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The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and the Dirty Deals of Henry Willson
by Robert Hofler
Carroll & Graf
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There's been a revival of interest in the 1950s, particularly the gay 1950s. Todd Haynes's Far From Heaven was a perfect 21st-century redux of Douglas Sirk's 1955 All That Heaven Allows, a film that defined a certain classic decadal sensibility. David Johnson's excellent The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government exposed the core of the decade's fear of difference. Tab Hunter's terrific memoir, Tab Hunter: Confidential, exposed both the glamour (fake and otherwise) as well as the horrors at the heart of the 50s imagined homosexuality. Now, The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson presents us with another-- more complicated, less cohesive, and certainly trashier-- view of the material that Tab Hunter dished and analyzed so well in his memoir. And while The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson is hardly the equivalent of Johnson's The Lavender Scare, it does touch on similar themes, albeit in brightly-shimmering Tinsel Town and not among the gray-flannel suits of Washington.

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If there's a linchpin-- or is it cornerstone?-- to 1950s Hollywood Homoeroticism it is Henry Willson. One of the major Hollywood agents, Willson's forte was manufacturing hot, beautiful male stars who were the fulfillment of both heterosexual fantasies as well as embodiments of a clearly defined postwar masculinity, which we know-- thanks to photographers such as Bruce Weber-- as one of the echt 20th-century gay looks. Willson's genius-- which apparently was difficult to locate since most sources agree that it was hidden under his unctuous, obnoxious, and duplicitous personality-- was not just in discovering these male stars, but essentially inventing them: giving them new names, identities, personalities, and often sexualities. As to talent: well Willson always said "acting can be added later."

Soft inside

A Willson star was easy to spot by name: Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue, Guy Madison, Rory Calhoun, Ty Hardin, Clint Walker, Grant Williams, Nick Adams, Chad Everett, John Saxon, Dack Rambo. These guys were butch, but often "soft butch." If they didn't have sensitive, nice-boy personalities like Hudson and Donahue, they had a certain feminine side to them in that they were all objet d'sex. Actors like Madison, Calhoun, and Hardin had a rough exterior, but underneath they were all beefcake, waiting to be devoured by audience eyes.

Some of these actors were gay, some were straight, and most were-- obviously-- available, or at least easily taken advantage of. The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson gives us great, great gossip and details how Willson managed to create these male stars, with aid of what cultural forces. This bevy of male pulchritude-- and some of them, well a few, were even good actors-- could only have happened in America in the 1950s.

Waiting for the big one

Yet one wishes The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson were a better book. Sure it has great gay Hollywood dirt-- who knew that Guy Madison had an affair with Rory Calhoun? (The butch Calhoun, with an extensive criminal past was the top to the sweet, former-sailor Madison.) But often the book has the feel of a too-long piece in a movie-magazine. Hofler also has a fine sense of irony and a piqued sense of humor. He is careful to situate this story-- really a series of interconnected stories, as each of Willson's boys has a particular tale-- in the decade's larger cultural and political framework. His analysis of the FBI's investigation into Rock Hudson's sex life is fascinating, and Hofler certainly understands how social forces shape movies.

But what's missing from The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson is how the politics of the closet-- and Willson's career was all about manipulating the closet to invent male hunks who were radically different from Hollywood male stars in the past-- was so deeply pervasive not only in Hollywood iconography, but in the American imagination. The obsession with homosexuality in the US reached a fevered pitch in the 1950s in social, psychoanalytic, and political arenas. The games of masculinity (faux and otherwise) that were being played on the silver screen were reflections of what was happening everywhere else. The traditional concepts of masculinity and gender were undergoing major revisions in the 1950s, effects of gathering seismic rumbles that would only visibly quake later on. This is what Hofler doesn't really explore, and what would have made his book not just fun, but great.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com