Rock Hudson Homosexual

Rock Hudson Homosexual
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People.com Entertainment Movies Rock Hudson's 'True Love' Speaks: How We Kept Our Gay Life Secret
Legendary actor Rock Hudson revealed 33 years ago he had AIDS.
By Grace Gavilanes July 27, 2018 10:56 AM
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Rock Hudson's 'True Love' Speaks: How We Kept Our Gay Life Secret
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Legendary actor Rock Hudson revealed 33 years ago he had AIDS. He was first diagnosed in 1984, but managed to keep his illness a secret. His publicist confirmed his diagnosis on July 25, 1985. To commemorate his brave decision, read about the movie icon’s untold story. This story was originally published in 2015.
At the height of his fame in the early ’60s, few people were closer to Rock Hudson than Lee Garlington, who dated the actor from 1962 to 1965.
“He was a sweetheart,” says Garlington, 77, a retired stockbroker. “I adored him.”
Over 30 years after Hudson’s death from AIDS-related causes on Oct. 2, 1985, at age 59, Garlington and others who knew Hudson closely— including Dr. Michael Gottlieb, the immunologist who cared for Hudson after he was diagnosed with AIDS, his business manager, Wallace Sheft, and his Pillow Talk costar Doris Day — share their intimate memories of the friend they loved and lost.
Garlington was a young film extra when he first met Hudson in 1962.
“He was the biggest movie star in the world, and the rumors were that he was gay,” he says. “So I thought, ‘Let me get an eye on him.’ I stood outside his cottage on the Universal lot, pretending to read Variety , which was probably upside down at the time. He walked out and down the street. He looked back once. That was it.”
A year later, after Garlington had broken up with his boyfriend, he got a call from one of Hudson’s friends, asking if he’d like to meet the actor. “I think he had me checked out,” he says.
“I was scared to death,” Garlington says of their first meeting at Hudson’s mansion on Beverly Crest Drive in Beverly Hills. “Of course, he was 6-foot-4, a monster. He offered me a beer, but nothing happened. Literally. I was too scared. He said, ‘Well, let’s get together,’ and we did.”
“I’d come over after work, spend the night and leave the next morning,” Garlington says. “I’d sneak out at 6 a.m. in my Chevy Nova and coast down the street without turning on the engine so the neighbors wouldn’t hear. We thought we were being so clever.”
The two went to move premieres together, but each brought a female date.
“Nobody in their right mind came out,” Garlington says. “It was career suicide. We all pretended to be straight. Once we met Paul Newman and his wife [Joanne Woodward] at a premiere. He looked at me and smiled. I just read in his face – that maybe he knew Rock and I were together. We kind of laughed about it.”
Hudson never had to ask him to keep their relationship a secret. “He assumed I would and I did,” Garlington says. “He wasn’t paranoid.”
But after a female fan broken into Hudson’s house and slept in his bed when the two were on a road trip, the actor grew a bit more cautious.
“In a drawer on a side table were pictures of me with no shirt on,” Garlington says. “She didn’t find them, but it shook him up. He realized he was vulnerable. He put gates on the house after that.”
He has fond memories of hanging out at the house and taking car trips to county fairs and through the South with Hudson.
“Rock had no pretense,” he says. “He was always casual. He liked to wear chinos and moccasins around the house and hang around and watch television. We’d go on road trips and sometimes he wouldn t tell the studio where he was going.”
“Rock was always himself,” he adds. “He would plant a kiss on a leading lady and I would say, ‘Geez, he does that to me the same way.’ That was always a giggle on my part.”
“I remember we were getting ready to go somewhere and he said, ‘Let me show you how to shave properly,” Garlington says. “He showed me how to take the razor and go down your face at an angle so it cuts better.”
“One of the reasons we went our own way was because in a way I wanted a father figure and he was not strong enough,” he says. “Rock wasn’t a real strong personality. He was a gentle giant.”
They gradually lost contact by the time the screen icon revealed he had AIDS in 1985, the first well-known celebrity to succumb to the disease amid a mounting climate of fear and hysteria surrounding the epidemic.
“I was shocked,” Garlington says of the news. “AIDS killed everybody in those days. I called up the people taking care of him, but they said he was so sick that he wouldn’t know who I was and it was best to remember him how he had been before.”
Garlington read in Hudson’s biography, published after his death, that the actor had called him his “true love.”
“I broke down and cried,” he recalls. “I just lost it. He said his mother and I were the only people he ever loved. I had no idea I meant that much to him.”

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People.com Celebrity Rock Hudson's 'True Love' Speaks: How We Kept Our Gay Life Secret
Thirty years after the screen idol's AIDS-related death, his former boyfriend Lee Garlington gives a rare interview
By People Staff Updated April 15, 2015 08:00 AM
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Rock Hudson's 'True Love' Speaks: How We Kept Our Gay Life Secret
this link is to an external site that may or may not meet accessibility guidelines.
To commemorate the 30th anniversary of legendary actor Rock Hudson’s death, PEOPLE dived into the movie icon’s untold story.
At the height of his fame in the early ’60s, few people were closer to Rock Hudson than Lee Garlington, who dated the actor from 1962 to 1965.
“He was a sweetheart,” says Garlington, 77, a retired stockbroker. “I adored him.”
Thirty years after Hudson’s death from AIDS-related causes on Oct. 2, 1985, at age 59, Garlington and others who knew Hudson closely – including Dr. Michael Gottlieb, the immunologist who cared for Hudson after he was diagnosed with AIDS, his business manager, Wallace Sheft, and his Pillow Talk costar Doris Day – share their intimate memories of the friend they loved and lost in this week’s issue of PEOPLE.
Garlington was a young film extra when he first met Hudson in 1962.
“He was the biggest movie star in the world, and the rumors were that he was gay,” he says. “So I thought, ‘Let me get an eye on him.’ I stood outside his cottage on the Universal lot, pretending to read Variety , which was probably upside down at the time. He walked out and down the street. He looked back once. That was it.”
A year later, after Garlington had broken up with his boyfriend, he got a call from one of Hudson’s friends, asking if he’d like to meet the actor. “I think he had me checked out,” he says.
“I was scared to death,” Garlington says of their first meeting at Hudson’s mansion on Beverly Crest Drive in Beverly Hills. “Of course, he was 6-foot-4, a monster. He offered me a beer, but nothing happened. Literally. I was too scared. He said, ‘Well, let’s get together,’ and we did.”
“I’d come over after work, spend the night and leave the next morning,” Garlington says. “I’d sneak out at 6 a.m. in my Chevy Nova and coast down the street without turning on the engine so the neighbors wouldn’t hear. We thought we were being so clever.”
The two went to move premieres together, but each brought a female date.
“Nobody in their right mind came out,” Garlington says. “It was career suicide. We all pretended to be straight. Once we met Paul Newman and his wife [Joanne Woodward] at a premiere. He looked at me and smiled. I just read in his face – that maybe he knew Rock and I were together. We kind of laughed about it.”
Hudson never had to ask him to keep their relationship a secret. “He assumed I would and I did,” Garlington says. “He wasn’t paranoid.”
But after a female fan broken into Hudson’s house and slept in his bed when the two were on a road trip, the actor grew a bit more cautious.
“In a drawer on a side table were pictures of me with no shirt on,” Garlington says. “She didn’t find them, but it shook him up. He realized he was vulnerable. He put gates on the house after that.”
He has fond memories of hanging out at the house and taking car trips to county fairs and through the South with Hudson.
“Rock had no pretense,” he says. “He was always casual. He liked to wear chinos and moccasins around the house and hang around and watch television. We’d go on road trips and sometimes he wouldn t tell the studio where he was going.”
“Rock was always himself,” he adds. “He would plant a kiss on a leading lady and I would say, ‘Geez, he does that to me the same way.’ That was always a giggle on my part.”
“I remember we were getting ready to go somewhere and he said, ‘Let me show you how to shave properly,” Garlington says. “He showed me how to take the razor and go down your face at an angle so it cuts better.”
“One of the reasons we went our own way was because in a way I wanted a father figure and he was not strong enough,” he says. “Rock wasn’t a real strong personality. He was a gentle giant.”
They gradually lost contact by the time the screen icon revealed he had AIDS in 1985, the first well-known celebrity to succumb to the disease amid a mounting climate of fear and hysteria surrounding the epidemic.
“I was shocked,” Garlington says of the news. “AIDS killed everybody in those days. I called up the people taking care of him, but they said he was so sick that he wouldn’t know who I was and it was best to remember him how he had been before.”
Garlington read in Hudson’s biography, published after his death, that the actor had called him his “true love.”
“I broke down and cried,” he recalls. “I just lost it. He said his mother and I were the only people he ever loved. I had no idea I meant that much to him.”

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In 1955, Rock married Henry’s secretary Phyllis Gates.
Rock died from AIDS-related complications in 1985.
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Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood presents a reimagining of what post-World War II Hollywood could have been if the oppressive biases that existed at the time (and still exist today) had been examined and overturned. The entertainment industry would undoubtedly have been changed forever — and for the better.
Since the show offers an alternate reality to real-life old Hollywood, many real-life actors of the time period feature heavily in the storytelling. In fact, Rock Hudson — one of the most popular movie stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age — features heavily in the show (he’s played by Jake Picking). In the show, Rock Hudson comes out as gay and has a relationship with screenwriter Archie Coleman. Was the real Rock Hudson gay ?
Rock Hudson’s real name was Roy Harold Scherer Jr. He was adopted by his stepfather as a child, changing his legal name to Roy Fitzgerald. After high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. After being discharged in 1946, Roy moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. Just one year later, he was discovered by talent scout Henry Willson — and his life (and name) was changed forever.
Henry came up with the name Rock Hudson by thinking to combine the Rock of Gibraltar and the Hudson River. Years later, Rock admitted that he actually hated the name , but after he became a huge star, he had no choice but to continue using it.
As for his sexuality, that was a topic on which Rock Hudson never chose to speak publically. He was known by many of his fellow film industry insiders to be homosexual, but he — along with Henry Willson — worked hard to keep that information under wraps.
In 1955, Confidential magazine threatened to reveal Rock’s homosexuality in an exposé — Henry stalled them by disclosing the secrets of some of his other clients (namely, that Rory Calhoun had spent time in prison and Tab Hunter had been arrested at a party). That info was enough to keep Rock’s secret out of the papers, but how long would that last?
It was later reported that Rock’s marriage to Phyllis was designed to throw the press off the scent so he could continue living as a closeted homosexual. However, in Phyllis’ 1987 memoir My Husband, Rock Hudson , she claimed that she had married Rock out of love and not to prevent his sexual past being exposed. In 1958, Phyllis filed for divorce from Rock. Neither she nor Rock ever remarried.
Rock was diagnosed with HIV in June of 1984, though he kept his diagnosis a secret from the public while he attempted to continue working as an actor. He also spent time traveling to various countries in search of a cure for HIV. In the months that followed, people began to speculate about his health after he made several public appearances while looking very ill. In July of 1985, Rock’s publicist revealed that the actor had AIDS.
Just a few months later, on Oc. 2, 1985, Rock died in his Beverly Hills home. He was the first major public figure to openly acknowledge he was suffering from AIDS, and his search for a cure brought awareness and attention to the disease that had been wreaking havoc for the past few years.
In Hollywood , Rock Hudson still goes through many challenges in his life as he tries to make it big in Tinseltown, but we get a glimpse of what could have been if the real-life Rock hadn’t been required to hide his true self form the world. Hollywood is now streaming on Netflix.
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Netflix’s ‘ Hollywood ’ mixes fact with fiction to deliver a story that changes the history of Hollywood. A lot of real-life characters appear in the show, one of which is Rock Hudson , who was counted amongst the most celebrated actors of his time. The story focuses on his closeted sexuality and gives him the courage to be who he is without any fear or doubt. With all the fiction thrown into the plot, one wonders how much of Hudson’s arc is inspired by his real life. Was he really gay? Was his relationship with Archie Coleman real? Here’s what you should know.

Yes, Rock Hudson was gay. Though he never came out publicly, his sexuality had been in question throughout his career, only attested to when the news about him contracting AIDS broke out. By then, there had been too many stories about them to leave any room for doubt. In fact, in 1971, it was alleged that he had married a man named Jim Nabors. The story was never confirmed.
Hudson had been married only once and for a very short period. When the rumors about his relationship with his agent Henry Willson started circulating, he was f
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