Rock Hudson died in Beverly Hills on October 2, 1985. He was 59. Forty-one years have passed, and his final months are remembered as a turning point in how America talked about AIDS. He was born Roy Harold Scherer Jr. in Winnetka, Illinois, on November 17, 1925. Hollywood gave him a new name and made him one of its most dependable leading men.
He broke through in ‘Magnificent Obsession’ in 1954 and starred opposite Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean in ‘Giant’ two years later. Audiences adored his romantic comedies with Doris Day, which began with ‘Pillow Talk’ in 1959 and continued with ‘Lover Come Back’ and ‘Send Me No Flowers.’ Television viewers knew him as the police commissioner on ‘McMillan & Wife’ in the 1970s. Day guarded his privacy for years. “Many, many people would ask me, you know, ‘Is Rock Hudson really gay?’ And I said, ‘It’s something I will not discuss,'” she once recalled, according to CBS News.
Rock Hudson’s Final Message Still Matters
His illness became public in the summer of 1985. Weeks before his death, a statement from him was read at an AIDS benefit. “I am not happy that I am sick. I am not happy that I have AIDS,” it said. “But if that is helping others, I can at least know my own misfortune has had some positive worth.” CBS News reported those words in its look back at his life. A $250,000 contribution from Hudson also helped Taylor and Dr. Michael Gottlieb launch the foundation that became part of amfAR. Day lived to be 97, and DYR remembered her when she died in 2019. Their films together still play like sunshine.