Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed

Matt Roush says...

A powerful Hollywood biographical portrait that doubles as a sobering social history, Heaven (the title plays off of one of his hit romantic movies) tracks the unlikely career and secret life of Rock Hudson, a matinee idol of the 1950s and ’60s who earned an Oscar nod for the 1956 epic Giant and was big box office in romcoms co-starring Doris Day. What his fans didn’t know, and tabloids only hinted at, was his identity as a closeted gay man, one of Hollywood’s better-kept secrets—until his diagnosis with AIDS was made public in 1985, putting a human face on the epidemic. Well-chosen film clips illustrate the dichotomy between his manufactured beefcake image and the real “Roy Fitzgerald”—one scene shows an actress quipping, “Hiding in closets isn’t going to cure you”—while a gay activist reflects on how “he found a way to be comfortable with both lives.” (And yes, that’s my byline on stories from USA TODAY during the aftermath of Hudson’s AIDS diagnosis.)

What's Worth Watching (Jun 28)