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The actor who had been inspired by Hall's breaststroke never turned into Laurence Olivier, never attempted the challenging parts taken by such contemporaries as Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, who reached deep into themselves to express their characters. Hudson knew his limitations, and what he did, he did well. One of his most successful roles was that of the Texas patriarch in Giant (1956), for which he received an Academy Award nomination. His real talent, however, was for light romantic comedy, beginning with Pillow Talk (1959), in which he was first teamed with Doris Day, and ending with his TV series of the '70s, McMillan and Wife. He possessed not only a sure sense of timing but a natural and self-deprecating manner that enabled him to have fun with sex without putting audiences off by actually making fun of sex. His final appearance as an actor was on last season's Dynasty, in which he unsuccessfully chased Krystle (Linda Evans). He was already looking drawn and gaunt, causing many to speculate about his health.
The public Hudson was summed up by a list of his performances. In private, he had to live by a double standard that seemed, in the last few years, to make him cynical and even resentful. From the moment he attracted enough attention to be noticed by gossip columnists, he had to lie to hide the inescapable fact that he was attracted to men rather than women. In 1955, when a scandal magazine threatened to expose his sexual preference, Universal arranged a hasty marriage of convenience with Henry Willson's secretary Phyllis Gates. Divorce followed.
Hudson was still hiding as recently as 1980. "Look, I know lots of gays in Hollywood, and most of them are nice guys," he told the London Daily Mirror, which was indelicate enough to ask if he was homosexual. "Some have tried it on with me, but I've said, 'Come on, now. You've got the wrong guy.' " In fact, he had a longtime male lover, and he made no secret of his homosexuality to the show-business friends whose discretion he knew he could count on. His secret became public in July, when he flew to Paris hoping for treatment with an experimental AIDS drug not then available in the U.S. His illness had progressed too far. Several days later, he returned to Los Angeles on a stretcher, in a Boeing 747 that he had chartered.
The disease took its inevitable course. Hudson was too ill to appear at a Hollywood AIDS benefit on Sept. 19, which raised $1 million. Such an outpouring of money would not have come about had it not been for Hudson's illness. Nor, without the subsequent publicity, is it likely that both houses of Congress would have moved last week toward vastly increasing the appropriations for AIDS research. From his misfortune good fortune may have sprung. His friend and Giant co-star Elizabeth Taylor wrote perhaps the most eloquent epitaph: "Please God, he has not died in vain."