Rock Hudson

New Secrets of Rock Hudson's Heartbreaking Battle with AIDS

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Rock Hudson Biography

·         Actor

Name at birth: Leroy Harold Scherer, Jr.

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Rock Hudson grew up as Roy Fitzgerald, the name he took after he was adopted by his step-father. Tall and handsome, he was "discovered" and molded into a virile, square-jawed movie star, appearing as Rock Hudson in films such as the western Gun Fury (1953, with Donna Reed), the melodramaMagnificent Obsession (1954, with Jane Wyman) and the classic Giant (1956, with Elizabeth Taylor, and with Hudson receiving an Oscar nomination). Hudson then turned to romantic comedy and became one of the top box office stars of the late 1950s and early '60s, frequently appearing in films with Doris Day. Hudson became a TV star in the 1970s, starring for six seasons as the police commissioner of San Francisco in McMillan and Wife (1971-76). In the 1980s Hudson began to look increasingly gaunt and unwell; in 1985 it was announced that he was dying as a result of AIDS. Hudson was the first major movie star to admit to having AIDS, and his death, along with that of entertainer Liberace in 1987, helped bring AIDS to the forefront of the public mind.

One of the most famous actors of his day, Rock Hudson was a leading man straight out of central casting, 6'4" and dark-haired, sweet and "unbelievably sexy," says Esther Shapiro who later cast the actor in Dynasty. On screen, he wooed leading ladies such asElizabeth Taylor in Giant, Doris Day in Pillow Talk and Dynasty's Linda Evans. 

Positioned as a heterosexual heartthrob, Hudson, a gay man, was forced to live a double life. "It was career suicide to reveal you were gay," says his boyfriend Lee Garlington, 77, who dated him in the early '60s. "We all pretended to be straight." 

And yet it was Hudson's acknowledgement in 1985 that he had AIDS that was a turning point for the world to finally pay attention to those who were dying from the disease. Thirty years later, in this week's issue of PEOPLE, those close to the star reveal new details of his fight to survive, his decision to go public and his emotional last goodbyes. 

"People talk about AIDS before Rock Hudson and after Rock Hudson," says Dr. Michael Gottlieb, who first identified AIDS as a new disease in 1981 and who cared for Hudson in the last year of his life. "I never could have imagined he would be the pivotal person in the history of the AIDS epidemic, the single most influential patient ever." 

After he was first diagnosed in 1984, Hudson kept his diagnosis a secret from all but his closest friends. But the world discovered the truth when he collapsed July 21, 1984, in his suite at the Paris Ritz, where he had gone for undercover treatments of the antiviral HPA-23, then unavailable in the United States. 

A French publicist, Yanou Collart, who was also a friend of Hudson's, was called in to help with the press frenzy and reveal the news of his diagnosis. When she entered his hospital room to speak with him, she recalls, "Rock must have lost 70 pounds since I had last seen him. He was so thin under the white sheet. I read him the statement. I was crying. He was too weak to make a decision. He said 'That's what they want. Go and give it to the dogs.' " 

Once he was back home in Los Angeles, Hudson was visited by Elizabeth Taylor, a lifelong friend. "She asked if it was okay to kiss and hug him," recalls Gottlieb, now on the advisory board of The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. "She was worried about his immune system. Not hers." 

An intensely private man, Hudson "was not a man who revealed much," says Gottlieb, who visited him at his house in Beverly Hills towards the end of his life. Still, he adds, "He was well aware of the publicity. He had a sense it was worthwhile. He expressed he was glad he had gone public. Maybe he knew it was doing some good, that his disclosure was making a difference." 

His friends spoke out in this week's PEOPLE because they felt it was important to remember his legacy. "Some 6,000 people had died of AIDS before Rock Hudson," says Gottlieb, "but their deaths went unnoticed whereas Rock made all the difference in terms of the public's acceptance."