All That Heaven Allows Read online

  Dedication

  In Memory of

  Charles Silver

  and

  Rolande Griffin

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  1: Winnetka

  2: Green Gin

  3: A Unique Appeal

  4: Universal

  5: “We Want Hudson!”

  6: Double Technicolor

  7: Is Rock Hudson Afraid of Marriage?

  8: Giant

  9: Written on the Wind

  10: A Farewell to Arms

  11: The Tarnished Angels

  12: Pillow Talk

  13: Strange Bedfellows

  14: Seconds

  15: Whistling Away the Dark

  16: McMillan & Wife

  17: Blue Snow

  18: Christian

  19: This Is Your Life

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Bibliography

  Notes

  Index

  Photo Section

  About the Author

  Also by Mark Griffin

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  On the second day of October in 1985, there was no shortage of newsworthy events happening around the globe. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had made his first trip abroad. An Israeli air raid on PLO headquarters had killed sixty-eight people. In southwest Sudan, a train carrying famine relief supplies had derailed. While all of these stories warranted international coverage, they would be bumped off the front pages by another headline—the death of a movie star. Rock Hudson, who had appeared in over sixty feature films and defined all-American manhood for an entire generation, had died of AIDS-related causes at the age of fifty-nine.

  On television, images of Hudson saturated not only the likes of Good Morning America and Entertainment Tonight but all of the network news broadcasts. The tributes included glimpses of Rock in his matinee idol prime—punching out James Dean in Giant; making out with Doris Day in Pillow Talk. These classic clips were intercut with footage of Hudson at a press conference just three months earlier when he reunited with Day to publicize her new cable series, where Rock was almost unrecognizable—gaunt, glassy-eyed, and disheveled. Although Hudson had been the most photographed actor of his generation, it would be these heartbreaking final images of him, looking ravaged and cadaverous, that would remain lodged in the collective consciousness.

  Following his appearance with Day, Hudson would not be seen again publicly, although his “mystery illness” would continue to be a major story worldwide. After Rock was admitted to a Paris hospital, the official word was that he was being treated for “fatigue and general malaise,” though gossip columns and “insider exclusives” said otherwise. Finally, after weeks of unconfirmed rumors and tabloid innuendo, Rock’s French publicist, Yanou Collart, would tell reporters gathered in front of the American Hospital of Paris, “Mr. Rock Hudson has Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.”

  The announcement that Rock Hudson had AIDS and the presumptive gay outing that accompanied it were so shocking—if not to his show business colleagues then at least to unsuspecting housewives in Peoria—that coverage of his last days seemed to obliterate everything that had come before. When a gravely ill Hudson flew back to America in a chartered 747, this was anything but a happy homecoming. It was clear that Rock had come home to die. In just a matter of weeks, a tragic and untimely death would overtake a rare and extraordinary life.

  Symbolic of this was the sight of dozens of photographers—first encircling, then engulfing the unmarked van carrying Hudson’s lifeless body away from his Coldwater Canyon home. Rumor had it that an American tabloid was offering six figures to anyone who could produce a close-up photo of Rock Hudson’s corpse. Such was the fate of an individual who had valued his privacy above all else. In 1972, Rock had been appalled by the media barrage that had accompanied the funeral of his close friend, the actress Marilyn Maxwell. After that experience, Hudson told his then companion, Tom Clark, that when his own time arrived, the send-off should be quiet and dignified. No three-ring circuses allowed. In the end, he almost got his wish.

  Although Rock’s memorial service would be attended by such celebrity friends as Elizabeth Taylor, Carol Burnett, and Angie Dickinson, every attempt was made to keep the event low-key and respectful. Despite the good intentions, Myra Hall, a neighbor of Hudson’s, charged members of the press $300 each to temporarily take up residence on her lawn. Throughout the proceedings, a helicopter hovered over Hudson’s yard as a videographer did his best to capture footage of the memorial. As publicist Roger Jones once said of his most famous client, “He is the center of the storm—dead or alive.” Though given the incredible circumstances, how could the death of Rock Hudson be anything less than a high-profile global event? It represented so much.

  First, there was the passing of a beloved movie icon—one who had appeared in his first film when he was twenty-three, his last as he was nearing sixty. Millions of people had watched Hudson grow up before their eyes and moviegoers came to feel that Rock belonged to them. From the beginning, they had responded to what director Douglas Sirk had described as Hudson’s “straight goodness of heart and uncomplicated directness.” The actor’s death signaled another important passing—the metaphoric demise of the Hollywood studio system, which in its heyday had brilliantly manufactured and marketed “Rock Hudson.” By 1985, it was painfully clear that the kind of stardust and glitter that had enveloped the careers of Hudson and his contemporaries had gone the way of the neighborhood Bijou. Universal, the studio that had produced some of Rock’s finest melodramas, like Written on the Wind and The Tarnished Angels, had now segued to Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

  For most screen stars, achieving pop culture immortality and closing the book on Hollywood’s Golden Age would be enough of a legacy, but Rock Hudson would transcend mere celebrity by becoming the poster boy for a global pandemic. With the disclosure that Hudson had AIDS and not anorexia nervosa (as had been rumored), his own physician, Dr. Michael Gottlieb, would describe Rock as “the single most influential AIDS patient ever.”

  Although AIDS had been identified several years earlier, President Ronald Reagan seemed not to grasp how significant the epidemic was. “He accepted it like it was measles and it would go away,” said Brigadier General John Hutton, a White House physician. This kind of head-in-the-sand indifference would result in the Reagan Administration being widely criticized for its nonresponsiveness to the crisis. That is until Rock Hudson—a friend of both Ronald and Nancy Reagan—told the world that he was battling the disease. Suddenly, from the White House to Frank’s Diner in Kenosha, everyone knew someone who had AIDS.

  “If Rock Hudson can have it, nice people can have it. It’s just a disease, not a moral affliction,” said William F. Hoffman, who wrote As Is, one of the first plays to focus on the epidemic. Ironically, having the disease would turn Rock Hudson, silver-screen hero, into a real-life hero. And although it had been implied rather than stated, Hudson’s “coming out”—such as it was—had made him the most recognizable gay person on the planet (or bisexual, depending on who you talked to). Even if Hudson’s gay admission had been an involuntary one, the New York Times noted that the actor had now been recast “in his most paradoxical role—that of a model for other gay men.” The fact that rugged, red-blooded Rock Hudson—who had been butch enough to share the screen with John Wayne in The Undefeated—also happened to be homosexual instantly shattered stereotypes and challenged people’s perceptions of what “gay” meant.

  In a few short months, the public had been jolted by one Rock Hudson b
ombshell after another. If all of the shocking revelations, conflicting accounts, and attempts at concealing the truth were unsettling to even die-hard members of his fan base, this was Rock’s reality. In a sense, the dramatic events playing out on the world stage were a magnification of daily life at “The Castle,” as Hudson’s sprawling Beverly Hills home was known. While it had provided the backdrop for many A-list Hollywood parties, The Castle was also the setting for some especially contentious court intrigue.

  As Hudson’s health began to fail, there would be an intense power struggle among the members of his inner circle. At times, the plots and counterplots that unfolded were so intricate and intertwining that one former staffer would describe the atmosphere as “Shakespeare for queens.” None of Hudson’s trusted advisors seemed to trust one another. Old flames found themselves cohabitating with new loves. Close friends became bitter enemies as some damning accusations were made.

  Ross Hunter, who had produced several Rock Hudson blockbusters, including Pillow Talk, had remained close to the star he had helped create. When Hudson began declining rapidly—both physically and mentally—a concerned Hunter phoned actor George Nader and his partner, Mark Miller. As Hudson’s closest friends and caretakers, didn’t they know that the whole town was talking? If not, the producer would oblige them by repeating one of the more incendiary rumors circulating throughout the Hollywood community.

  “I hear Rock’s being drugged by staff,” Hunter told Nader.

  After recovering from the shock, Nader and Miller, who had befriended Hudson more than thirty years earlier, were outraged. “Queens will make anything up,” Nader wrote in his journal. “Regarding Rock being drugged by staff at The Castle, it was so ridiculous that it was funny. Their little lie is ludicrous and libelous at the same time.”

  Since Rock had returned home, there was no denying that life behind the walls of The Castle had become increasingly surreal. Tom Clark, a Hollywood press agent and Rock’s former companion, had been summoned back to The Castle after having been banished a few years earlier. Clark would now be living under the same roof with Marc Christian, another of Rock’s former boyfriends. Although Christian had been asked to leave the house, he chose to remain. An already tense household became even more strained.

  As Tom Clark had once been a stabilizing and supportive presence in Hudson’s life, many friends readily welcomed his return, feeling that if anyone could bring Rock some comfort at the end of his life it would be Clark. But by the mid-80s, Clark’s alcoholism had progressed to such a degree that his once clear-eyed judgment had been significantly impaired. “Tom Clark has turned Rock’s last days into an obscene circus of a publicist’s wet dream,” George Nader bitterly noted.

  If celebrity well-wishers like Elizabeth Taylor and Roddy McDowall were welcomed in, some family members claimed that they were shut out. “I was kept out of the loop because the entourage took over my brother’s life,” says Hudson’s adoptive sister, Alice Scherer Waier, who believes that Miller and Nader hindered her attempts to communicate with Rock. “They didn’t want me to be acknowledged as any living relative . . . I was used, lied to, threatened and abused by them, to the point that I backed away.”

  Though the intimidation tactics that Waier described didn’t stop her from suing her brother’s estate. The suit filed by Waier a year after Rock’s death alleged that he had been “unduly influenced” by associates when he excluded her from his will. Waier also claimed that some of Hudson’s intimates had impeded her efforts to write or telephone her brother and “forced him into a lifestyle contrary to his traditional upbringing.”

  Waier’s lawsuit had been preceded by another, which was explosive, endlessly debated, and groundbreaking. Only a month after Hudson’s death, Marc Christian, who claimed that he had been intimately involved with Rock for three years, filed a $10 million lawsuit against Hudson’s estate. The thirty-two-year-old Christian maintained that although Hudson had been diagnosed with AIDS in June of 1984, the actor withheld this information from him and they continued having unprotected sex for a period of eight months.

  Hudson’s AIDS admission had, for the most part, garnered Rock much heartfelt public sympathy. The 45,000 letters of support he had received in the last months of his life were a testament to this. However, Christian’s lawsuit made no bones about it—if anybody was entitled to sympathy, it was the wronged lover and not the morally bankrupt movie star.

  “If you have AIDS and continue to have sex with someone as if nothing is wrong, I see it as like . . . attempted murder,” Christian told an interviewer.

  Was it possible that the same Rock Hudson who was held in the highest possible esteem by his coworkers, friends, and relatives had been capable of exposing a partner to a potentially deadly disease in exchange for sexual gratification? If Christian’s allegations were true, Hudson’s betrayal was unconscionable.

  Four years would pass before a jury would reach a decision in the Marc Christian case. In the meantime, even more controversy erupted with the publication of a memoir entitled, My Husband, Rock Hudson. Phyllis Gates, who had been married to Hudson from 1955 to 1958, claimed that Rock and his omnipresent agent, Henry Willson, had ruthlessly manipulated her into participating in a sham marriage.

  Gates, who had been Willson’s secretary, would contend that she had been unwittingly used as a pawn to silence the rumors about Hudson’s homosexual proclivities while keeping scandal sheets like Confidential at bay. In her book, Gates laid all of the blame for the disintegration of her marriage on Hudson. If Rock’s gay predilections were common knowledge even among Hollywood’s extras and bit players, Gates had somehow missed this. In a not-so-surprising revelation, she described Hudson’s lovemaking as “routine and perfunctory.” Gates then proceeded to take her deceased ex-husband to task for his “dark moods,” “uncontrollable temper,” “male chauvinist” tendencies, and “a strain of jealousy” in his nature. What’s more, she recalled that Hudson didn’t like to brush his teeth because he found the routine “boring.”

  In two years, Rock Hudson had morphed from movie icon to gay icon to The Face of AIDS. Somehow, even after his death, the reinvention continued. Only now—if Marc Christian were to be believed—Hudson was no longer a victim but an attempted murderer. And if Phyllis Gates had been completely forthcoming in her tell-all, it would appear that a widely respected and well-loved star had actually been a shamelessly manipulative con artist. Were these disparaging portrayals the unvarnished truth or the vilest form of character assassination?

  For those who thought the real Rock Hudson had finally been unmasked at the end of his life, guess again. “Remember that movie, The Three Faces of Eve? That was my brother. This man led so many different lives, and kept them all separate from one another,” says Rock’s sister, Alice Waier. “Think about it—he had his family, he had his professional life, and he had his private life, and he had to portray a different person in each of those realms. Trying to please everyone but himself. I mean, he was a great performer—not only in acting but throughout his entire life.”

  All of the conflicts, betrayals, and deception that had been so much a part of Rock Hudson’s life did not end with his death. For an individual who wanted to be an actor more than anything, there had been drama every step of the way. And it had started from the very beginning.

  Chapter 1

  Winnetka

  Young Roy Scherer, Jr., during his toddler years in Winnetka.

  (Photo courtesy of Diane Markert)

  Appropriately enough for one who embodied the American dream, Rock Hudson’s story began in an idyllic small town in the Midwest.

  “If one must live in Chicago, then one should eat, sleep, love and pray in Winnetka,” said A. W. Stevens. Around the turn of the century, the writer had visited the picturesque village in northeast Illinois, located along the shores of Lake Michigan—only twenty miles away from “The Windy City.”

  Many of the German immigrants who had landed in the area in th
e 1830s were from Trier—in the western part of Germany—so they referred to their adopted land as “New Trier.” In 1869, the city was officially named Winnetka, after a Native American phrase supposedly meaning “Beautiful Land.”

  Much of Winnetka’s natural beauty was attributable to its trees. Several streets were virtually canopied by American elms. The tall, stately oaks and flowering dogwoods shading the main part of town turned it into what has been described as “a living arboretum.” As Judge Joseph Burke once remarked, “In order to have a street named after you in Winnetka, you must be from a very old family, or else be a tree.”

  In 1925—the same year that ground was broken on Winnetka’s New Village Hall—Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., was born.* The delivery took place on November 17 at 2:15 a.m. in a rented room at 794 Elm Street, where his parents lived. Junior’s father, Roy Scherer, was a twenty-six-year-old mechanic employed at the nearby Elm Street Garage. His mother, Katherine Marie Wood, was a twenty-five-year-old housewife.

  By all accounts, it had been a very difficult birth, with Kay’s on-again, off-again labor stretched out over five agonizing days. Roy Senior’s older sister, Pearl, was a registered nurse. She assisted Dr. Gilbert Lowe—whose office was directly across the street from the Scherers’ apartment—with the delivery. “I was right there when Dr. Lowe spanked the breath of life into him,” Pearl Scherer recalled years later. “The first night I heard him squall, after his birth, I knew that he’d always be heard the rest of his life.”

  Although Roy Junior was born healthy—weighing five and a half pounds and not nine or thirteen as he would later tell unsuspecting colleagues—there would be an unusually long recovery period for Kay after her exhausting ordeal. The agony Kay endured giving birth to Roy would haunt him for the rest of his life. “He told me that he had difficulties because he felt that he had ruined his mother’s body,” recalls actress Diane Ladd, who portrayed Kay in a 1990 television movie. “I said, ‘What are you talking about, Rock?’ He said, ‘I was too big a baby . . . nine pounds. I ruined my mother’s body trying to get born . . . I have horrible guilt.’ I said, ‘Who told you that?’ He said, ‘My mother.’”