The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson

by Robert Hofler

Overview

Henry Willson was one of the quintessential power brokers in Hollywood during the late 1940s and 1950s when he launched the careers of Rock Hudson, Lana Turner, Tab Hunter, Natalie Wood, and many others. He was also a true casting couch agent, brokering sex for opportunity on the silver screen. While this practice was rampant across Hollywood, for gay actors and film professionals the casting couch was a dangerous cliff: a public revelation could and would ruin a career. The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson is an incredible biography as well as a harrowing look into Hollywood at a time of great sexual oppression, roaming vice squads searching for gay and/or communist activity, and the impossibilities for gay actors of the era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780816691296
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	02/15/2014
Pages:	472
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Robert Hofler survived a forty-year career in journalism, working as an editor at Life, Us, and Variety, among many other publications. He is now the theater critic for The Wrap and lives in New York City. Hofler is also author of the books Sexplosion: From Andy Warhol to “A Clockwork Orange”—How a Generation of Pop Rebels Broke All the Taboos, Variety’s “The Movie That Changed My Life,” and Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll Starring the Fabulous Allan Carr.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Hollywood's Adonis Factory xi

Part 1

1 Rock Tab Troy 3

2 Polishing the Rock 9

3 An M-G-M Rejection 27

Part 2

4 A Note from Walter Winchell 25

5 Ginger Rogers Sat Here 37

6 Bloodsuckers on the Neck 49

7 Junior Hollywood 59

Part 3

8 Cary Grant's Roommate 65

9 Lana Turner at the Troc 73

Part 4

10 Memos from David O. Selznick 85

11 Monty Clift Escapes 97

12 The Face and the Beard 103

13 Guy (Madison) Worship 109

14 Saint Jennifer Jones 115

15 Faux Fiancées 125

Part 5

16 Ex-con Rory Calhoun 135

17 Never a Groom 141

18 Jaguar in the Rain 147

19 Farewell to Tara 151

Part 6

20 Self-reinvention 159

21 Big Fish, Big Pond 167

22 Dazzling at Ciro's 171

23 From Race to Touch 179

24 Up the Ladder with Tony Curtis 185

Part 7

25 And Natalie Wood Makes Three 201

26 Wholesome, But Never Fresh 209

27 Tabloid Mole 217

28 BHPD Interrogation 223

29 Around the World at Universal 233

30 Confidential Reports 239

31 Sacrificial Lions 247

Part 8

32 Jimmy Dean's Maker 253

33 Revenge on Tab Hunter 259

34 Trial of the Tainted Stars 267

Part 9

35 Giant Step 275

36 Vampira among the Ivy 287

37 Importing John Saxon 291

38 Troy Donahue, Again 299

39 Pick-up on Sunset 307

40 Alain Delon on the Tarmac 311

41 John Gavin Plays Rock Jr. 317

42 Hollywood Leg Breaker 323

43 Suddenly, Last Saturday 333

44 FBI File: Mr. Rock Hudson 345

Part 10

45 The Trouble with Warren Beatty 353

46 Jock-Turned-Extortionist 363

47 Married to Suzanne Pleshette 367

Part 11

48 Bazooka and Brylcreem 375

49 Henry's Last Chance 381

50 Losing the Rock 385

51 Bel Air Breakdown 391

52 Camelot Before Dying 399

53 Mannix for Lunch 407

54 Finally, No Name 415

Epilogue: Best of Friends 419

Notes and References 421

Bibliography 449

Index 455

Editorial Reviews

"Those who think Hollywood’s current predatory political scene and celebrity partner-swapping activities are new phenomena would be wise to dive into this tell-all tale of Henry Willson, an agent who became a major star maker to actors like Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, and Troy Donahue in the 1950s."
—Publishers Weekly


"A trove of enticing gossip and little-known facts . . . Hofler chronicles Willson’s life of privilege. He roams through the origins of his paradoxical right-wing attitudes, early intrigues to obtain sexual power, conspiracies hatched in glamorous fabled nightclubs, the Trocadero, the Macombo. He describes nasty sexual antics among powerful studio heads."
—Los Angeles Times 


 "The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson is a gritty, often coarse but well-researched biography of a tough Hollywood power broker famous for his ‘Adonis factory.’"
—Salon.com


 "Hofler, a Variety editor and reporter, is well matched to this shark-tank of a life." —Washington Post

From the Publisher

[Willson's] was a sad, sordid, thrillingly low kind of life, a worthy theme for Hofler's acerbic and ultimately repellent book…Hofler, a Variety editor and reporter, is well matched to this shark-tank of a life. The only thing he can't do is swim above it. He writes with a bright sneer, as though he were competing with his own subjects.
—The Washington Post

Louis Bayard

Those who think Hollywood's current predatory political scene and celebrity partner-swapping activities are new phenomena would be wise to dive into this tell-all tale of Henry Willson, an agent who became a major star maker to actors like Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter and Troy Donahue in the 1950s. Rapacious, ambitious and fond of a sex-for-roles strategy, Willson (1911-1978) is a compelling character worthy of this extensive biography. His story, too, illustrates the rise of the studio star system, in which actresses were pimped out to movie executives by their agents, and actors married to cover their homosexual liaisons. Hofler, a former Variety senior editor now the publication's theater reporter, delves into this shadowy, sometimes seamy world with particular relish, and his writing has all the sizzle of the films his subjects starred in. He includes interviews with a number of Hollywood insiders (Roddy McDowall and Shirley Temple Black, to name two), and shows remarkable sympathy for Willson, offering a glimpse into a man and an era that may be past, but whose effects linger still. Photos. Agent, Mitch Douglas. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Bedroom journalism about a Hollywood talent agent who-surprise!-shaped actors' careers in return for sex. Truck driver Roy Fitzgerald had bad teeth and used bad grammar. But the tall hunk also had a great face and great pecs. Agent Henry Willson played a hunch that someone with Fitzgerald's all-American image would excite audiences who, after World War II, liked their men heroic and brawny. Willson had the actor's teeth fixed and gave him an iconic name, Rock Hudson. A block of oak as an actor, Hudson nevertheless became a top box-office star, cueing Willson to turn Arthur Gelien into Tab Hunter, Robert Moseley into Guy Madison, Francis Durgin into Rory Calhoun, etc., etc. Besides paying Willson ten percent of their earnings, the actors were expected to sleep with Willson, who was gay and a troll in the looks department. Most actors, including some who were straight, gave in. The success of his clients kept actors showing up at Willson's office or by his pool, reportedly the scene of orgies. More than a lecher, Willson could be generous with his boys (he supported Hudson during the actor's first year in Hollywood) and gave them canny career advice. The agent could also be treacherous. When Confidential magazine threatened to expose Hudson as gay, Willson bartered the rag's silence about Hudson for tales about Calhoun's prison record and Hunter's arrest at a gay party (see Tab Hunter Confidential, p. 776). To butch up Hudson's image, Willson arranged a marriage between his secretary and the future star of Pillow Talk. And to keep blackmailers off Hudson's trail, Willson let loose the hounds-off-duty cops and mafia men. No fool for Hollywood, Variety reporter Hofler gets off a lot of goodlines as he tells this familiar tale of Hollywood gays in the '50s.

Kirkus Reviews