Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed *** (2023, documentary) – Classic Movie Review 12,656

Stephen Kijak’s timely and revelatory Altitude/ HBO documentary exploration of Hollywood and gay identity sheds some light on the life and death of iconic actor Rock Hudson. Lovely images but maybe there’s too much gossip about his sexuality and love life. 

Director Stephen Kijak’s timely and revelatory Altitude Film Entertainment/ HBO documentary exploration of Hollywood and LGBTQ+ identity sheds some light on the life and death of iconic actor Rock Hudson, from his carefully nurtured public persona as a babe magnet to his private life as a necessarily closeted gay man. It is well, and carefully assembled and edited, with interesting testimonies from a handful of survivors, and plenty of movie clips and olden-days showbiz gossip.

There is too much kiss and tell (salacious gossip and posthumous outing), too much about his sexuality and love life, and too much reliance on old movie clips taken out of context, in this profoundly depressing story, with Linda Evans, Doris Day and especially Elizabeth Taylor emerging well from the wreckage. Rock’s ‘friends’ Nancy and Ronald Reagan, especially, do not. Rock himself does. He seems to have been an okay sort of guy, maybe more than okay, loyal to his friends, kindly to his acquaintances and courteous to his colleagues, though he was extremely ambitious, a Republican, chain smoker, hard drinker and sex addict.

At the end, it’s hard not to shed tears but what’s the point? You get the feeling that Rock would perhaps have hated this film. Rock’s decline is a heart-breaking, shitty story, and this film indulges in it in the same way as the Eighties media did. Ironically, the Fifties and Eighties media are under fire consistently (and rightly) in the film. There are lots of villains in this story, and relatively few heroes, but then that’s life. Rock managed to accrue a few good friends, which is what mainly what gives the idea that he was an okay sort of guy. For a couple of decades, it seems it was a wonderful life.

He must be one of the most filmed and photographed people ever, and there is plenty of glorious evidence for this in Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed. So he is not forgotten, all these years after his death, and for that Rock would perhaps have liked this film.

By the way, not clear in the documentary is that Rock Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer Jr on November 17, 1925, in Winnetka, Illinois. His parents divorced when he was four, and in 1932, his mother married ex-Marine Corps officer Wallace Fitzgerald, whom Roy disliked. Roy was adopted by Fitzgerald and he became Roy Harold Fitzgerald.

Rock, of course, made the 1955 film All That Heaven Allows.

Let’s give Marlene Dietrich the last word: ‘Rock Hudson was one of the gentlest, kindest men in Hollywood – and all those journalists should burn in Hell for the bile they printed about him when he died.’

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,656

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