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Rock Hudson’s true love speaks out
The year was 1962 when Lee Garlington, an unknown film extra, first met Rock Hudson.
Hudson was still one of the biggest movie stars in the world and at that time was enjoying a string of hit films opposite Doris Day.
Now 77, Garlington is finally speaking out about his three-year relationship with Hudson who died of complications from AIDS in 1985.
“He was the biggest movie star in the world, and the rumors were that he was gay,” Garlingtion tells People. “So I thought, ‘Let me get an eye on him.’ I stood outside his cottage on the Universal lot, pretending to read Variety, which was probably upside down at the time. He walked out and down the street. He looked back once. That was it.”
Until about year later.
I was scared to death,” Garlington says of their first meeting at Hudson’s mansion on Beverly Crest Drive in Beverly Hills. “Of course, he was 6-foot-4, a monster. He offered me a beer, but nothing happened. Literally. I was too scared. He said, ‘Well, let’s get together,’ and we did.”
“I’d come over after work, spend the night and leave the next morning,” Garlington says. “I’d sneak out at 6 a.m. in my Chevy Nova and coast down the street without turning on the engine so the neighbors wouldn’t hear. We thought we were being so clever.”
They even went to movie premieres together but brought female dates for cover.
“Nobody in their right mind came out,” Garlington says. “It was career suicide. We all pretended to be straight. Once we met Paul Newman and his wife [Joanne Woodward] at a premiere. He looked at me and smiled. I just read in his face – that maybe he knew Rock and I were together. We kind of laughed about it.”
Another favorite memory: “I remember we were getting ready to go somewhere and he said, ‘Let me show you how to shave properly. He showed me how to take the razor and go down your face at an angle so it cuts better.”
Garlington read in Hudson’s biography, published after his death, that the actor had called him his “true love.”
“I broke down and cried,” he recalls. “I just lost it. He said his mother and I were the only people he ever loved. I had no idea I meant that much to him.”
Comments
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Cool Curt says:
That was so bittersweet because here was this very talented and sought after movie star, who was beloved all around the world and in his real life, he wasn’t able to love who he wanted to love publicly and only privately. That is how everything was in the golden-age of Hollywood and I feel some of the attitudes of yesteryear are still relevant because the the stigma hovers over the Hollywood Sign. Even though there are talented OUT & PROUD card-carrying (SAG) performers and this is in front of the camera and behind the scenes but still there shouldn’t be a difference. I don’t know how or why but once someone comes out, their box-office appeal shouldn’t go away but it does. Straight actors and actresses can play gay roles and that is almost rewarded but actual LGTBI actors and actresses aren’t banned but might as well be banned from playing straight roles or characters. It’a alleged that they wouldn’t be believable as being straight and a great example would be Anne Heche, who was Ellen’s one-time lover/partner.
When she was OUT and somehow up for a leading part in a romantic comedy and now she was being thrust into the spotlight as Ellen’s girlfriend, there was some controversy in her way.
There hasn’t been anyone as BIG as Rock Hudson, who would be out and as liberal as most feel Hollywood is, it truly isn’t.
Rock Hudson (God Rest His Soul: R.I.P) wouldn’t have been as big, if he would have been out.
There are so many allegations about others big names in Hollywood around Rock’s reign, who were either gay and very closeted or bi-sexual and was fully aware of the risk of being found out about.