ROCK HUDSON – DARK AND HANDSOME STRANGER-Andrew Davies / André Schäfer
Rock Hudson was a virile screen idol who was the epitome of clean-cut masculinity. He was one of the first Hollywood celebrities to die of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, providing the killer virus with a famous face amidst the American AIDS paranoia of 1985. 2010 is not only the 25th anniversary of his death, but would also have been his 85th birthday. Born as Roy Harold Scherer Jr. in Winnetka, Illinois Rock secretly dreamed of becoming an actor. After arriving in Hollywood his name was changed into ROCK HUDSON – a name ringing of ruggedness and testosterone. The all-American movie idol was now ready for action and perfectly suited for the typical beefcake roles he was destined for. The Hollywood system was not ready for tolerating homosexuals. To prove his masculinity in public, Hudson had to take starlets out for dinner in order to protect his secret double-life behind the scenes. In the 1950s he even married his manager’s secretary Phyllis Gates, a marriage which lasted only three years. In the late sixties a fresh generation of revolutionary films started to hit the cinemas – the so-called New Hollywood. Rock Hudson’s movie career started to fade but he continued working for television. He starred in the successful detective series “McMillan and Wife” and played in the legendary eighties soap “Dynasty”, which bought Rock Hudson into millions of living rooms. But viewers could see that he was not looking as fit as he used to. The symptoms of AIDS were beginning to take their toll.
Who was the real Rock Hudson? Was he a kind of invented personality? Rock always said that his real-life reflected his movie life and vice versa. The film will investigate the many film roles Rock Hudson played, against the more intimate and private world of Roy Fitzgerald, uncovering and revealing what was happening behind the superficial scenarios and double values in Hollywood. Rock Hudson was a star doing a secret balancing act between private, and public, between the heterosexual world of an obviously very male looking star and the dark side of forbidden sexuality as a closeted gay.
