Elaine Stritch on choosing Rock Hudson over Ben Gazzara

The legendary Tony and Emmy winner Elaine Stritch talks about dumping her then-boyfriend Ben Gazzara for a Hollywood superstar Rock Hudson.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Rock
• Hudson
• gay
• Elaine
• Stritch
• Ben
• Gazzara
• Broadway
• stage
• theatre
• theater

[sweeney60]

@summermen shes savvy now, she wasnt back then.

[wwathisthen]

@summermen Right, but the period Stritch is talking about is ~ '57. Hudson was still married to Phyllis Gates -- he wasn't anything like out to the world at large. While there may have been whispers, Stritch could easily have been unaware of them, since she was more involved in theater at that point than in Hollywood. McMillan & Wife was more than a decade later -- and the intervening decade was the 60s, in which a lot of attitudes about a lot of things loosened up considerably.

[Swmrsue]

@summermen Yes savvy now (or when this show took place) but if you have seen the entire show, she makes no bones about thefact that she was quite sheltered when it came to men....there is also the real fact that people see what they want to see...

[alanmt]

what a life...

[ChicWebb]

@summermen Who cares? It was a great bit. Why not just enjoy yourself?

[PatrickLHawkins]

@summermen I've always read that it was Rory Calhoun the studios sold out to Confidential to get them to not print the story about Rock.

[PatrickLHawkins]

@summermen It could be just for the act. Or maybe she was too drunk at the time to realize it. But I think it is quite possible Elaine didn't know Rock was gay. As savvy as she appears, I got the distinct impression that she was rather naive. When she played Melvin the newspaper reporter in Pal Joey she sang the song Zip. (I don't like a deep contralto Or a man whose voice is alto Zip! I'm an heterosexual). She claimed that she thought heterosexual meant gay.

[summermen]

The public (mostly) never knew, but it was widely known in the business. Rock was pulled in in a gay bar raid early in his career, the cops were paid off, but Confidential Mag threatened him. Rock's agent arranged to throw George Nader under their bus, and pushed Rock into a marriage with his secretary Phyllis Gates. By the McMillan years he was hanging out in SF sex clubs with Army Maupin. So was every other hot gay man in the world. Rock left Nader a big sum in his will.

[savida34e]

@summermen I didn't know that he wasn't "careful"! I''d heard that he was in the closet. However your statement dose have a lot of merit.

[JRR0013]

No one knew about Rock Hudson (absolutely) that he was gay until he came out in 1984 when he announced he had AIDS. He had been seen with beautiful women and had been married. The marriage was a sham, of course. I would have been head over heels over him too!