Rock hudson biography book

The definitive biography of the deeply complex and widely misunderstood matinee idol of Hollywood’s Golden Age—soon to be a major motion picture.

“Exhaustive and empathetic…. Griffin fills in what’s left to say [about Hudson’s life] in between the lines with an impressive list of interviews with movie star friends, acquaintances and co-stars and also digs deep into private journals and correspondence.”—USA Today

The embodiment of romantic masculinity in American cinema throughout the s and ’60s, Rock Hudson reigned supreme as the king of Hollywood. The star of Giant and Pillow Talk was worshipped by adoring fans and beloved by all who worked with him. The quintessential matinee idol made movie love to Elizabeth Taylor and Doris Day, jetted between exotic film locations, and hosted A-list parties in his sprawling mansion.

Wherever he went, Rock Hudson made headlines, though much of what has been written about him has either been

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New Rock Hudson biography reveals the secrets the closeted star tried to hide

Rock Hudson was everything a romantic leading man could be in the s and ‘60s – hunky, clean-cut, extraordinarily handsome – so much so that he ascended to a place where he was considered the “king of Hollywood” and lived in a Beverly Hills mansion nicknamed “The Castle.”

But as author Mark Griffin points out in his exhaustive and empathetic biography “All That Heaven Allows” (Harper,  pp., ★★★ stars out of four), the actor paid a heavy anställda price for his pre-eminence.

Deeply closeted in an era where an openly gay man could never be a celluloid hero, Hudson – a matinee idol of the first beställning who wooed Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall, Gina Lollobrigida and Doris Day onscreen and starred most successfully and famously in films like “Giant” and “Pillow Talk” – spent his life and career hiding in plain sight.

That’s the narrative thrust of this onscreen/offscreen examination of Hudson: “Long before h

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All That Heaven Allows: A Biography of Rock Hudson

Mark Griffin. Harper, $ (p) ISBN

Griffin (A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli) meticulously documents Rock Hudson’s private life as a closeted gay man against the backdrop of his glittering film career and public persona as a sophisticated ladies’ man. All the trappings of a Hollywood success story are present, and Griffin takes a scholarly, carefully researched look at Hudson’s early life and upbringing in a small Illinois town near Chicago, his complicated rise to fame, his off-the-books relationships with men, and his death from AIDS-related complications in The Hudson that emerges is at once a glamorous and tragic figure: constantly in fear of being exposed by the press and even his closest friends, Hudson lived a life of quiet desperation, manipulated by the studio star system, at the mercy of a predatory agent, and pursuing a string of secret and unsuccessful relationships with men.