When I found out that Rock Hudson was one of the stars of All That Heaven Allows (1955), my mind immediately thought about the Netflix series, Hollywood (2020). I watched this show about two years ago, and it was how I learned about Hollywood icon, Rock Hudson. Hollywood is a show set in 1940s Los Angeles during the boom of studio filmmaking. It follows various fictional and real-life characters navigating the world of Hollywood and also the racism, sexism, and homophobia of the 1940s. One storyline is focused on Rock Hudson’s rise to fame in Hollywood, but it offers a happier, fictional ending to his story.

In real life, Rock Hudson was a closeted gay man. It wasn’t until the very end of his life when he announced that he had AIDS that people knew he was gay. Rock Hudson had a carefully crafted facade to the public, he was married to a woman named Phyllis Gates, and he often had romantic photo-ops with famous women of the time (Miller). In Hollywood, however, Rock Hudson has a happier, less secretive love life. In fact, he comes out in the show and even walks down a red carpet with his boyfriend. Hollywood opts for a “revisionist take on history,” giving Hudson the freedom that the 1940s didn’t offer him in real life (Miller).

One of the creators of Hollywood, Ryan Murphy commented on his choice to alter Rock Hudson’s and other characters’ storylines in the series:

“I thought, what if those people won?… What if we went back and sort of did a revisionist look, and created an alternative universe where you could win by being gay, you could win by being black, you could win by being Asian? All of these people in Hollywood, and particularly at that time who were so marginalized—what if we rewrote their history, and put them in the center of sort of a victor’s tale?” (Miller).

I love this take on history. This change in endings shows the power of film; we can see what Hudson’s life may have been like if he had chosen to come out in the 40s. Below I have attached a video on Rock Hudson’s story and its relation/differences to his story in Hollywood. I found this video to be extremely interesting!! 

I also found the story of Hudson to be interesting in relation to the plot of All That Heaven Allows. Two of the primary themes of this film are secrecy and appearance. Cary is extremely nervous about the news of her and Ron’s relationship going public, and because of that, she manages to keep it a secret for a while. Cary is nervous about what the people will say; she knows that there will certainly be narratives about their age gap, as well as their differences in class. This is very similar to Hudson’s situation in real life. He engaged in relationships with men in secret, and made appearances with women in public. Who he truly loved was kept secret. There were stakes if his whole identity were to be revealed: he could lose jobs, be outcasted from society, and receive dangerous threats. For those reasons, Hudson hid this part of himself from the public. The fact that these themes can relate to both Hudson’s films and personal life is incredibly interesting, and leaves me wondering if he thought about this overlap while filming. 

Additionally, multiple articles I read said that although Hudson’s sexuality was secret from the public, people in the industry knew that he was gay. If this is the case, I am interested in if the director of All That Heaven Allows, Douglas Sirk, intentionally wanted Hudson to play this role. I wonder about the general choice of Hudson’s casting. Was it coincidence, or was this all intentional?

Sources:

Miller, Julie. “Netflix’s Hollywood: Liberating Rock Hudson From His Real-Life Secrets.” Vanity Fair, 4 May 2020, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/05/netflix-hollywood-rock-hudson. Accessed 20 September 2023.