Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/The Rock Hudson Estate Collection/HBO
With his massive 6-foot-5-inch frame, sharp jawline, dark hair and impossibly good looks, Rock Hudson always struck me as someone who would have made an ideal Superman—a notion reinforced by his stout-yet-sensitive all-American screen persona. Of course, Hudson wouldn’t have just looked the part of the Man of Steel; he would have understood a character who had a secret identity, since the Hollywood star himself was a matinee idol who famously lived his entire public life in the closet.
Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed is the story of the two Hudsons, one for the spotlight and one for his friends, lovers and confidants, and perhaps most surprising is that the portrait it presents is not of a tortured soul but of a man, and actor, who was comfortable in all the roles he inhabited.
Director Stephen Kijak’s excellent documentary (premiering June 28 on HBO, following its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival) is, in the end, an inescapably sad one, given that Hudson died of complications from AIDS on Oct. 2, 1985, at the too-young age of 59, thus becoming the first A-list celebrity to fall victim to the epidemic. Nonetheless, if that sorrow hovers over its action, it never overwhelms it.