While freedom might just be another word for nothing left to lose (like Janis said), Republican, of course, is often just another word for money-grubbing monster. Oh yeah, and “fag-hating,” too (among other types of hatred espoused). Yet, because the times were still even more archaic than they feel now, Rock Hudson lived during an era in which he was needled into believing it was best to conceal his sexuality, no matter how painful that stiflement could be. As a matinee idol, appealing to the straight suburban wives of San Fernando Valley and beyond was key to sustaining the “myth” of Rock Hudson, whose real name was Roy Harold Scherer Jr. And yes, he was just another fresh off the boat from a flyover state Hollywood aspirant when he was “plucked from obscurity” by his agent, Henry Willson, himself a closeted gay man of a far more nefarious variety (as the show Hollywood recently iterated). Of course, Willson wasn’t taking on an unknown out of the kindness of his heart, having developed a keen eye for who to prey on when it came to fulfilling his forced-to-be-suppressed appetites.
Willson would be the one responsible for kiboshing rumors in the gossip rags of the 1950s about his favorite client’s orientation by offering up intel on two of his other “beefcake” stars, Tab Hunter and Rory Calhoun, who never achieved quite the same level of enduring fame as Hudson. Famous enough, as it were, to strike up a friendship with ex-movie star and then current president Ronald Reagan and his anti-drug wife, Nancy. Having known Ronald on the proverbial lot and danced at black tie gatherings with the couple in the 80s (most glaring in a May 1984 photo of the trio at a White House state dinner), Hudson was more than just a “cursory” friend hoping for a one in a million favor. A favor that might have helped alleviate some of his pain were Nancy not such a sniveling little bitch for the GOP.
Wanting to ensure that she and her husband would be distanced from anyone cited to have the “gay disease,” the response to a telegram from Hudson’s publicist, Dale Olson, on July 24, 1984 (a year later on July 25, he would surrender to revealing his diagnosis to the media) pleading for someone at the White House to put in a good word for Hudson getting into the American hospital in Paris (one had to be a French citizen to gain access), Reagan staffer Mark Weinberg responded with, “I spoke with Mrs. Reagan about the attached telegram. She did not feel this was something the White House should get into and agreed to my suggestion that we refer the writer to the US embassy, Paris.” Cold and impersonal, the “writer” being referred to was Hudson’s publicist, who genuinely felt “a request from the White House or a high American official would change [the head of the hospital’s] mind.”
Putting a major spotlight on the nature of “friendships” that politicians have with high-profile celebrities, the motives in cultivating such “rapports” became all the more obvious in their self-servingness. It was fine to showcase Hudson as a “dear friend” when he was still the hetero beefcake of Hollywood’s Golden Era (the Reagans seeming to want to cultivate their own version of the Kennedys’ Camelot by way of filling the White House with aging stars to somehow prove their relevance the same way Norma Desmond did in Sunset Boulevard). But once he actually displayed vulnerability, expressed an urgent need for any possible relief to combat a terrifying and novel disease, the Reagans suddenly did not find their friendship so beneficial to the image of wholesome Americanness they wanted to project.
Nancy’s refusal to “get into” that (a phrase some claimed simply meant she didn’t want to be seen as giving preferential treatment to a friend when that was literally what the entire Reagan administration was based upon) led Olson to call her personally to make the plea. Nancy remained staunch in her denial. Rock was dead to them, and no matter how she tried to spin it as simply not wanting to be viewed as “immoral” (when not helping someone, particularly a friend, in dire need is the definition of that), the fact was as ACT UP member Peter Stanley stated: “Seems strange that the Reagans used that excuse, since they often did favors for their Hollywood friends during their White House years. I’m sure if it had been Bob Hope in that hospital with some rare, incurable cancer, Air Force One would have been dispatched to help save him. There’s no getting around the fact that they left Rock Hudson out to dry. As soon as he had that frightening homosexual disease, he became as unwanted and ignored as the rest of us.”
It was, indeed, an extremely callous move in keeping with the overall callousness of the decade toward gay men–regardless if they were diagnosed with the disease or not–with everyone in the community being looked upon as a leper by those on the outside. As for Ronald, he wouldn’t even make a major public address about the disease until 1987, when he cooingly said in that “I’m a good Christian” voice of his, “It’s important that America not reject those who have the disease, but care for them with dignity and kindness. Final judgment is up to God; our part is to ease the suffering and to find a cure.”
Where was that sentiment when your friend Rock was in agony during his final year, calling out for your help from across the shore to take a gamble on an experimental drug that wasn’t even going to work on him? Though Hudson might have made it into that hospital in Paris several days later, the message behind the Reagan’s rejection was clear–as clear as everyone else’s in America: “You’re a fag. And we don’t fuck with fags.” So it is that one must pull out the old adage, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”
