As Pride month winds down, we’re getting another gay-themed documentary from HBO and Max — “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed” — on Wednesday.
And the timing is a little bit … well … odd. Hudson remains a gay icon, but he most definitely was not a heroic figure. Whatever good he did for the gay community was in spite of his actions, not because of them. And some of his actions put the lives of other people at risk.
Don’t get me wrong. I have great sympathy for Hudson, because of his untimely death from AIDS at age 59, and because he had to live in the shadows while in the spotlight of fame to protect his career as a Hollywood star.
He was pursued by tabloids and spied on by the FBI. In 1955, Life magazine ran a story with this headline: “Fans are urging 29-year-old Hudson to get married — or explain why not.” Hudson had to do more acting offscreen than he did onscreen, even entering a sham marriage, which is a horrible way to live.
“All That Heaven Allowed” (playing off the title of a 1955 Rock Hudson-Jane Wyman film, “All That Heaven Allows”) does a fine job of documenting Hudson’s life and career. It’s the rags-to-riches story of Roy Fitzgerald, whose name was changed when he was signed to Universal Pictures as one of the last stars of the old studio system. It was only because of that all-controlling studio system that Hudson’s homosexuality didn’t become a mainstream news story.
The documentary is loaded with clips from the actor’s film and TV roles, matching the clip to the narrative. Like a clip from “A Farewell to Arms” when Elizabeth Taylor tells Hudson, “You’re going down to town tomorrow and find yourself some gay young playmate.” A lot of it is just that on the nose.
To be clear, the documentary is not just one big ode to Hudson. His promiscuous personal life is called into question. There are prurient interviews with several of his friends and sometimes lovers that go well beyond the bounds of good taste as they discuss everything from his penchant for young men to his … um … physical attributes.
Far more troubling is the effort by director Stephen Kijak to portray Hudson as a hero of the LGBTQ+ community and of the fight against AIDS. When he reluctantly issued a statement admitting that he had AIDS, the story was already out. And Hudson never admitted that he was gay — other people outed him.
(Harry Langdon Jr. | HBO) Rock Hudson at home with his dogs in the 1960s.
And there’s something deeply troubling about the way the documentary treats Hudson’s behavior after he was diagnosed. There’s an extended segment about how, as a guest star on the hit TV series “Dynasty,” he kissed Linda Evans. It became a huge story at the time, and the filmmakers obtained the diary of Hudson’s friend/personal assistant, who wrote: “We get to watch Rock give Linda Evans a dose of some virus in a kissing scene. I will tape the fateful footage, if not too frozen in horror. Akin to watching someone receiving a possible lethal injection. Morally, how guilty are we for not having said something to someone. Anyone.”
Remember, this was 1985, and people were terrified of AIDS. We know today that closed-mouth kissing (and they both kept their mouths closed) can’t transmit the virus. But they didn’t know that then. As a matter of fact, there’s an audio clip of Evans saying that people refused to work with her on the set of “Dynasty” and friends refused to visit her home after the kiss.
But there is no mention at all of the allegations that, after he was diagnosed, Hudson had unprotected sex with men who did not know he had AIDS. One former lover won a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Hudson’s estate, arguing that the movie star lied to him about his diagnosis and continued to have sex with him for months.
That heinous behavior doesn’t make it into the documentary, but there’s time for Evans to say, “I know he was protecting me” during the kissing scene?
(Photofest | HBO) Rock Hudson in1954.
Hudson’s friend/aide wrote in his diary that the admission of the AIDS diagnosis and implied admission of his homosexuality was the “orchestrated ruination of Rock Hudson’s life.”
It’s tragic. But not heroic.
If there’s a hero in “All That Heaven Allowed,” it’s Elizabeth Taylor, who became the driving force behind and public face of fundraising to battle AIDS. But Kijak certainly tried to make Hudson the hero is wasn’t.
He features a man who worked for AIDS Project L.A. in 1984-85, who says that the news of Hudson’s diagnosis “made an incredible difference in our ability to raise money. … It helped destigmatize the disease.”
Did it? Hudson’s diagnosis and death spurred Taylor into action, and fundraising rose. And no evidence is offered to suggest that AIDS was in any way destigmatized in 1985.
Hudson’s friend Armistead Maupin — the author of the “Tales of the City” novels — says the news that Hudson had AIDS “pretty much did change the course of history around AIDS. He didn’t intentionally do it, but there was no other star that made that kind of impact before. And there hasn’t been once since, really.”
Can you be a hero if you do everything in your power to avoid doing anything heroic? No.
No one can really fault Hudson for staying in the closet in the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. Being gay wasn’t just socially unacceptable, it was illegal in most of America and believed to be a mental illness. But imagine how much good Hudson might have done if he’d come clean and come out in the final year of his life.
Instead, he died a victim of both AIDS and homophobia. It’s a dreadful story with an unfortunate and unhappy ending.
But he remains an important figure in LGBTQ+ history. If “All That Heaven Allowed” had not tried to make a hero out of him, it would’ve been a more accurate and more meaningful documentary.
“Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed” premieres Wednesday at 7 p.m. on HBO, and will stream on Max.
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