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The matinee idol’s death in 1985 changed the public’s perception of Aids. Yet in life, the golden age actor was anything but an activistGore Vidal’s reaction to the news of Truman Capote’s death in 1984 is well known. “Good career move,” the writer said. Rock Hudson, once the most bankable star in Hollywood, died the following year – like Capote, he was 59 – but the manner of his death and the revelations that preceded it have deterred anyone from applying Vidal’s line to him. Looked at coldly from a 21st-century vantage point, though, Hudson’s death was a good career move, deepening his persona in ways that would never otherwise have happened. The actor died of complications from Aids, having been outed as gay months beforehand. His sexuality had been an open secret within the industry for decades: his pool parties, described as “blond bacchanalias”, were legendary. The public, however, remained oblivious until 1985. “It’s odd to put it like this,” says his biographer, Mark Griffin, “but Aids gave Rock a whole new dimension.”The trade-off for a life cut cruelly short was an artistic longevity that has encouraged biographical readings of his performances. The suspicion has arisen that Hudson was trying to tell us something when he appeared in the 1955 Douglas Sirk melodrama All That Heaven Allows, which warns of the social dangers of nonconformity; or opposite Doris Day in the 1959 romcom Pillow Talk, where the actor plays a straight man posing as gay. “I don’t know how long I can get away with this act,” he says revealingly. Even his character’s pseudonym – Rex Stetson – sounds a bit like Rock Hudson, which was itself a screen name. (He was born Roy Scherer Jr in Winnetka, Illinois, and was later known as Roy Fitzgerald.) These onscreen tells are so plentiful and illuminating that an entire mock-documentary, Rock Hudson’s Home Movies, was assembled from the actor’s back catalogue in 1992 by the director Mark Rappaport. Continue reading...