by Mark Griffin
Dr. Michael Gottlieb responded to Hunter’s charges in an interview with Rona Barrett: “There is no truth to the notion that Rock Hudson was unaware of his diagnosis and unaware of his role in bringing this to public attention. He was aware and fully participatory in the process of founding an organization that will carry on research into AIDS and help all of us as a result. And it damages that cause to make allegations of that kind.”
Despite all of the backstage drama, the Commitment to Life Gala had been a great triumph, raising $1 million and attracting plenty of press attention. It was pioneering AIDS activist Bill Misenheimer and L.A. catering mogul Bill Jones who had persuaded Elizabeth Taylor to become the fundraiser’s chairperson; the star was eager to get involved. “Elizabeth was just so angry that people were not believing how serious AIDS was,” says Rock’s friend, Wes Wheadon. “She had two assistants, both gay men that died of AIDS. One had it and killed himself, which devastated her. The other guy died without any warning because in those days, you got diagnosed and you were dead in a month. So, she was really becoming very militant about this cause.”
Galvanized by the success of the Commitment to Life event, Taylor and company decided to establish an AIDS foundation, which would raise funds for clinical research as well as providing primary care for patients. The result was the L.A.–based National AIDS Research Foundation, which Taylor and Michael Gottlieb created. This organization would eventually merge with the Manhattan-based AIDS Medical Foundation.
The newly formed amfAR (American Foundation for AIDS Research) would be jump-started with a $250,000 donation from Rock Hudson. Though even this goodwill gesture was questioned by the press: Was the same Rock Hudson who had recently been hospitalized in full command of his faculties as well as his bank account? The actor’s business manager, Wallace Sheft, assured reporters that Hudson “agreed wholeheartedly with the gift I advised. We discussed it, and he agreed with it . . . There were other people in the room. He knew what was going on. He liked the idea of helping.”
As other donations started pouring in to amfAR, Bill Misenheimer would credit Hudson’s public disclosure with turning the tide: “It was the single most important thing that happened to open people’s minds and to help us raise funds.” If the nonprofit organization he helped found was off to an encouraging start, Hudson himself was struggling. Rock was not responding well to some of his recent blood transfusions, which were followed by extended periods of thrashing and twitching. Despairing over Hudson’s grave condition and exhausted from caretaking, Tom Clark was at his lowest ebb when an unexpected visitor appeared at The Castle one afternoon.
Clutching a Bible in one hand and a map to the movie stars’ homes in the other, “Eleanor” informed Tom that she had received an important message from God for Rock Hudson. She had to see him. “I said to myself, oh-oh, one of those,” Clark recalled. “I said, ‘It is impossible. He is very sick and there are no visitors allowed.’” But Eleanor would not be deterred. “I know I will see him because Jesus told me I would.”
Impressed with the woman’s tenacity and noting that Eleanor bore a vague resemblance to Rock’s late mother, Clark relented and ushered her upstairs to Hudson’s bedroom. The woman informed Rock that he had an important “final ministry” to fulfill. One that would have a more powerful and lasting impact than his film career. Rock listened attentively as she spoke. “Jesus told me to tell you that he has great plans for you.”
This surprise visit was followed by a scheduled one with Father Terrance A. Sweeney, who was not only a Catholic priest but a five-time Emmy Award–winning producer. Susan Stafford had summoned Father Sweeney, who anointed Hudson, gave him communion, and then got creative in terms of taking confession, as Rock was almost completely nonverbal at that point. Even after Father Sweeney’s departure, Hudson kept things to the point. “Thanks for that” is all Rock said to Tom.
Back in 1952, a televised tribute to Roy Fitzgerald on This Is Your Life had concluded with friends and family gathered around him, everyone expressing their affection and support. More than thirty years later, the sentiments were still the same, but now the guest of honor was fighting for his life . . .
As dying was a serious business, Rock tried not to smile whenever he overheard one visitor whispering to another that his mind was gone. Maybe it was, but he still knew that was nobody but Doris singing “Sentimental Journey” over the loudspeakers as he shipped out on another tour of duty . . . Gonna take a sentimental journey, gonna set my heart at ease, Gonna make a sentimental journey to renew old memories . . .
Rock felt a weight on his chest as Pat Boone placed a Bible there. He was no longer the “Beefcake King” and it was heavy . . . Then the bed started shaking as Tom slipped under the covers on one side of him and Elizabeth Taylor on the other. “Liz, what would the Enquirer say about this?” he heard Tom say. “Don’t call me Liz,” Elizabeth answered. Then, George Nader and Mark Miller sauntered into the room, linked arm in arm, singing “Mockin’ Bird Hill.” They had some serious competition as the mysterious “Eleanor” was kneeling on the floor, clutching a map of the movie stars’ homes and speaking in tongues.
Now someone was talking softly in one ear, encouraging him to forgive his father for abandoning him, while in the other, he was being asked to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal savior. It was a lot to think about, especially when your mind was gone. Or at least elsewhere. He was mesmerized. His boyhood idol, Jon Hall, was preparing to take the plunge. Only now Hall wasn’t swan-diving into a shimmering lagoon as he had in The Hurricane but into Rock’s forty-foot pool, which was filled with a dozen young men, each one a stunning blue-eyed blond. Suddenly, Tom announced, “I’m going downstairs and get another cup of coffee. How about you . . . another cup?” It took every last bit of effort that he had left to speak, but Rock heard himself say, “No, I don’t believe so.” Then it was all over.
ROCK HAD WANTED to be cremated with his ashes scattered in the ocean. This request would be fulfilled, but another of his wishes—that there be no memorial service—would be overruled. If anything, Hudson would have liked his friends to gather on a yacht, sip champagne, and swap a few funny stories. But a yacht seemed impractical, given the number of people involved. Alternative plans were discussed among the members of Rock’s inner circle and, initially, a very traditional Hollywood ceremony started to come together.
“I got a call from Mark Miller, who said, ‘Can you help me make the funeral arrangements?’” says Ken Jillson. “We called Forest Lawn and they rolled out the red carpet for us. Then, Elizabeth Taylor calls Mark and she’s furious and says, ‘I don’t want to go to Forest Lawn. We’ll have a memorial at The Castle. We’ll have margaritas and mariachi music and a few speakers. We’ll do it the way Rock would have wanted it.’ She turned out to be right. Having it at The Castle excluded it from a public forum, which was really smart.”
The day before the memorial, a grand white tent went up in the backyard at The Castle. Beneath this, a hundred white chairs were arranged, fifty on either side of a center aisle. The gardener, Clarence Morimoto, and Marty Flaherty were busy planting masses of pink and white flowers—“Elizabeth Taylor style.” Director Stockton Briggle and his partner, Mark Tillman-Briggle, created an elegant memorial program that reflected the dual nature of Rock’s personality, as it included a serious quote from poet Kahlil Gibran and a nonsensical one from Taza, Son of Cochise.
The day of the service, Doris Day telephoned Mark Miller and told him she wanted to attend but wouldn’t be able to handle it. The other notable no-show would be George Nader: “I didn’t go to the service because Ross Hunter and Jacque Mapes were supposed to be there. If I went and saw them there, I would have thrown them in the pool.” Rumor had it that Hunter was now referring to Nader and Miller as “Greed and Avarice.” Miller was unruffled (“I get to be avarice!”), but Nader was not amused.
Everyone else would be there, though, as the press was well aware. The guest list had been lea
ked ahead of time and it read like a who’s who of Hollywood: Carol Burnett, Angie Dickinson, Robert Wagner, Lee Remick, Susan Saint James, Roddy McDowall, Stefanie Powers, Nancy Walker, Connie Stevens, Martha Raye, Ricardo Montalban, and “optometrist to the stars,” Wes Wheadon. Rock’s old friend, the actor Craig Hill, flew in all the way from Barcelona. MGM’s “million dollar mermaid,” Esther Williams, crashed the event. At 5:15 p.m., the “informal” tribute—which Nader referred to as “The Elizabeth Taylor Quaker Memorial Service,” began. Father Sweeney spoke, as did Burnett and Dickinson. John Schuck and Constance Towers performed a medley from I Do! I Do! Then Taylor closed by saying, “Rock would have wanted us to be happy. Let’s raise a glass to him.”
With so many celebrities in attendance, Hudson’s young friend Gunther Fraulob stood out simply because he was one of the few people present who wasn’t instantly recognizable. At the memorial, Fraulob met Marc Christian for the first time. “He wanted to know what I had to do with Rock,” says Fraulob. “I said, ‘Well, he went to Hawaii with me and spent a week with my parents.’ Christian looked shocked. I should have connected the dots right there and asked myself why he was so interested. Then he called me a couple of days later and I was very surprised. He started in by saying, ‘This guy, Tom Clark, has jumped in here and he says he’s Rock’s spouse. I’m Mrs. Hudson. Not this guy.’ We talked for hours. Basically, Christian had me convinced that he was the victim in all of this. As I started to get to know him, I couldn’t believe this was the same guy that Rock had said was blackmailing him.”
Despite everything Hudson had told him about Christian, Fraulob found that he was not only sympathetic to his handsome new friend but attracted to him. “He was very charming and after all of our long talks, I felt this connection to him,” Fraulob says. “One thing led to another and we ended up in bed. Of course, we had safe sex but I remember him saying that he was the safest person on the planet and there was no need to worry. He said, ‘I’ve been tested by every expert in the book and I’m clean.’ Christian and I had only been together a month but I thought we had this genuine connection. Then, the next thing I hear is that he’s hired Marvin Mitchelson and he’s suing Rock’s estate.* His whole lawsuit was based on the premise that ‘I have this terrible fear that I’m going to come down with AIDS. I can never have sex again in my life.’ He was telling the world he was celibate and yet, he had sex with me twice.* I was watching him on the news and I was shocked. He wouldn’t answer my calls. Then I realized that I had been taken. I’ll admit I was stupid. I thought we had been bonding but all along, he was trying to get all of the information that he could out of me. I was starting to have feelings for him and it really hurt to find out that I had been played.”
Before his case went to trial, Christian attempted to arrange an out-of-court settlement with Hudson’s estate, but he was rebuffed. “Marc asked for $300,000 to be put in a trust, so that if he came down with AIDS, that money would be available for medical care,” says Christian’s partner, Brent Beckwith. “Marc said that they essentially told him, ‘Screw you. We’re not going to do that and if you try anything, no faggot is going to win in court’ . . . Marc was the kind of person that you didn’t fuck with. And he had a revenge factor. I think a big part of this case was a big ‘Fuck You’ to Mark Miller and George Nader. They were the beneficiaries of the estate and they were really pulling the strings when Rock was so sick.”
In 1989, after Marc Christian won his suit against the estate, defense attorneys sought to overturn the $21.75 million jury award by presenting new evidence—in the form of a sworn statement—that directly contradicted Christian’s testimony on the critical issue of fear. The statement had been provided by Gunther Fraulob.
When asked why he didn’t come forward during the trial, Fraulob told a reporter, “I didn’t want to drag my name through the mud. I didn’t think my involvement would help the case in any way.” Thirty years later, Fraulob hasn’t changed his mind: “Who knows what would have happened if I had spoken up earlier? I just didn’t want to drag my friends and family into the courtroom and have them become part of the whole circus . . . I finally had to speak up, though, because I knew that what Christian said was a blatant lie.”
According to one source, some physical evidence exists that completely discredits Christian’s testimony. “After the trial was over and the judgment came in, I got a call from an individual whom I had attempted to interview prior to the trial,” says private investigator Paul Cohen, who was hired by Robert Parker Mills, the attorney representing Hudson’s estate. “This individual showed me a video of him and Christian having sex. What was important about that video was that the television was on in the background and it showed the date and time of the broadcast, which was exactly when Christian said he was celibate. That was the basis of the remittitur action for the judgment and it was successful.”*
Gunther Fraulob says that when he thinks back to the day of Hudson’s memorial, there is sadness but there is also anger: “Everyone at the service was wonderful but where were all of these wonderful people when that whole nightmare of a trial was going on and Rock’s good name was being tarnished? Why didn’t anyone come to Rock’s defense after he was gone and couldn’t speak for himself? I didn’t speak up for the money. I didn’t do it for publicity. I just did it because I wanted to do the right thing and stand up for Rock.”
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1985.
The Warehouse Restaurant in Marina Del Rey.
“ELIZABETH TAYLOR AND Stockton had talked about the spreading of the ashes,” says Stockton Briggle’s partner, Mark Tillman-Briggle. “They wanted to make sure that the press wasn’t going to be all over it. So, that morning, we all went to breakfast down near the docks. After that, Elizabeth got in a car and drove away and all of the reporters and paparazzi followed her. She was the decoy. They went chasing after her while the rest of us walked down and got on the boat. I thought that was very big of her because she was allowing everyone else to have this private moment with the spreading of the ashes.”
Around 11:30, a group of thirty-five boarded a small yacht called Tasia II, which Warehouse owner Burt Hixson, a friend of Hudson’s, had located last minute. Among those making the three-mile journey toward Catalina Channel were Tom Clark, Stockton Briggle, Jack Coates, Dean Dittman, Susan Stafford, Mark Miller, Ken Jillson and his partner, Al Roberts, and four of Rock’s cousins from his mother’s side of the family. Marc Christian not only attended—which surprised a number of the other passengers—but he even brought his friend Liberty Martin.
If the mood en route was high-spirited, it would turn solemn by the time the boat reached its destination. The group gathered on the starboard side and Susan Stafford began reading the Twenty-third Psalm. Then there was some discussion about whether Jack Coates, Tom Clark, and Marc Christian—representing Rock’s companions at different stages of his life—should all hold the brown plastic box containing Hudson’s ashes. Wouldn’t it be a beautiful symbolic gesture if they all scattered Rock’s ashes together? It quickly became apparent that Clark didn’t think so. This was something he preferred to do alone.
“Tom Clark took the ashes and spread them out into the water,” Stockton Briggle remembered. “And when he did that, the most amazing thing happened. This huge rainbow appeared all around the area where he had spread Rock’s ashes. This is the truth. We all just stood there and tried to comprehend that such a thing could have happened. So, Rock’s ashes went out to sea, surrounded by a huge rainbow. That was finally how he was put at peace.”
As the passengers said a final farewell, the mood was mournful and contemplative. Then, as George Nader recalled, seemingly out of nowhere, “A lonely seagull flew over the yacht . . . and shat on Mark’s beautiful cashmere sweater Susan had given him for his birthday the year before. Mark looked up at the seagull, laughed and said, ‘Rock had the last laugh.’” In a split second, the feeling on the boat had changed from sadness to hilarity and as his friends all agreed, th
at is exactly the way Rock would have wanted it.
Although he wasn’t present for the memorial events, actor Peter Kevoian, whose appearances on McMillan had been arranged by Hudson, couldn’t stop thinking about the man he referred to as his mentor: “After he died, the one memory I kept returning to was this day when I was at Rock’s house. We were lying by the pool and I said, ‘Can you give me any advice? I’m new to this business and I don’t know . . . I just don’t think I’m special enough to succeed. How did you come to decide that all of this was right for you?’ And Rock said, ‘I had a dream once when I was young. I dreamt that I was in a room and there were these lights circling 360 degrees around the room. The lights were pin-spotted in the center of the room on a perfectly cut diamond. I saw myself as that diamond. The lights all around the room and all around the world were focused on me. And I was filled with the most brilliant light. That was when I truly believed that I was destined to be something special . . . a star, if you will.’”
Author’s Note
It was just the way things were,” an eighty-nine-year-old actress told me. “In Hollywood—back in Rock Hudson’s day—you were expected to keep secrets, just as you were expected to learn your lines. Nobody said anything to you but it was all understood . . . this is how the game is played.”
During our interview, Hudson’s former costar expressed all of this rather matter-of-factly and even punctuated her remarks with a shrug. The detached tone was unsettling, given the fact that we had been discussing the code of silence that existed in Hollywood during that period of American cinema now longingly referred to as the “Golden Age.”
It’s true that era was responsible for some of the finest films ever made, but it was also a time when gays were forced to play straight, studio executives passed starlets around like hors d’oeuvres, and casting couches of every persuasion were constantly occupied.
