Salon.Com (10/19) reviewed a new bio The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson by Robert Hofler. The reviewer, even as a child at the movies, thought Hudson was stilted. Upon reading the book he thought no wonder since ‘… His desire for his leading ladies was patently artificial … but so were his teeth, his walk, his voice, even his smile. Rock Hudson was a male Eliza Doolittle’ created by his agent Henry Willson who re-named his creations with a ‘preposterously butch moniker’: Guy Madison, Troy Donahue, John Saxon, Clint Conners. ‘Acting ability wasn’t required, conventional good looks were a must and willingness to have sex with the ferret-faced Willson was … very, very strongly encouraged.’ Willson forced most of his clients to be discreet in sexual matters but his biggest (and very gay) star, Hudson, refused and openly cruised for men everywhere. Fellow client Van Williams said ‘Rock’s sex drive was enormous.’ Another client swears Willson used the mob to wipe out two of Hudson’s blackmailers. Willson’s career ironically collapsed when he forced Hudson to marry Willson’s secretary, Phyliss Gates as a ‘beard’ (cover). Debbie Reynolds told Buzz Mag all of Hollywood laughed, started openly talking about Hudson’s homosexuality and then started asking about the sexuality of all of his clients. Willson died penniless at the Motion Picture Country Home.
In a long article in The New Republic (10/24) Andrew Sullivan subtly and not at all offensively portrays the fading away of gay culture. Bringing in many threads—the death of many in th AIDS generation, the rise of gay marriage, the new ascendancy of lesbians in community roles, the rise of sub-sub cultures (e.g. ‘Bears’) among gays, the raising of children by lesbians and gays, the politization of many middle-aged gays and lesbians—he argues that ‘The distinction between gay and straight culture will become so blurred, so fractured, and so intermingled that it may become more helpful not to examine them separately at all.’ Some of the places in the U.S.A. where gay culture is most in an activist ‘1980’s’ mode are those places like Nashville where the state is still most oppressive —in the rest of the country, gay has become virtually normal.