Rock Hudson: How the star’s tragic death from Aids destroyed his career but changed the world

Rock Hudson was rugged, handsome and a strapping 6ft 5in tall. “He was really the embodiment of romantic masculinity in films throughout the Fifties and Sixties,” Hudson’s biographer, Mark Griffin – whose book inspired the new documentary – tells me. “He did have a very active gay life in spite of the fact none of that was out of the closet at that time.” Suddenly there was this notion that if Rock Hudson, the boy next door, can have Aids, anybody can have it Mark Griffin, biographer Griffin tells me that he interviewed dozens of Hudson’s old friends and colleagues during his research for his biography, and not one of them had anything remotely negative to say about him. That might suggest he was a bit bland, yet filmmaker Douglas Sirk, who directed him in swirling 1950s melodramas like Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows, spoke of Hudson’s “metaphysical” power on screen. open image in gallery ‘Metaphysical power on screen’: Hudson stars alongside Jane Wyman in 1954’s ‘Magnificent Obsession’ There was an obvious irony in the fact that one of Hollywood’s biggest male pin-ups was gay.