NEW YORK – Who is he really? Hudson Rock? Is he the modern-day Jekyll-Hyde who by day plays the lover Apollo according to all the Hollywood rules and by night the Adonis chained to the male Persephone and drawn into the vagaries of base lust, until finally satiated in the senses but destroyed by the curse of AIDS? What if he was a more complex man than had been thought, in need of love, but love of any kind, even if riddled with germs he might find not in certain dirty bars, but, say, in hospital syringes?
Who is Rock Hudson, or Roy Scherer how was it born, two books released simultaneously in the United States are now wondering. By drawing different conclusions, it cannot be denied that they will again cause a commotion around the male figure, if not the actor.
On September 4 last year, a month before he disappeared, Rock Hudson saw the journalist at his Beverly Hills villa, “The Castle”. Sarah Davidson. “The time has come to tell the truth. Let’s write my biography together. Too much nonsense has been written about me”, he said. This biography, briefly titled Rock Hudson: His Storytherefore the exit is “authorized”, collected by its vote.
However, this is completely “illegitimate”. Idol From Jerry Oppenheimer And Jack Vitek, also comes from journalism circles who claims to have spoken to a hundred people. On the cover of the first book is a depiction of a recently emaciated Hudson, a shadow of his former self. However, on the second cover, the Hollywood heartthrob.
Both versions feature a boy born in one version poor family a few miles from Chicagohis tortured childhood, his father’s abandonment, the arrival of his stepfather Fitzgerald, his mother’s obsessive and possessive love, his teenage years – despite everything – lived out quite peacefully, until the bite of ambition took over and young Roy sailed off to Hollywood. Here he soon found out Henry Wilsona gray figure in her life, a homosexual agent who takes control of her independence and, in return, launches her into the cinema.
In 1948, at the age of 23, after becoming Rock Hudson at Willson’s behest, he made his debut in Fighter Squadron (38 takes for one beat). It was six years later when it came out Extraordinary Obsessionhe is a star. That was until the end. Jealous of his personal life to the extreme, Rock Hudson has it all: success, money, friends, secretaries and servants who make his “castle” like a real palace. Studio publicity brought him female partners such as Piper Laurie, Mamie Van Doren, Marilyn Maxwell and even Dorothy Malone. He was taken to wedding with Phyllis Gateand it doesn’t matter that Gates recently declared that “Rock Hudson hated women”: the film’s staging of his life, perhaps his greatest performance, is perfect.
His close friends, of course, knew of his homosexuality. Tom Clarkthe man who loved her to the end, inhabiting her private world like no other; and even if in the end Hudson casts him aside to feel young again in the arms of Marc Christian, Clark returns to his side as soon as he learns of the fatal disease. Indeed, he was the one who scattered his ashes in the Pacific, according to his will.
Still, nothing has been said about the real Rock Hudson. This drastic decline, which began a week after May 15, 1984, turned the tide and gave rise to what is now called the “sphinx.” Hudson was invited to the White House that day. Seven days later Nancy and Ronald Reagan they sent him a photo of the three of them, with a dedication. Mark Miller he looked at the photo, then looked at his friend’s owner’s neck and said to him: “You have a rash on your neck that I don’t like. You’ve had it for quite a while. You can see too much in the photos. Why don’t you see a doctor and have it removed?”. On May 24, the doctor, with the biopsy results in his hand, called him and made the grim announcement about the disease.AIDS. The rest is known: seventeen long months of suffering.
Sarah Davidson He does not hesitate to show it when he is arrogant, arrogant, even annoying. But he realized, with amazement, how much he was loved. He loved to laugh, make people laugh, have a good time. But “he was a master of illusion, capable of deceiving and exalting himself.” George Nader he said: “There are many Rock Hudsons: one for each person who approaches him.” Even a simple face, like a big boy without problems: another deception, the most subtle part of his art.
That criticism what interested Sara Davidson was based on the fact that “Hudson was no longer sober when he invited her to write his biography.” Therefore, the image will remain an artificial image, the contours of which no one owns. But what about Idol? It provides a portrait that has most touched the collective imagination: a depraved star who built a fortress of silence for himself with money, while in great secrecy he tore his flesh to shreds in the most depraved of crimes.
Clark was confident that Hudson had accepted AIDS virus during the quintuple bypass surgery that restored his heart function in 1981: a dose of infected blood or a plague-ridden syringe. That might just be a sad explanation. Among other things, both books reveal that when Hudson wanted him, he called his secretary from anywhere in the world and told her to come and see him when he returned. “proper party”: twenty beautiful men in swimsuits around a swimming pool. So what’s the verdict? Nobody. A sphinx is a sphinx, and overall it might be better if the “idol” wins.
