Ever heard of the actor Roy Fitzgerald? Nope. No reason why you should have. How about the actor Rock Hudson? Changing his name from Fitzgerald to Hudson didn’t propel him to stardom—but it sure didn’t hurt.
In the 1950s and ‘60s, Hudson was one of the most popular actors in the world, blessed with fame and riches, a former truck driver who seemed to be living the dream of so many Americans. Yet the performer people saw on the big screen was, to a large extent, a creation of the Hollywood studio publicity machine. The reality was that Rock Hudson, the star of frothy romantic comedies, was gay. To have come out of the closet in that era would have destroyed his career in an instant.
The tensions, secrets and contradictions in Hudson’s life make for a rich story, one told by Lewiston writer Mark Griffin in his new biography, “All That Heaven Allows.” “I noticed in interviews spanning decades,” he told me, “that Rock would tend to say the same thing—‘I learned to keep my mouth shut.’”
Universal, Hudson’s old movie studio, purchased the rights to the book and plans to make a motion picture out of it, a surprising development for Mark Griffin, who is delighted and thrilled. “I think the most important thing about the book and the film,” Griffin says, “is hopefully this will introduce Rock’s legacy to a whole new generation.”