by Mark Griffin
Reporters badgered her for additional details, shouting out questions simultaneously. Collart then made a statement that seemed to contradict her earlier announcement: “The last test made in America before he came here showed that he was not having any trace of AIDS, any virus.” When questioned further, Collart was quoted as saying, “But he has been cured.”
Later, Collart insisted that she had been misquoted. Once the press conference concluded and the hordes of reporters had dispersed, Mark Miller went to check on Rock. “Did you throw it to the dogs?” Hudson asked. “Yes,” Miller answered. Rock said quietly, “God, what a way to end a life.”
The night before Collart read her statement, President Reagan had phoned in his support to Hudson’s hospital room. Friends and former costars, like Elizabeth Taylor and Angie Dickinson, called to encourage Rock and wish him well. As the news of Hudson’s diagnosis—and the tacit admission of sexual identity that accompanied it—ricocheted around the world, Rock’s coworkers, friends, and relatives were stunned.
“I just remember having my breath knocked out of me,” says Howard McGillin. The actor who had played Hudson’s son in Wheels was now on the verge of Broadway stardom. “I had just moved to New York and I was in rehearsals for La Bohème with Linda Ronstadt. I remember passing a newspaper kiosk in Greenwich Village and saw the headline on the Daily News proclaiming ‘Rock Hudson Has AIDS.’ I felt so many things—shock, sadness for Rock and real terror for myself. I knew I had to come to terms with my sexuality. I was married with two small children at the time and had been locked in a real struggle over the knowledge I was gay. I had to leave Los Angeles for the same reasons Rock had felt it necessary to hide his own sexuality all those years—the homophobia of Hollywood and the culture at large . . . Now, the man who had symbolized virility and Hollywood glamour was not only dying of ‘gay cancer’ but was being forced to bare the secret he had worked so long to conceal from the world. I don’t think I fully realized it at the time, but it was undeniably a turning point in my life.”
Marc Christian claimed that the first time he learned that Rock Hudson had AIDS was at the same time the rest of the world was made aware of it: “I’m watching the television and Yanou Collart, who was the French press secretary for him, came on and said he has AIDS. And my first reaction was, ‘They just discovered this?’ But then she said, later on, ‘Which was diagnosed a year ago in the United States . . .’ And then I knew I had been lied to.” Christian maintained that after enduring Hudson’s night sweats, he had asked him if he had been tested for AIDS. According to Marc, Rock became angry and responded sharply, “I was checked out for everything, including AIDS, and I don’t have it.”
When Christian heard about Hudson’s AIDS diagnosis, he said that he was completely stunned: “I thought I was a dead man. At first, I didn’t believe what I was hearing. Then I began to sweat. Then I blacked out. Afterward, I vomited. I got chills and became extremely depressed.”
However, Marty Flaherty and others believe that Christian had known about Rock’s diagnosis long before it made international headlines. “Marc Christian knew Rock had AIDS before anybody, so he set this whole thing up,” says Flaherty. “I remember when I was enrolled in this acting studio, the Van Mar Academy and one of the guys in the class comes up to me and says, ‘I hear Rock Hudson has AIDS.’ I’m going, ‘What?’ It turned out he was the cousin to the nurse that did the blood extraction on Rock . . . the nurse told Christian, ‘Stop having sex with [Rock].’ Christian knew before anybody, even before Rock knew himself and that’s the truth.”
Chapter 19
This Is Your Life
Rock’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
After returning to America in a chartered 747, Rock was admitted to UCLA Medical Center for treatment. In late August, just before being released, Hudson announced that he wanted Tom Clark to return to The Castle with him. George Nader, for one, questioned whether this was such a brilliant idea. As he wrote in his journal: “I tell Tom he is two people—okay sober and a monster when drunk.” Even so, it was decided that bringing Tom back to The Castle—even in his semi-glazed condition—might offer Rock some comfort and reassurance in his final days.
After he was given the green light to return, Tom wasted no time in regaining control of all things Rock Hudson. He made certain that Hudson took his pain pills exactly when he was supposed to. He fretted over whether a permanent I.V. tube should be implanted in Rock’s chest. He strategized ways to fatten Hudson up, fantasizing that at some point, the man of the house would be well enough to host star-studded dinner parties again.
Just as Tom was settling back into The Castle, another former companion resurfaced. Jack Coates returned and spent a few hours quietly reminiscing with Rock. They shared a long laugh when Coates offered to make Hudson his favorite snack, a sandwich that was half peanut butter and jelly, half ham and cheese, piled on white bread and topped off with Miracle Whip. The easygoing, irreverent tone of this meeting was markedly different from Hudson’s final confrontation with Marc Christian.
When Rock had been admitted to the hospital, two lists had been compiled—one included the names of individuals that he wanted to see (with Elizabeth Taylor, Juliet Prowse, Marty Flaherty, and Ron Channell among the chosen), while another list displayed the names of would-be visitors that should be turned away. Marc Christian’s name appeared on the “do not allow” list. “I tried to visit him at the UCLA Medical Center. But I was barred and even threatened with arrest,” Christian claimed. “Finally, I snuck in. It was very emotional. I asked him, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ And he said, ‘When you have this disease, you’re alone.’ I told him, ‘You’re only alone if you want to be.’”
Tom Clark, Mark Miller, and Hudson’s private nurse, Tammy Neu, all confirmed that Marc Christian visited Rock in the hospital. However, they all insisted that the visit was supervised and that the meeting with Hudson did not square with how Christian later described it. Everyone present remembered that the only reason the meeting took place was because Christian had insisted on it. He adamantly refused to leave The Castle unless his marching orders came directly from Rock.
Hoping to finally resolve the tenancy issue, Mark Miller drove Christian to UCLA and Hudson spoke with him, though very briefly. Those present recall that there was no heart to heart, no teary mea culpa. Clark remembered that when Christian emerged from Hudson’s hospital room, he announced: “Well, Rock asked me to move out, so I’m moving out.” Everyone within earshot breathed a sigh of relief. But after meeting with a high-powered attorney, Christian suddenly changed his mind. “When Marc met with the lawyer, Marvin Mitchelson, he probably said something like, ‘It may help your case to stay in the house . . .’” says Christian’s last partner, Brent Beckwith. “So, I tend to think that he was following the advice of his attorney when he didn’t actually leave Rock’s place.”
Although Mitchelson had pioneered the concept of palimony and referred to it as “marriage with no rings attached,” Christian said that he had not broached the subject of palimony laws with the Beverly Hills attorney. Marc also maintained that at no point during his initial meeting with Mitchelson did they discuss what might transpire if Christian was not named as a beneficiary in Hudson’s will. According to Christian, the only reason he met with Mitchelson was to discuss the fact that he had been asked to vacate Rock’s home.
After Mark Miller learned that Christian had met with a lawyer, he attempted to dissuade him from meeting with Mitchelson again. “Trust me, you’ll be taken care of in some way,” Miller assured Christian. “Don’t take this to court. It will hurt Rock and hurt you.” Christian would later testify that he told Miller, “I have no intention of going to court. I just want to know what my rights are.” Christian then alleged that Miller threatened him in no uncertain terms: “If you go to court, I’ll smear you . . . We are going to call you a male hustler, a street hooker . . . If we allege it, it will go all over the world and it will be believed. I
f that doesn’t work, we’ll call you a drug addict.”
Miller denied that he threatened to smear Christian. In a conciliatory gesture, he agreed to allow Christian to remain on Hudson’s property. As Marty Flaherty recalls, “[Miller] said, ‘Why don’t we just move Marc Christian into the theatre? It’s not connected to the house, so he can come in through the garage instead of the front door. That way, we’ll never see him. Rock’s secretary was not known for his good ideas. I mean, if you’re handing Christian everything—his own pad, money, food, garage, and access to many of Rock’s valuables—why on earth would he ever want to leave? It just didn’t make sense.” To Miller, this new strategy may have been about keeping one’s enemies close while doing everything possible to circumvent a lawsuit.
With two of Hudson’s former companions now residing (more or less) under the same roof, it didn’t seem possible that the atmosphere at The Castle could become any more intense, but there was yet another act waiting in the wings. In early September, Hudson’s lawyer, Paul Sherman, appeared and handed his nearly bedridden client a bunch of contracts. Rock eyed the stack of papers with interest. Sherman explained that these were the contracts for Hudson’s autobiography. In late August, Mark Miller had flown to New York and met with executives from William Morrow. After entertaining them with anecdotes concerning his thirty-five-year friendship with Hudson, Miller had secured a lucrative book deal. Rock Hudson was going to tell all in what the trades would not-so-tactfully describe as a “deathbed memoir.”*
Hudson was told that he would be “collaborating” with Sara Davidson, a soft-spoken forty-two-year-old journalist who had authored the bestseller Loose Change. But even before they started working, a number of important challenges almost derailed the project. For starters, George Nader and Mark Miller felt that Tom Clark was doing his best to “sabotage” the book. Early on, Clark told Davidson that he would only discuss his role in Hudson’s career; he didn’t feel comfortable talking about their personal relationship.
Davidson had expressed some of her contagion concerns to Dr. Michael Gottlieb, Hudson’s AIDS specialist from UCLA, who did his best to allay her fears. After being reassured, Davidson visited The Castle and conducted three forty-five-minute interviews with Rock, who made every effort to cooperate, although he sometimes found it difficult to concentrate and tired easily. As Davidson would later tell the Washington Post, “He had good days—the first day I met him, he was downstairs talking to people, telling jokes . . . up to the end, he’d have a great day and then a terrible day.” After the initial sessions, Davidson traveled to Palm Desert, where she would meet with Nader and Miller, who would supply many of the anecdotes included in Rock Hudson: His Story.
Meanwhile, Tom Clark noticed that the same Rock Hudson who had been guardedly optimistic about his condition just a few months earlier now seemed resigned to the fact that he was dying. Part of that realization may have had something to do with the fact that he suddenly had plenty of time to think.
“People deserted him when he was sick,” says Marty Flaherty, who recalled that many friends came to see Hudson when he was in the hospital but there were far fewer visitors once he returned home. But several diehards—George Nader, Elizabeth Taylor, Roddy McDowall, Jack Scalia, and Betty Abbott—continued to make pilgrimages to The Castle. Depending on the day one visited, Rock might either be clearheaded and focused or disoriented and inattentive. As Flaherty recalls, “You never knew which Rock you were going to get.”
Some visitors were instantly recognized. “It’s Dean!” Hudson exclaimed when Dean Dittman paid a visit one afternoon. However, things were altogether different when Jean Simmons, Hudson’s costar from This Earth Is Mine, dropped in. Although Simmons had been to The Castle on countless occasions, Rock no longer recognized her. She left in tears.
Others attempted to reach out but claimed they were shut out. Hudson’s sister, Alice Waier, was living in Oregon and hadn’t seen Rock since their father had passed away a couple of years earlier. The images of a gravely ill Hudson that had saturated the airwaves alarmed her. “When I saw my brother on the news, it reminded me of when my grandfather was very ill,” says Waier. “I tried contacting my brother but the whole entourage was terrible. They deliberately kept me away from him. It was a very sad situation and I’ll never get over it.”
If some family members, friends, and hordes of reporters were turned away during Hudson’s final days, one really big name was granted an all-access pass: Jesus. Although Rock may have been baptized as a Catholic, he had never been particularly religious.* As it became clear that Hudson’s condition was rapidly deteriorating, Tom Clark felt that Rock needed to connect with what he termed “a spiritual higher power.” Enter actress and born-again Christian Susan Stafford, who predated Vanna White as a letter-turning hostess on the game show Wheel of Fortune.
Stafford had just returned from India, where she had been working alongside Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, caring for leprosy patients. As Stafford had experience comforting people who had been ostracized because of their disease, Clark hoped that she might be able to bring some of the same compassion to the world’s most high-profile AIDS patient. “Do you realize that people would not even go into his house because they were afraid that maybe it’d be contagious?” said Stafford. “There were some that wouldn’t even call him, thinking that they might get AIDS over the phone.”
According to Stafford, other born-again members of the show business community began visiting Rock voluntarily, without any encouragement from her. The group included pop singer Pat Boone and his wife, Shirley, as well as Gavin MacLeod (The Love Boat’s own Captain Merrill Stubing) and his wife, Patti. Shirley Boone, who had been a devoted Rock Hudson fan for years, went on an eight-day fast in the hopes of manifesting a miraculous recovery; she would eventually be joined by twenty others. When the fast ended, the group asked if they could come to The Castle and pray for Rock.
Marc Christian, for one, was appalled, recalling “Shirley Boone . . . racing in with her Bible ablaze and doing her voodoo rites over his body,” while Mark Miller was grateful: “One has to imagine the generosity of these faithful people, coming to pray with and for Rock.” Elizabeth Taylor happened to be visiting one day when Boone’s prayer group returned. “Truly a sight to behold,” George Nader remarked. “Cleopatra among the holy rollers.” Several of the faithful stayed as far away from the sickbed as possible. Taking note of what appeared to be Rock’s rejected expression, Taylor said, “Oh, for goodness sake!” With that, she hopped in bed with him and cradled Hudson’s body, rocking him gently as she did. The prayer vigil concluded and everyone quietly filed out of the room.
By the end of September, Rock was spiraling downward. Unable to express himself in complete sentences, he would either murmur a few syllables or make grunting noises. He slept much of the time, sometimes twelve hours a day. Hudson’s nurse, Tammy Neu, felt that her patient, who was now down to ninety-seven pounds, couldn’t hold on much longer.
Clark, Nader, and Miller began preparing for the inevitable. Calls were made to Rock’s closest friends, asking if they would be willing to speak at a memorial service. Claire Trevor was at the top of the list. “She is most cordial, calm, and realistic,” Nader noted, though Trevor doubted that she could make it through a tribute without breaking down. Roddy McDowall not only agreed to speak but suggested reaching out to Elizabeth Taylor, who immediately said yes.
A week earlier, Taylor and Shirley MacLaine had cosponsored a benefit for AIDS Project L.A., which was billed as a “Commitment to Life.” The gala event took place at the Bonaventure Hotel and featured performances by Carol Burnett, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Bette Midler. The most powerful part of the event came toward the end of the evening. In a move that the press termed “graceful,” Linda Evans appeared and introduced Burt Lancaster, who read a statement from Rock Hudson:
“People have told me that the disclosure that I have been diagnosed as having Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome help
ed to make this evening an immediate sellout, and that it will raise some one million dollars to help the battle against AIDS. I have also been told the media coverage of my own situation has brought enormous attention to the gravity of this disease in all areas of humanity, and is leading to more research, more contribution of funds, and a better understanding of this disease than ever before. I am not happy that I have AIDS. But if that is helping others, I can at least know that my own misfortune has had some positive worth. Thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you to all my friends who are attending this evening, and to the thousands who have sent their prayers, thoughts, love, wishes, and support.”
Clips of Lancaster reading Hudson’s words were broadcast around the world. Rock’s message was both an eloquently phrased expression of gratitude as well as a rallying cry. The feeling behind the words was characteristically Rock Hudson—the chips may be down but, even so, it’s your duty to reach out and help others. The sentiment seemed to be pure Rock, even if the words were not. A controversy erupted when some of Hudson’s associates suggested that he wasn’t coherent enough to have written the statement attributed to him. Were words being put into his mouth?
“Rock Hudson never, never publicly acknowledged he had AIDS,” an irate Ross Hunter told the Los Angeles Daily News. “All those statements made in his name were lies. He knew nothing about any of them. He fought all his life to stay out of the limelight, and the last thing he would have wanted was to have been thrust into it the way he was.” Hunter charged “that 95% of the time, he wasn’t lucid. He could recognize his friends when he was shaken into consciousness—but that was all. Then he’d drift off again.”
When questioned about this, Tom Clark admitted, “The statement was not written by Rock. But can’t we just say they were his thoughts? Those words have been so encouraging to so many millions. Let him have those words as his legacy.”
