‘Rock Hudson: All that Heaven Allowed’ review: The double life of a Hollywood star

A documentary about one of Hollywood’s biggest stars of the 20th century, “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed” (riffing on the title of Hudson’s 1955 film “All That Heaven Allows”) is the portrait of a boy from Winnetka — a New Trier alum and self-described “Midwestern hick” — who found fame and fortune on screen. But he lived a double life, which he kept under wraps until his fatal AIDS diagnosis in the ‘80s.

There was his heterosexual public image — of brawny style and wit, a 6-foot-4 leading man who could switch easily from adventure films to Douglas Sirk melodramas in the ‘50s, to romantic comedies opposite Doris Day in the ‘60s, to the TV police procedural “McMillan & Wife” in the ‘70s and the nighttime soap “Dynasty” in the ‘80s.

His closeted private life was an open secret in Hollywood, if not to his wider audience. He was gregarious and charming and had an abundance of sexual flings and a close circle of friends, but no long-term romantic relationships. Maybe the demands of maintaining a straight image made that too difficult. But either way, Hudson’s wealth, and his agent Henry Willson, were key to keeping all of this under wraps.

When the tabloid Confidential threatened to do a piece exposing Hudson’s homosexuality, Willson offered up Tab Hunter, who was one of his other clients, as a sacrificial lamb instead. The film doesn’t delve into how Hudson might have felt about that, if he felt anything at all.

Willson was a less-than-ethical operator. He is described in the film as the equivalent of a womanizer — a “manizer” — and it was understood that his male clients would sleep with him as part of the bargain. What Hudson made of that arrangement is left unexplored, but there are hints that he may have had an opportunistic streak, at least early in his career, dumping an earlier paramour and manager who was Hudson’s first real friend in Los Angeles in favor of whatever career gains Willson could provide.

Even so, “People loved him. He was just a decent, wonderful guy. And that’s unusual in Hollywood,” someone says in director Stephen Kijak’s film.

But there’s another quotation that’s even more revealing: “He was a great performer, not only in acting but in life.”

That presents a number of challenges for Kijak (whose credits include documentaries about Judy Garland and Lynyrd Skynyrd) because Hudson didn’t give probing interviews during his lifetime. Kijak talks to a number of old friends and lovers and they “form a really neat, compact arc that will bring you from the pre-Stonewall era before gay liberation to the other side of the AIDS crisis,” he said in a recent interview. But the film struggles to capture what Hudson’s personality was like in private. Nor does it talk about his drinking, which reportedly became an issue later in life.

But it’s a terrific portrait of how Hollywood once functioned — and the artifice of it all. “I was under contract with Universal Pictures and I was with them for 17, 18 years,” Hudson says in an archival interview. “Universal in those days was a wonderful studio. They took care of everything for the actor: The house you live in, the shopping, your meals cooked, it was all done for you so that the only thing you had to be concerned about was your performance.”

In the early ‘50s, he shared a home with fellow actor Robert Preble, and the pair were featured in the magazine Photoplay. Through today’s lens, the accompanying images read as hiding in plain sight, particularly one in which they are shirtless, posing by a convertible in jeans, their muscles flexing. Hudson is kneeling and polishing the fender while Preble leans under the car’s hood. They were roommates, the story claimed. Just two bachelors looking to save a buck on rent.

But soon enough, Hudson’s marriageability became too conspicuous to ignore and a wedding to his agent’s secretary was hastily arranged in 1955. The marriage didn’t last, but it served its purpose.

The documentary is at its strongest when it considers Hudson juxtaposed with the eras he lived through. He had a fairly unencumbered life — his house in Beverly Hills was dubbed “The Castle” and it was the frequent site for gatherings, away from prying eyes and cameras — only to see all that shatter when his fellow political conservatives, including one-time friend Nancy Reagan, all but abandoned him in his hour of need.

“Tales of the City” author Armistead Maupin was among Hudson’s inner circle and he talks about a conversation they had in the ‘70s, when he urged Hudson to come out of the closet. Apparently, Hudson considered it but never followed through. It’s a tantalizing “what if?” Later, it was Maupin who would confirm publicly that Hudson was gay: “People had to learn how to behave like adults about this subject,” is how he puts it.

Hudson became sick just as the AIDS crisis was worsening. “All we did was go to funerals and fundraisers,” one of his friends says. Hudson sought treatment in Paris, where his diagnosis was kept secret, until it wasn’t. His publicist made the announcement — how involved was Hudson in that decision? It’s unclear — and he became the most famous person at the time to publicly confirm his AIDS diagnosis. What followed was deplorable treatment; the hospital in France wanted him out and no airline would fly him back to the States, leaving his publicist to charter a 747 to get him home.

He died not long after in October 1985. Less than a year later, Roger Ebert would interview Sara Davidson, author of “Rock Hudson: His Story.” He begins with a blunt statement: “If Rock Hudson had collapsed in Los Angeles instead of in a Paris hospital, he would have died with all of his secrets still intact.” That was how Hudson wanted it, according to Davidson, who said he feared the truth “would destroy the image he had carefully built up over 35 years.”

The film doesn’t grapple with this complexity, of Hudson’s feelings about his carefully manicured public image and his state of mind when his health turned cataclysmic. The film also makes no mention of a lawsuit one of his former lovers filed after his death.

It was Elizabeth Taylor and Doris Day who publicly stood by him in the end. There’s a touching anecdote from another Hudson biographer, Mark Griffin, that’s not in the film but worthwhile all the same. At home, during the star’s final days, “everyone was maintaining a very polite distance,” Griffin told CBS. “And Taylor, quite admirably, said, ‘Well, this is ridiculous.’ And she crawled into bed with him and cuddled with him and hugged him.”

“Rock Hudson: All that Heaven Allowed” — 3 stars (out of 4)

Where to watch: 8 p.m. Wednesday on HBO (streaming on Max)

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic

nmetz@chicagotribune.com