Customer Reviews

My Husband Rock Hudson

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I was fortunate enough to find this book by winning it from an online auction. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Being the only woman to marry Rock Hudson, Miss Gates gives the reader a truly honest insight to what Rock was like during her brief marriage to him. It has a sad ending, but is nevertheless a book you won't want to put down once you start reading it.

If you're a Rock Hudson fan or have an interest in learning more about this complex man, I highly recommend reading it. You won't be disappointed.

Phyllis Gates tells that a week before Rock Hudson proposed to her, he and his agent Henry Wilson had gone to Hollywood lawyer Jerry Giesler to find a way to stop Confidential magazine publishing the story of a gang bang at Wilson's house. She was informed of this by Giesler when finalising her divorce from Hudson, after tiring of his single minded focus on his career which included abandoning her when she was ill, his relationship with Wilson, Hudson slapping her when she referred to a friend of his as a "fruitcake", and his refusal to consult her psychiatrist. It was only after her separation that she became aware of the reality of Hudson's secret lifestyle, although hindsight provided clues - Hudson's friendship with several handsome actors and his association with Wilson, himself gay and an agent who specialised in handsome young and often gay men. Hudson's closet sexual behaviour being unknown to Gates means that it occupies little space - rather it is used as the denouement - and we are left with the less interesting stories of Hudson's idiosyncracies, once he stops having her accompany him to the filming locations. It's hard to assess the book in terms of it as a piece of writing because of the essential frustration of the setup, but the best part is Gates' coverage of the period leading up to her 3 year marriage, particularly relating to the set of Giant, because it is relatively optimistic. It also demonstrates the opportunities of chance, where the day she moved in with Rock was the day James Dean was killed, and how she was at Elizabeth Taylor's the night Montgomery Clift crashed his car. Her telling of Rock's anger at her accompaning Taylor to the hospital with Clift is mentioned to show his unreasonable and controlling tendencies. If one believes that Hudson's greatest acting was in keeping his dalliances hidden from Gates, his courting reveals him as charming, and perhaps it is his youth that explains his ability to make love to her, even if he had been with a man earlier. Perhaps embittered after the later revelations, Gates describes Hudson as weak and manipulative, using people to fulfill his own ambitions and eventually becoming totally corrupted and empty of feeling. However this accusation, with it's covert justification for his death from AIDS, is perhaps crueler than anything she tells us Hudson had done to her. What forced the end of the relationship was her deliberate strategy to try to distance Hudson from Wilson. Hudson would succeed in this task by himself later on but at the time Gates' attempt was a serious underestimation of Hudson's loyalty and the influence Wilson held over him. Gates says that Hudson only kept Wilson on to protect himself from blackmail. More than once Gates is informed of how hard it is for couples to stay together in the ego-based world of actors and Hollywood. Hudson seemed to appreciate her more as an industry companion than as a wife, and Gates repays him by saying he had the emotional development of a 10 year old, and by ridiculing him with the information that he turned down the Chalton Heston part in Ben Hur because the script was too big for him to read. Although Gates clearly means to present herself as a victim, one retains more sympathy for Hudson. She introduces herself as a religious farmgirl from Minnesota with a large family, an innocent caught up in the big bad world of showbusiness, and she comes across as pious and morally superior. Although we don't learn how she catches the hepatitis that leaves her bedridden for months, the suggestion that Rock passed it onto her from his infidelities, so much the worse in her mind because they were with men, is undermined by her catty aside about his obsession with bodily cleanliness. The observation is also tired pop psychology about trying to wash away one's sins. The book's cover picture is metaphorically creepy - they embrace, neither looking at each other, wearing matching red sweaters, Gates' lipstick like blood and Hudson's lips pale. He is taller but rests his forehead on hers, as if she is his mother. Her arms hold him but we cannot see where his are.

Phyllis Gates was a secretary for an important Hollywood agent/image-maker in the fifties. One of his clients was Rock Hudson; they met at work, started dating, and before you could say, "Pillow Talk," they were married. Right away Rock was withdrawn and secretive; there were mysterious phone calls, he wouldn't say where he'd been when he went out, and in fact, he barely spoke to her at all. They had nothing in common and divorced after three years.

This poorly-written, self-aggrandizing piece was written in 1987, two years after Hudson's death and thirty years after their divorce. It's anyone's guess why she wrote it, but I'd guess money had a lot to do with it. It's page after page of name-dropping and calling famous people "friends" just because they attended the same party. Apparently she was the only one in Tinsel Town who didn't know that the whole marriage was Hudson's agent's idea to insure Rock's he-man image.

The whole marriage wouldn't fill one article in People magazine; this is a silly, padded, last-ditch grab at fame and all in all, it's just boring.

---- it comes out from several sources (including Liz Smith) that Phyllis was a lesbian all along. In the 1986 People Magazine excerpts from Sara Davidson's Rock Hudson biography (before Phyllis's book was written), there is talk about her attraction to the same sex. Liz Smith had information on Phyllis's affairs with married women, and used these against her when she attempted to extort money from Rock after the divorce, by selling her story to Confidential magazine. So it seems that Phyllis wasn't the long-suffering martyr after all. She knew what she was getting into from the outset, agreed to it, and then tried to destroy Rock Hudson when this marriage of convenience didn't last. Worse than that, she kept herself just as closeted as Rock did, until the day she died.

This book by Phyllis Gates is interesting in that it is seen from a different angle from other books on rock hudson. I have read several autobiographies on Rock Hudson and they all suggest that Phyllis (His wife) was a lesbian and knew exactly what Rock was when she married him. She claims she had no idea about his chosen lifestyle and through-out the book she paints herself as the innocent victim. She does not paint rock in a very good light at all. A good read, but I found that it did not ring true in many instances, as compared with other rock hudson books I have read.

Having read several other biographies of Rock Hudson, I was curious as to where his ex-wife's would fit in.
Gates' memories are a mix of nostalgia and revenge, so it's difficult to determine how factual or truthful her reminiscences are. Since she died some years ago, no one will ever know. But from my reading of the other biographies and from talking with people who actually knew Rock Hudson, I tend to take her derogatory statements with a large grain of salt. Did he actually hit her once? Possibly. Were they happy together at times? Evidently.
This reader is left with pity for both of them -- pity for her in her obvious need to kiss-and-tell sometimes nastily, and pity for him that although he tried to make the marriage work, her wifely personality and his bi-sexuality got in the way.
This book is for the Hudson fan who wants to know as much as possible about his life -- but it is not a happy book and one is left with much sorrow for both of them, neither of whom ever remarried.
For a more sympathetic view of Hudson, I recommend Tom Clark's "Rock Hudson: Friend of Mine."

You start reading this book with a heavy feeling, or at least I know I did because you know exactly how it ends.
A marriage that started out with so much promise ended in heartbreak and disillusionment.
It has come out since Ms.Gates' death that apparently she was bi-sexual for much of her life and was as closeted as Rock was about his sexuality.
Despite this new information, I still think that Rock and Phyllis really loved each other and what they had was geniune.
There is little doubt that they were pushed together by Henry Wilson, Rock's agent, who was famous for his elaborate plots, but I don't think as some do, that means that the feelings between them weren't real.

And as a treat for you Old Hollywood buffs like myself, there are many stories of the Hudsons' Hollywood friends and the Old Hollywood stars who worked with Rock in his films.

This is a book with an obviously tragic ending since everyone knows what to expect-Divorce in a painful way (as if there were any other). I have always been a Rock fan and loved his movies from Giant to Pillow Talk. However I was always astounded when my mother would tell me, "he was gay" as I thouroughly convinced he was in love with Elizabeth and Doris. Of course I was a clueless teenager swooning over him in these films (yes even a 1990"s teen thought he was hot!). by the way I am using my husband's amazon login as I review this.

I never knew he was married and never could have imagined what it would be like to be married to him, then finding out he was gay, if the book is accurately written, which I see some reviewers do not believe. Anyway, it left me with a deep sorrow for both of them, not one more than the other, just sorrow or both and quite a shock about how Hollywood was "back in the day" with crooked agents, gay whing dings, blackmail, gansters, famous acquaintanes and friends. It is quite the drama and I'm so glad I can read about it in someone elses life and keep mine as sane as possible. :)

Someone should have made a movie telling the real story of Phyllis Gates. It's amusing that people think Hudson's friend Jim Nabors was gay (because of a party joke about a "Rock/Pyle" wedding handed around Fire Island) and Phyllis Gates was straight. She was part of a fake couple (lesbian/gay man) and didn't hold up her end of the bargain. She bullied Hudson into not having lovers whenever possible and had as many girl lovers as she wished (because she was less in the public eye). When she decided Hudson's career was on the wane she decided to divorce him and blackmail him for alimony. None of this is in the book.

Phyllis recently passed away and a quote from her book was used describing her marriage. I hadn't known about the book and looked for it here at Amazon. It was published in 1987 (I think) so it's older, but doggone this was a good book. She had quite an adventure as Rock's wife. Lots of good stories about Hollywood in the 50's. The rise and fall of her marriage to Rock was interesting. She could have taken him to the cleaners or ruined his career but did neither. Consequently, she had money problems later on in her life. This lady sounds like someone I'd enjoy having a conversaton with. She never remarried. I mean...how could you after the Rock Hudson roller coaster ride???