Rock Hudson's AIDS disclosure
Rock Hudson led a double life for decades. On 25 July 1985 his secret became world news.
On 25 July 1985, the Hollywood actor Rock Hudson announced through his publicist Yanou Collart that he had AIDS. This made him the first world-famous celebrity to be publicly associated with the disease.
Hudson, born Roy Harold Scherer Jr. in 1925, was one of Hollywood's biggest screen idols in the 1950s and 1960s and was marketed by his studio as a heartthrob. In fact he was gay, which was an open secret in the dream factory but strictly hidden from the public. His agent Henry Willson and Universal Studios went to considerable lengths to conceal Hudson's sexual orientation. When the gossip magazine "Confidential" threatened to out him in 1955, Hudson entered into an arranged marriage with Phyllis Gates, his agent's secretary. The marriage lasted only three years, after which Hudson lived in constant fear of being outed.
In July 1985 Hudson collapsed during a stay in Paris, where he was being treated for advanced HIV infection. At first the media spoke of liver cancer, before the actual diagnosis was publicly confirmed on 25 July. The news went round the world and brought into public awareness a disease that until then had mainly been stigmatised and hushed up, because it was wrongly associated only with gay men.
Hudson's friendships with First Lady Nancy Reagan and fellow actor Elizabeth Taylor contributed significantly to AIDS receiving greater political and social attention. Taylor subsequently became one of the best-known AIDS activists and a co-founder of the foundation amfAR. Shortly before his death, Hudson himself donated 250,000 dollars to AIDS research. He died on 2 October 1985 at the age of 59, one of the first world-famous celebrities to die of the disease.