Rock Hudson: The Gentle Giant

by David Bret

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  absence, Marc Christian sneaked a man into the Castle, apparently the first of many, Morimoto recalled that he had entered his employer’s bedroom to water the plants and seen Christian with Marty Flaherty, the handyman. Both had been naked from the waist up, caressing in the bed. Not that Rock should have condemned him for this, without being perceived as a hypocrite, for after the Oscars ceremony he had spent the night with a young Canadian boat builder, Pierre B—, who he had picked up in a Long Beach bar and moved into his hotel suite.

  Rock had never been faithful during any of his relationships. Even so, when he suspected that Christian was seeing other men behind his back, he too was shunted into the guest room. Christian later said that he had taken the initiative to move here because of Rock’s excessive sweating which, he thought at the time, was caused by his heavy drinking.

  Why Rock allowed Christian to stay on at the Castle when he had begun to tire of him (according to subsequent evidence submitted for the trial over his estate) cannot be readily determined. It has been suggested that he loved and loathed the loquacious charmer with equal passion in that he allowed himself to be caught up in an impossible-to-live-with, impossible-to-live-without situation, and that he was too weak to effect a remedy either way, as had happened during his final agonising months with Tom Clark.

  To some friends, Rock boasted that Christian was the kindest, most understanding and lustiest lover he had ever known—while denouncing him to others as cold and devious, and a gold-digger. The truth may lie somewhere between—the fact that at times Rock was reported to be overwhelmingly tetchy and conceited, as many move legends invariably become once their careers have started to wane—and if so Christian should have realised this and offered him support…or just moved on.

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  Also to be considered is the fact that, due to cautious property investments and owning his own production company, Rock was a wealthy man and as such could have lured virtually anyone into his bed. Hollywood was teeming with opportunists eager to take advantage of him and help him spend his cash. From a professional angle, many might have been willing to declare the commodity to be getting past its sell-by date, but as an amorous conquest Rock Hudson was still essentially easy pickings.

  One man who had recently entered Rock’s affections and not out for all he could get was Ron Channell, a 38-year-old actor-singer and fitness instructor from Tampa, Florida. He had been visiting the Castle since October 1983 to supervise Rock’s workouts—the first time anyone had used the gym here. The pair had met at the Sports Connection, a health club which catered for both gays and straights, and where the former could go in search of partners and not arouse suspicion. Rock is said to have been “stunned” when Channell informed him that there would never be anything physical between them because he was straight.

  Rock nicknamed Channell “Speed”, after the character he had played in Iron Man. Whether there actually was anything sexual between the two of them is not known. Rock was certainly frustrated at not being able to jump into bed with a man he was mad about. For whatever reason, Rock contacted Pierre B—, the lover who had escorted him to the Oscars ceremony. The pair went off to Mexico, where they spent a short vacation at the home of Pierre’s father. Rock later told friends that he had been unwilling to have sex with the handsome boat-builder, giving the impression that he was “saving” himself for Channell, should he decide to change his mind and let him sleep with him. However, Pierre told Dean Dittman (according to Sara Davidson) that he had refused to have sex with Rock for no other reason than he had been put off by Rock being the same age as his father. Given

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  Rock’s predilection towards hunky blonds, and the fact that he and Pierre had slept together before going to Mexico one finds it hard to believe either account. It seems that Rock loved Channell in such a way that he could not have loved Marc Christian, whom Channell mistook for just another employee at the Castle until Rock’s friends enlightened him.

  Over the next year or so, on all of Rock’s trips abroad, Channell was his only travelling companion. Marc Christian was never taken anywhere important or introduced to Hollywood luminaries who dropped in at the Castle. Neither was he invited to Dean Dittman’s almost nightly supper parties because Dittman and most of Rock’s inner circle could not stand him.

  On 15 May 1984, Rock flew to Washington, where he was one of the guests at a presidential dinner with Ronald and Nancy Reagan at the White House. Photographs of the event appeared in newspapers around the world and one—a copy of which was autographed by them and sent to the Castle—revealed a large mole on the side of Rock’s neck. Mark Miller urged Rock to make an appointment to see Dr. Kennamer, who in turn sent him to see a dermatologist, Dr. Letantia Bussell. A biopsy was taken. On 28 May, Dr. Bussell called Rock with the results: the mole, which had been there for the past year, was Kaposi’s sarcoma—a type of skin cancer that mainly men with AIDS often develop, although it is not exclusive to the disease—and Rock was told, point-blank, that most probably he also had AIDS. This was confirmed a few days later by a Dr. Frank Kramer, a plastic surgeon and skin specialist who carried out a second biopsy to see if the mole could be removed.

  Rock’s initial reaction to this devastating news, according to Dr. Kramer—speaking to Sara Davidson—was to put on a brave face and say something along the lines of, “Fine, but I’m going to lick this thing and if I don’t—well, it’s been a good life!”

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  Privately, Rock must have been mortified and it would have taken a while for the news to sink in. In these early days of HIV, little was known of the disease, or how it could be transmitted. Such was the hysteria in some circles that many believed it could be passed from one person to another as innocuously as by touching, drinking from the same glass, or even by being in the same room and breathing the same air as the sufferer. Of one thing there was no uncertainty: those with full-blown Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, dubbed by the media as “The Gay Plague”—and by homophobes, moralists and Bible-bashers as “The Wrath of God”—did not survive.

  Rock shared his tragic secret only with Mark Miller, George Nader—and later with Dean Dittman, his most trusted confidants who would help him through his alternating fits of fear, anger, shame and denial. Christian was told nothing, and over the coming months would be left to speculate as to why Rock was fading before his very eyes. On the face of it, this appears insensitive, if not downright malevolent. As Rock’s most recent live-in lover, whether they were still having sex or not—which seems unlikely if the animosity between them was as all-consuming as Rock’s friends have claimed—Christian had a moral right to know if his health was being compromised and, equally important, that he himself was a danger to others if he was sleeping around and not using protection.

  Rock had good reason for keeping him in the dark: Christian he had threatened to expose his “affair” with Ron Channell to the press, and had they also got their hands on the AIDS story, the media would have shown no mercy. Rock did however send out several anonymous letters to young men with whom he had been intimate over the last three months, one of which ended up on the desk of a well-known Los Angeles handwriting analyst…just as Rock had feared it might, which was why he had dictated it to

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  George Nader, and why each letter was worded differently in the event of them all ending up in unscrupulous hands, so that no one would suspect they had been written by the same person.

  This note shall remain anonymous. Since we have had sexual contact where semen has passed between us, it’s only polite to tell you that I’ve discovered I have AIDS. That’s why I suggest you have tests, the way I’ve done, to make sure you’re okay. Good luck.

  Even more desperate to conceal the details of his illness than he had his sexuality, Rock consulted his lawyer and attempted to ensure that his all-important image would remain intact beyond the grave…by having the words “cirrhosis of the liver” typed on his autopsy report.
He was confident that he would get away with this, and though nothing had yet appeared in the press, he was aware of how the media were speculating that he had cancer or anorexia, on account of the noticeable change in his appearance. His weight was now down to 195 pounds.

  On 7 June, just two days after sharing his secret with Mark Miller and George Nader, and accompanied by Miller and Rex Kennamer, Rock consulted with Dr. Michael Gottlieb, an immunologist and at that time one of America’s leading AIDS specialists who was based at the UCLA. In the summer of 1981, Gottlieb and his colleagues had published a paper, one of the earliest studies of HIV, on behalf of the Atlanta Center of Disease Control. On the six patients detailed in his report, all were self-confessed promiscuous homosexuals, each one had suffered irreparable collapse of the immune system, most had gone on to contract pneumonia, and all had died or were close to death. Although the term “AIDS” was yet to become a household word, within weeks of this report the American press,

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  most especially in the San Francisco area, had begun referring to “a new form of cancer” exclusive to the gay community. This ignorance, combined with media castigation beyond the realms of human decency, rapidly spawned mass public hysteria.

  Gottlieb outlined the limited, often speculated facts about the disease—aside from being transmitted by blood transfusions and shared infected needles it could only be passed on by way of anal sex, with the passive partner more likely to be stricken with the virus if tearing of rectal tissue occurred, enabling the active partner’s infected semen to enter the bloodstream. Then, as if the prognosis was not grim enough—when Rock asked Dr. Gottlieb if the condition was terminal, the response was, “I would get my affairs in order if I was you.”

  Early in June 1984, in the midst of this anguish and confusion, Rock received an invitation to attend the Deauville Film Festival, scheduled to open at the French resort on 31 August. This year they were featuring a George Stevens retrospective, including Giant. Whilst Rock was deliberating, he learned through Dean Dittman that a pioneer in AIDS research, Dr. Dominique Dormont of the Hôpital Militaire de Percy, just outside Paris, had developed an experimental serum, HPA-23, which though not thought to be a cure for AIDS, had in a number of tests proved to have delayed some of the worsening effects of the disease.

  Dr. Gottlieb suggested to Rock that he had nothing to lose, and Mark Miller made the arrangements. Deauville would provide him with the perfect cover and Rock got his agent, Dale Olsen, to contact Ciné-Revue’s Joan Mac Trevor and inform her how much his client was looking forward to the event, but that Rock might miss the opening night due to another commitment. Rock then spoke to his favourite journalist over the phone, and once he had attempted to dispel her concerns for his health, informed her that during this particular trip, certain conditions would apply:

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  I’m better, now. Tremendously well. And I’m happy! Happiness is the best cure for illness and old age. But I’m only going to Deauville to honour a man [George Stevens] who is the greatest magician the film world has ever known. I’m not going for myself, so there’ll be no press conferences and no photographs. I’m getting too old for that sort of thing!

  Rock made an amendment to this rule a few days later, when he learned that Ciné-Revue’s editor-in-chief, Gérard Néves, was in Los Angeles for the Olympic Games. Calling Néves, he told him “You’d better come over for dinner. I’ll be celebrating my birthday in November, so maybe you can do a piece about what it’s like to be growing old gracefully here in Hollywood!” Néves later confessed that he had been well aware that Rock would be 59 next, and later speculated that he must already have had an inkling that he would not see sixty. He turned up at the Castle with a photographer. Just weeks earlier he had seen Rock on the television and, apart from a few grey hairs had thought he looked good for his age. One year later, in the same publication, he revealed the shock at seeing him in the flesh:

  I had such trouble recognising him. Indeed, were it not for his great height, I would not have known who he was. He looked thin and pale, giving me the impression that he’d lost ten kilos in the space of a few weeks. He also seemed to have some difficulty speaking, though his easy approach and kindly attitude helped take my mind off his strained face. Dale Olsen had warned us that Rock would probably not allow us to photograph him, but when I asked, he took me by the arm. He tried to crack a joke, although he had immense trouble hiding his

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  illness from me. He said, “Fine, but allow me to make myself a little more presentable!” He was adorable!

  The various facts that Rock volunteered concerning his health and personal life would only be published posthumously—no problem for Néves, who as patron of Ciné-Revue did not have a superior breathing down his neck and pressing for an exclusive, though the following year (after Rock’s death) he must have felt more than a little ill at ease, recalling what Rock had told him back in August 1984:

  Life doesn’t have to end at sixty. I’ve always wanted to play a happy-go-lucky sexagenarian opposite other oldies such as Liz, Doris, Gina and Bob (Mitchum). What a wonderful family we’d make! Okay, not so long ago I was staring death in the face, and I’m not going to look up to heaven before lighting my next cigarette. But I am living wisely, and my doctor reckons that if I take things easy and don’t work too hard, I should see my centenary. So, without missing out on too many of life’s pleasures I’m heading for 17 November [sic]. And do you want to know the secret of my second youth? Well, it must be something to do with my being surrounded by men. Women put too much strain on the heart!

  Much of Rock’s heart-to-heart with Néves centred around his perception of modern-day Hollywood as opposed to the “Golden Days” of the studio system:

  It’s significant to say that stars such as Richard Pryor, Dan Aykroyd and Scott Baio are enormously popular here in America but unknown in Europe. Likewise Dolly

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  Parton, Burt Reynolds and Gene Wilder are unable to make a successful crossover because the humour over there is so different to ours. They know nothing about country music in Finland, and the French aren’t interested in baseball. Programmes such as Dynasty, Dallas and Hotel are on the other hand international and popular everywhere. It’s the same with scripts. Today, people are only interested in their so-called intellectual quality, so most of the storylines are boring. Bob Mitchum never questioned the profundity of the characters he played. Liz [Taylor] always accepted that her movies were diversions, not speeches for the defence. And look at today’s directors! Few are blessed with any kind of personality, yet they think they’re geniuses. Steven Spielberg’s an exception, I suppose. But who apart from him has truly brought anything of value to the cinema in recent years?

  It was around this time that Rock received a call from Esther Shapiro, an associate of television soaps magnate, Aaron Spelling. Shapiro and her husband Richard were co-producers of the hugely successful Dynasty series, and she was anxious for Rock to augment her already impressive cast. Rock promised to think about it, and told Shapiro that he would call her as soon as he returned to Hollywood. Since the aborted Devlin Connection he had sworn never appear on television again. Also, he told friends, he was not enamoured of starring in a glossy saga where the plots were flimsy, hard to believe in, and centred around the feuds and extensive wardrobes of the show’s female rivals.

  In the meantime, Dr Gottlieb warned Rock of the dangers of travelling long distances in case he suddenly fell ill, but added that for what Dr. Dormont might have to offer, such a risk might

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  be worth taking provided he was accompanied by a responsible person capable of handling the situation, should the worse come to the worst.

  Mark Miller coerced Marc Christian into having a complete medical check-up by telling him that, as a Hudson “employee”, this was essential for insurance purposes. Although the clinic attended by him did not possess the facility to conduct HIV tests, Christian was certified A1 fit in ev
ery other respect. Rock, however, had no intention of taking him to Paris. Mark Miller should have gone, but Rock’s treatment was expected to take at least eight weeks and Miller did not wish to leave the ailing George Nader for that long. At the last minute, Rock asked Ron Channell to accompany him, though he was not told the real reason behind the trip to France—so far as he was concerned, this was just another working holiday.

  On 20 August, Rock flew to New York—alone, for a secret meeting with his lawyers to amend his will. Tom Clark’s name was removed, and George Nader was named first beneficiary, followed by Mark Miller. A few days later Ron Channell joined him, and on 27 August the pair flew to Paris by Concorde. Rock’s treatment was scheduled to begin the next day, and after breakfast he left Channell in their suite at the Ritz—telling him that he had a script reading with a French producer—and took a taxi to Percy. Dr. Dormont carried out preliminary tests, told Rock that he was “not in too bad a state”, and proposed two alternative courses of treatment. The first would require daily injections of HPA-23 over a fourteen-week period; the second a course of 120-minute infusions, one each day for a week, followed by a week’s respite, until the procedure had been repeated four times. Rock opted for the latter. Throughout this time, Ron Channell is said to have suspected nothing, not even when observing the bruises on Rock’s arms left by the needles.