Rock Hudson

The invention of a steel-jawed leading man

Roy Harold Scherer Jr. had no natural acting talent. He worked as a truck driver in Illinois before agent Henry Willson decided that his jawline and his six-foot-three frame were worth a fortune. Willson changed his name, had his teeth fixed, and made him take diction classes to erase his small-town accent.

That manufacturing process was so aggressive that Hudson needed thirty-eight takes to deliver his first line in a film. It happened in 1948 during the shoot of Battle Hymn. But Universal saw something in his gaze that made up for any initial technical shortcomings.

And the gamble paid off.

In 1954 he starred in Obsession under the direction of Douglas Sirk. That melodrama took him out of supporting roles and put him at the center of the global film map. Hudson became the face of the American ideal of masculinity: a strong, protective, seemingly down-to-earth man.

But the reality behind the studio walls was very different. Universal's publicity department worked overtime to hide his homosexuality. In 1955 he was pressured into marrying Phyllis Gates, his agent's secretary, to stop leaks from the magazine Confidential. The marriage lasted barely three years and was purely a contractual arrangement.

The mask of the perfect comedy

It was in 1956 that he shot Giant alongside Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean. That production earned him his only Oscar nomination and proved he could hold his own with the finest actors of his time. During the shoot in Texas, he forged a friendship with Taylor that would last until the end of his days.

The arrival of the 1960s brought a change of direction no one expected. With Pillow Talk in 1959, he discovered he had an enviable gift for comedic timing. His chemistry with Doris Day was instant and was repeated in two other films that defined the style of romantic comedy of the era.

Hudson was the most bankable actor in Hollywood.

Despite his commercial success, he began to feel typecast in roles as a lightweight seducer. In 1966 he tried to break away with The Chase, a science fiction film directed by John Frankenheimer. Critics were harsh, and audiences didn't accept seeing their favorite leading man in such a dark, psychological setting.

That commercial failure sent him back to the security of television years later. Between 1971 and 1977 he starred in the series McMillan & Wife, playing a San Francisco police commissioner. The salary was astronomical, but his health was starting to suffer after decades of heavy smoking and drinking.

The Impact of a Final Confession

In 1981 he underwent a quintuple bypass surgery. His physical appearance changed dramatically, and his energy on set visibly declined. Three years later, in 1984, he received the diagnosis that would change the history of public health in the United States: he had AIDS.

He kept the secret while filming his final appearances on the series Dynasty in 1985. Rumors about his extreme thinness were constant in the tabloid press. Finally, on July 25, 1985, his spokesperson confirmed the news from a hospital in Paris.

It was a social earthquake.

His confession put a face to a disease that Hollywood and the Reagan administration had until then systematically ignored. Hudson died on October 2, 1985 at his Beverly Hills home while he was asleep. He was 59 years old.

His will specified that he wanted no public funeral or religious services of any kind. His body was cremated just hours after his death, and his ashes were scattered at sea. He left an estate worth about 27 million dollars at the time.