washington and she wanted to be with Rock.” Twenty-five years after Giant, Hudson and Taylor were together again. Their on-screen reunion inspired a few clever jokes. In one scene, a weary Marina gazes at her reflection in the mirror and murmurs, “Bags, bags, go away . . . Come right back on Doris Day . . .” prompting a priceless double take from Rock.
“A Yalta Conference of Hollywood’s finest” is how film critic Gerald Peary described the press junket for The Mirror Crack’d that he attended in early 1981. “I was part of a roundtable of journalists at a New York hotel, with several of the stars circulating from table to table,” Peary recalls. “From across the room, I heard Liz Taylor squawking, telling off a journalist who asked about her weight. We had Rock Hudson for twenty minutes. He was gentlemanly, friendly, and told us how much he enjoyed riding the subways in New York. Suddenly, some journalist at my table blurted out, ‘Mr. Hudson, is it true that you used to live with Jim Nabors?’ Hudson was taken aback. The journalist repeated the question, trying to sound like a tough-guy reporter. Hudson said, ‘No, that is not true.’ The rest of us sat stunned. We realized that question really meant, ‘Are you a homosexual?’ and that was a tasteless, irrelevant thing to ask. Those like me who were big Rock Hudson fans felt ashamed.”
After The Mirror Crack’d, Rock agreed to play the lead in a made-for-TV movie for NBC entitled The Star Maker. Hudson’s character, movie mogul Danny Youngblood, presides over the busiest casting couch in show business. Even though director Lou Antonio considered the project “total sleaze,” he persuaded Rock to sign on, promising that the script would be improved. “It just wasn’t very good when you read it,” says Antonio. “But I thought Rock could bring something human and real to it. There were quite a few dramatic scenes and I thought he might be able to use some of his own experiences, his own emotions and we could work on it and turn it into something that wasn’t pure dreck.”
Antonio had directed several episodes of McMillan & Wife and Hudson respected him. What’s more, the supporting cast was appealing: Suzanne Pleshette, Brenda Vaccaro, and Melanie Griffith. Also on board was a newcomer whom sharp-eyed viewers may have recognized as the “Jordache Jeans Man,” a good-looking model turned actor named Jack Scalia. A few years later, Scalia would work with Hudson again. And in time, Rock would come to refer to the charismatic young man from Brooklyn as “my son.”
With no promising feature film scripts coming his way, Rock wasn’t in a position to turn down work. However, when he was initially offered a four-hour made-for-TV movie entitled World War III, he passed. Although he would be playing an American president attempting to avert a nuclear holocaust, Hudson found the doomsday scenario off-putting and exploitative. “When I first read it, I thought it shouldn’t be made,” Rock said. “Then, when I had given it more thought, I realized—absolutely, it must be made to make us human beings realize what idiots we are.”
AFTER THE LONG run of McMillan & Wife, Rock had sworn off series television as he found everything about the network game unsatisfying—except, of course, his salary. However, NBC executives were so anxious to have Hudson headlining another hit show, they made him an offer that he couldn’t refuse: his name included in the title, approval over his costars, and best of all, complete creative control (Rock’s own Mammoth Films would coproduce with Viacom).
“I said I’d never do another TV show. But I think as you get older, you learn to keep your mouth shut more because you never know how badly you’re going to embarrass yourself later,” Hudson admitted to People. When asked why he had agreed to star in another mystery series, Rock’s answer came quickly, “I like to work.”
As developed by John Wilder, the concept for this new outing—which was initially titled The Rock Hudson Show—was familiar with a twist: Brian Devlin, a former military intelligence officer, is now the director of L.A.’s Performing Arts Center. In his off hours, Devlin goes sleuthing with Nick Corsello, a racquetball pro turned private detective. As it turns out, Corsello is also the son that Devlin never knew he had. While father is suave and cultured, son is brash and street smart. Before even a single episode aired, critics joked that the show should have been called McMillan & Son.
“NBC asked me to come up with a concept for Rock,” remembers John Wilder. “They favored an action-drama detective show but with the depth of character I had delivered on The Streets of San Francisco. As I’ve always loved father-son stories, I thought it would be great for Rock to have a son, someone as physically imposing and attractive as he was. But I wanted rough edges to oppose the polish Rock’s character had acquired. I hoped that I could find that actor!”
Jack Scalia, who had appeared with Hudson in The Star Maker, was cast as Nick. The show’s father-son dynamic spilled over into real life as Rock immediately took his costar under his wing. “Events happen in people’s lives and Rock Hudson was an event for me,” says Scalia. “When I was growing up in Brooklyn, if one of the guys in the neighborhood was feeling their oats and chasing after a couple of girls, we’d say, ‘Who do you think you are . . . Rock Hudson?’ Now, suddenly, here I am working with the same guy and he couldn’t have been a better mentor. He brought me into this whole new world and said, ‘Here it is, kid. It’s all for you . . .’”
Hudson suggested a meeting in New York, where Scalia was living at the time. “He was so genuine and funny that I kind of forgot about the whole star thing,” Scalia says. “So, we’re walking along Central Park West and all of a sudden, this crowd of people started running after him and asking for his autograph. I stood back and just watched this unfold. He signed every single autograph and everybody walked away with a smile. I said, ‘Doesn’t that bother you?’ And he said, ‘It’ll bother me when it stops.’ I learned so much just from observing him. In fact, Rock never gave me advice. All he ever said to me was, ‘Stick around, kid.’ And what that ‘stick around’ meant was watch, listen, and learn.”
If star and costar immediately hit it off, their show—which was retitled The Devlin Connection—was never on the same sure footing. From the beginning, the series was hampered by one important challenge after another. Says John Wilder, “On the very first day of location shooting, the crew discovered a car with a dead body in it. A man had committed suicide in his car . . . In retrospect, that probably wasn’t a good omen.”
In the spring of 1981, a Writers Guild strike halted production on dozens of television shows, including The Devlin Connection. No sooner was the strike resolved than the show was plunged into another crisis. “I won’t say that I had a nervous breakdown but boy, I must have been close,” says Wilder. “My whole world blew up. I was blindsided when my ex-wife sued me for divorce. My four young children were suddenly a hundred miles north of my workplace. I tried my damnedest to focus on work but it was impossible.” While teetering on the brink of a breakdown, Wilder was forced to crank out scripts. As a result, the quality Rock had hoped for wasn’t there and, according to Tom Clark, “There was chaos on the set.”
Then, during the second month of taping, there was another important setback. “I was working when I started getting these chest pains,” Hudson recalled. “I couldn’t catch my breath. I
was being my usual compulsive self, too wrapped up in my work, worrying, overeating, smoking, and drinking too much . . . I was over 50 and ripe for trouble.”
Nearly a decade earlier, Susan Saint James had warned Rock that his frequent Scotches and three-packs-a-day habit virtually guaranteed a visit to the emergency room. And now here it was. After being admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A., doctors discovered that Hudson had severe coronary artery blockage. They would have to perform a quintuple bypass operation immediately. Rock fought this, insisting that he had to return to work and at least finish the episode in progress. “I didn’t want to be bothered by trouble,” Hudson later said. “We’d already shut down production with the writers’ strike. Enough already.” Rock’s medical team insisted. Postponing the surgery—even for a few days—could cost him his life. It was only after he learned how high the stakes were that Hudson finally relented.
During the six-hour quintuple rerouting, blood vessels from Rock’s leg were used to bypass the damaged arteries. The surgery proved to be successful. Even so, Hudson found it impossible to break some bad habits.
“I went to see him in the hospital and I remember he really downplayed the whole operation,” Jack Scalia says. “He was supposed to be taking it easy but right away, he says to me, ‘Do me a favor and look inside that drawer.’ I opened it up and there’s a package of cigarettes in there. He says, ‘Give me one of those cigarettes. After everything I’ve been through, I really need one.’ I said, ‘I’m not giving you one. I’m going to go tell Tom.’ He got angry and said, ‘Go tell Tom. See what I care.’ Then he starts opening up his gown and he says, ‘So, Jack, have I shown you my scar?’ This was in the old days when they just cracked you open and you were left with this massive scar. I said, ‘I really don’t want to look at that, Rock.’ He says, ‘Okay. Deal. I won’t make you look at it if you give me a lousy cigarette.’ That was the kind of character he was.”
A brief stay in intensive care was followed by a Caribbean cruise. Throughout the trip, Tom Clark and Claire Trevor alternated duties as Hudson’s well-oiled but highly attentive nursemaids. Although Rock’s doctor, Rex Kennamer, had advised him to go easy and forget about his professional obligations for a while, Hudson didn’t waste a minute of his twenty-four-day vacation. Instead of kicking back, Rock began poring over some of the new Devlin Connection scripts, which only succeeded in raising his blood pressure. “We read them with dismay,” Tom Clark recalled. “It seemed to both of us they were absolutely unplayable . . . It wasn’t the show we had set out to do.”
Suddenly, John Wilder was out as producer and Jerry Thorpe (The Untouchables) was in. This followed a similar shake-up, which had already taken place in NBC’s executive offices. Network president Fred Silverman, who had greenlighted The Devlin Connection, resigned and was replaced by Brandon Tartikoff, who agreed with Hudson that the series needed to be retooled.
“None of what went on with the show changed anything between Rock and I,” says Jack Scalia. “Our friendship shifted to a deeper level. There was a lot more openness. He was still funny but now there was a sense of vulnerability as he was dealing with his own mortality. We were talking once about his childhood and he started getting emotional. He started tearing up and I said, ‘What’s that all about, Rock?’ And I looked over and his eyes just instantly cleared up. Allowing someone to see his pain, even for a minute, must have been hard. He didn’t let many people in.”
A full year after it had been slated to debut, The Devlin Connection finally premiered in October of 1982. Despite the chemistry between Hudson and Scalia, all of the false starts and bad breaks the series had weathered resulted in a show that was, at best, mediocre. The Devlin Connection debuted at a dismal number sixty-two in the Nielsen ratings and it was downhill from there. With only thirteen episodes in the can, NBC pulled the plug. The cancellation didn’t seem to faze Hudson, who was not only enjoying his new lease on life but publicly admitting that he felt “rather smug about the new me.”
If Hudson was “exhilarated” by his own Seconds-style reboot, others felt that the new Rock was a complete stranger. Hudson’s physician had warned Tom Clark that after a heart bypass operation, patients often underwent a distinct personality change, though the effects were usually temporary. “It is very difficult to describe the change or, rather, those changes, because it wasn’t just one thing, but several,” Clark remembered. “He behaved in ways he never behaved in the past. He said things he never would have said before the operation . . . I thought, well, this too will pass—but it never did pass. Rock was a different man from the time of his surgery until his death.”
According to Mark Miller, the changes that Clark described were a result of Hudson giving up the bottle and finally emerging from a decade-long alcoholic fog. Clear-eyed and completely sober for the first time in years, Hudson realized it was time to make some drastic changes.
“When Rock came out of the heart by-pass surgery in 1982 and stopped drinking, he said to me, ‘My God, I’m living with a drunk . . . ,’” Mark Miller remembered. Hudson decided that in order to maintain his sobriety, Clark would have to go. “Ship him to New York, to my apartment until we can figure out what to do next,” Hudson told Miller. As Claire Trevor was preparing to fly back to New York on business, it was decided that Clark would accompany her. Once they landed, Trevor would check into her suite at the St. Regis while Clark would move into the Beresford, Rock’s six-room luxury apartment on Central Park West.
Although everything had been meticulously planned, all did not go well. “Claire called me the next day to report that it was the worst flight of her life,” Miller remembered. “Tom got drunk on the plane and caused a scene Claire would never forget. He gave every first-class passenger an earful about his affair with Rock Hudson and how he had been kicked out of 9402 Beverly Crest in Beverly Hills and was now going to live in Rock’s fabulous apartment.”
In Tom Clark’s version of events, he decided—without any promptings from others—that it was time to go. Fed up with a postsurgical Rock Hudson who was brooding, petulant, and wholly unlikable, Clark determined that he needed a change of scenery. As he remembered it, Hudson made every attempt to persuade him to stay but his mind was made up: “I felt an overpowering need to get away by myself for a while.”
Regardless of which rendition is correct, Hudson really cleaned house. This included the dismissal of Flo Allen, Hudson’s longtime agent at the William Morris Agency. Putting his personal feelings for Flo aside, Rock signed with Marty Baum at Creative Artists Agency. The first order of business to be addressed was the fact that Rock Hudson—one of Hollywood’s most beloved stars—had not appeared in a feature film since The Mirror Crack’d had been released in 1980.
* * *
“Did you have a nice Easter?”
This was Rock Hudson’s highly original opening line to Michael Kearns. It was the Monday after the holiday. 1983. The two actors could have been chatting on the set between takes. Only they weren’t. They were sitting across from one another, wearing nothing but towels, in the sauna at Brooks Baths.
“It was this reputedly legit bathhouse on Beverly Boulevard in L.A.,” says Kearns. “It was just across the street from CBS. Brooks Baths had been there for years but its big claim to fame was that Rock Hudson was known to hang out there . . . literally.”
Then in his early thirties, Kearns was one of the few openly gay actors in Hollywood, and his shades-up policy regarding his sexuality almost certainly impeded a promising screen career. While he had won acclaim for his stage performances, that success didn’t translate into starring roles in feature films (he’s billed as “Man in Shower” in The Kentucky Fried Movie). As Kearns had learned, in Hollywood there was such a thing as being too honest. The movie star sitting across from him fully understood this, too.
“When I found myself alone in the sauna with Rock Hudson and it was clear that he was interested, I realized I was suddenly living every gay man’s fantasy,”
says Kearns. “But what’s interesting is there was nothing lascivious or lurid about it. He seemed sad to me and sad is not sexy. If I ever saw an aura around someone, it was then. And it was dark. Rock seemed kind of desperate to me . . . as it turned out, it wasn’t just a sexual experience we shared, it was a human experience. This was about connecting with a lonely human being, who I then felt empathetic towards. He was stripped down, as it were, both literally and figuratively. I could feel his pain then, though it wears on me more today. I’m older now and have a better understanding of what he was struggling with.”
Kearns was so moved by his fleeting encounter with Hudson that in 1991 he wrote Rock, a provocative theatre piece in which four characters explore their connections to Hudson, either real or imagined. In one sequence, a distraught Hudson confides in Marilyn Monroe: “There’s a little girl in me that I just trample to death.” Norma Jeane Baker sympathizes with Roy Fitzgerald and sees them as two halves of an iconographic whole: “I put on ‘Marilyn Monroe’ like a pair of earrings. Roy put on ‘Rock Hudson’ like a jockstrap.”
In the course of writing his play, Kearns came to the realization that “Rock was a brilliant actor, though not necessarily on the screen. His most brilliant performance was playing ‘Rock Hudson’ all his life. I think the acting he did off screen required more work, more transformation. Then you start to wonder . . . Who would he have really been if Roy Fitzgerald had been allowed to exist? What would he have really talked like? I mean, from the very beginning of his life, this is someone who had to act just to survive.”
