Today In History, 1985: Rock Hudson’s AIDS Diagnosis Confirmed

Jim Burroway

July 25th, 2016

Rock Hudson, Doris Day

Rock Hudson with Doris Day, in a television appearance that touched off national speculation about Hudson’s health.

The rumors had been swirling for some time, long before Rock Hudson entered a Paris hospital for what was clearly a very serious illness. He had appeared on July 16 at a news conference in Carmel, California, alongside his 1959 Pillow Talk costar, Dorris Day, to promote Doris Day’s Best Friends, a new animal companion program on the Christian Broadcasting Network. Hudson had agreed to be her first guest. Hudson was so late for the press conference that by the time he got there, a lot of the reporters had already left. Those who stayed were shocked by what they saw: sunken cheeks, poor complexion, unsteady on his feet, his speech barely intelligible and his clothing several sizes too large for his now skeletal body. Day embraced her former co-star, and they somehow made it through the press conference. Hudson taped the show a few days later, although he was so weak they had to stop several times.

A few days later, Hudson flew to Paris where he was no stranger to the medical establishment there. Back in the states in 1984, he had a scratch on his neck that wouldn’t heal, so he went to a doctor. The doctor told him that was no scratch, but Kaposi’s sarcoma, a rare form of skin cancer and a common opportunistic infection among AIDS patients. Hudson went to Paris to receive treatment with HPA-23, an experimental drug unavailable in the U.S. which was supposed to inhibit an enzyme that allows the AIDS virus to multiply. (HPA-23 was found to be ineffective against AIDS in 1989.) Now a year later, he made arrangements to return for another appointment with Dr. Dominique Dormont, the specialist who had treated him the year before. The appointment was set for July 22, but Hudson collapsed in his room at the Ritz the day before. The hotel summoned a doctor, who assumed that Hudson was experiencing heart problems and rushed him to the American Hospital of Paris. The doctors there, ignorant of his AIDS condition, noticed that his liver function was poor and suspected some kind of liver disease. This led Hudson’s publicist, Yanou Collart, to tell reporters that he was suffering from liver cancer.

Rock Hudson's return to Los Angeles

Rock Hudson’s return to Los Angeles.

When Dr. Dormont finally arrived at the hospital, he determined that Hudson was too weak to undergo any more HPA-23 treatments. Hudson decided to return to Los Angeles as soon as possible. He also decided to announce that he had AIDS.  Collart remembered, “The hardest thing I ever had to do in my life was to walk into his room and read him the press release. I’ll never forget the look on his face. How can I explain it? Very few people knew he was gay. In his eyes was the realization that he was destroying his own image. After I read it, he said simply, ‘That’s it, it has to be done.'”

Collart’s statement acknowledged Hudson’s disease, but not his sexuality. “He’s lucid. He’s talking, He’s joking… He’s feeling much better and in quite good spirits,” Collart said. “He doesn’t have any idea now how he contracted AIDS. … Nobody around him has AIDS.” In 1981, Hudson had undergone open heart surgery at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, near West Hollywood, where he received several blood transfusions. That would have been during the earliest days of what would soon be understood to be a major blood-borne epidemic. This meant that his sexuality may have been coincidental to his AIDS, but nobody really knew, then or now. But at the time, that explanation provided a path to plausible deniability.

And so the dancing around his sexuality would continue for another three weeks. Finally, and with Hudson’s blessing, close friends Angie Dickinson, Robert Stack and Mamie Van Doren acknowledged Hudson’s sexuality in a supportive article in People magazine. Messages of support and a procession of visitors followed: Morgan Fairchild, Joan Rivers, Nancy Walker, Tony Perkins, Carol Burnett, and, of course, Elizabeth Taylor. Hudson’s death less than three months later provoked another wave of sympathy and galvanized much of Hollywood, with Elizabeth Taylor’s prodding, to undertake the task of reducing the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS.

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