Rock Hudson

by David Bret

Book Overview

This is the first full account of Rock Hudson s career and private life to appear since his death in 1985. With frankness, David Bret discusses every aspect of the actor s life: his painful childhood, his scores of male lovers, the constant pressures of concealing his homosexuality from the press, and four decades of box-office success. Drawn from new materialincluding candid interviews given by Hudson himself and withdrawn until after his deathBret...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1861058551
• ISBN13: 9781861058553
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Robson Books
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

I would like to see him again...

A great addition to my library. I look forward to reading this book. After Rock died, I was staring at an Enquirer full page photo of him. A night or two later, I had a dream where I was at a gathering where he was present. He said (to me), "You want to see me again, don't you?" What a dream...!!! I wish I could have explored it further, and to some who know, I could have.

English author pulls no punches

A friend recommended this author to me for his biography of Joan Crawdord. I have since read his biographies of Tallulah Bankhead and now Rock Hudson. The author does not gloss over any of the sordid details in any of these three biographies. All the dirt is there whether you want it or not.

Tracking a Movie Legend

Balanced, straightforward biography of Hollywood's favorite leading man of the 1950's. The fact that he was both gay and promiscuous meant endless headaches for Hudson and his career managers during that most repressed of decades. The tension between big libido and big box-office underlay the actor's entire career, which author Bret tracks in pretty unsparing terms from early fan mags to coverup marriage to final tragic outing. The emerging portrait is generally favorable, particularly that of a generous on-screen professional, who at the same time could be a fickle and sometimes ungenerous lover off-screen. Names are named and there is a gossipy dimension for the curious. But the intimations remain pretty forthright without becoming catty or distasteful. Bret has handled this difficult but necessary aspect with understandable sensitivity. Still and all, he fails to clear up that murky veil drawn around Hudson's marriage to studio secretary Phyllis Gates, or the exact nature of his relationship with the controversial Marc Christian. So readers looking for resolution of these troubled phases of Hudson's personal life may be disappointed. My one real misgiving is with the plot synopses of Hudson's many films, big and small. Their inclusion in the text interrupts the flow and serves no discernable purpose other than padding the book's length (not that it needs padding). I found myself skipping entire pages as a result. Anyway, the biography comes across as an honest attempt to deal with the conflicted life of a movie legend, who, for better or worse, symbolizes an entire entertainment era.

Hudson Hawk

I've never had the pleasure of reviewing anything by David Bret before, but his new biography of the late film star Rock Hudson is one of the best biographies I've read in years. There are some figures for whom there can never be enough biographies to suit my taste, and I've read five or six or seven apiece on Kipling, Oscar Wilde, Hitchcock, Emily Dickinson, Custer and who knows how many more. To that list add the improbable name of Rock Hudson. Bret is a British journalist who seems remarkably free of Hollywood cant. He tells it like he sees it, and when he doesn't know something, he says so. Hudson was born Roy Scherer Jr in 1925, in Winnetka, and had what seems to be a difficult relationship with his family. Before long he had sort of drifted into acting, becoming the protege of the he-man director Raoul Walso, who directed him in several early pictures. Hudson also informed Walsh of his homosexuality, and the two of them apparently didn't think it would be much of a problem. Hudson did the Cary Grant-Randolph Scott thing at first, living openly with a lover or two on the fringes of Hollywood society, but as his parts and his fanbase grew bigger more censorious minds prevailed and Rock became a ladies man in the press, although hardly to his friends and intimates. As an actor Hudson was more of a star than anything else, but he was so great in all of his pictures that one hardly cares about his "skills." After all, you don't pay money to see good acting, you buy your ticket to get close to your dreams. And Rock Hudson was the man of everyone's dreams, male or female, straight or gay, for a good ten years in a row, during which time he made several films for Douglas Sirk. Bret names names, and you will be startled, as I was, to find out exactly how many Hollywood leading men of the 1940s and 1950s were actually gay but hiding it. By the time the book was over my mind was reeling with all the names. On the set of AIR CADET, so Bret tells us, troubled leading lady Gail Russell was more troubled than usual when she found her new husband Guy Madison in bed with one of the cadets. The story of Hudson's "beard" romance with the equally troubled dacing star, Vera-Ellen, is a pathetic parable of Hollywood truths and illusions. Of course the charade eventually came to an end, first with Hudson's spectral illness which no one could identify, then with his accepting a romantic role on TV's DYNASTY which would require him to kiss Linda Evans, and then with his admission that he was gay and he had AIDS. Even after his death the glamor continued to evaporate as his onetime boyfriend, Marc Christian, sued the Hudson estate for concealing the fact that Hudson was seropositive. A parade of gross details followed on the stand, things that made one's heart sigh. I suppose in the end it doesn't matter. The pictures that he made will live forever and I predict that each year from now his stock as an actor will rise until the day comes when peop