‘Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed’
HBO

The name Rock Hudson came to be by aligning two iconic geographic locations: the Rock of Gibraltar and the Hudson River. It was formulated by Hudson’s infamous agent, Henry Willson, in 1947 when the young actor was just beginning in Hollywood. 

The rest, some might say, is history, and specifically movie history, yet the new documentary “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed,” which just had its premiere on HBO, does attempt to chisel a few new facets into the set-in-stone story of the screen idol and document the flow of his career, albeit superficially.

After a preamble of clips and testimonials reminding viewers of what a major star he once was, the documentary charts its course. Events in Hudson’s early life are skimmed, starting with his childhood in small-town Illinois, his stint in the Navy during World War II, and how after the war he moved to Los Angeles, where his father was living. Yet no mention is made of his parents’ divorce when he was just 4 and how, after his mother remarried, he never got on with his stepfather, a former Marine Corps officer. 

The only psychological insight gleaned from this part comes when Hudson, in an interview from the early 1980s, states that he couldn’t admit to wanting to be an actor because his ambition was considered “sissy stuff.”

Soon after he’s christened Rock Hudson, his career in Hollywood starts to take off. The film does a good job of showing how he was in the right place at the right time, particularly since the public wished to see more masculine men in the pictures than had been on-screen before the war. Still, Hudson had to learn how to lower his voice and conform to a heterosexual persona, despite being gay. 

The doc, though, never suggests that he developed a Judy Garland-type neurosis as a result of being molded into something other than who he was, presenting him instead as an earnest example of beefcake who simply wanted to act and lead a private personal life.

Movie fans surely will love it when the doc gets to the films Hudson made with Douglas Sirk. Seen in a couple of vintage interviews, the director talks about his “metaphysical” pictures and how he made Hudson a star. Clips from “Magnificent Obsession,” “All That Heaven Allows,” and “Written on the Wind” reaffirm that the handsome actor was a perfect match for the director’s exploration of society’s surfaces and submerged anxieties. 

Indeed, all the clips assembled for the documentary speak to how Rock Hudson often played men characterized by ambivalence, confusion, and even deflection. Director Stephen Kijak and editor Claire Didier have fun inserting, and sometimes creatively editing, clips from Hudson’s movies that act as either a sympathetic or snide chorus to the events being discussed by the documentary’s commentators. This is amusing for a while, especially when the movies were witty and self-aware themselves (e.g., “Pillow Talk”), but the technique grows tiresome and distasteful, especially when the actor’s real life turns tragic.

Before the documentary gets to Hudson’s untimely death, though, we do get glimpses of the actor’s other life. One of his first lovers, Lee Garlington, is interviewed about how they met and traveled together, with the two always avoiding being photographed next to each other. 

It also becomes apparent that Hudson had many lovers over the years — author Armistead Maupin calls him a “sexual gladiator” — and the filmmakers include a few salacious anecdotes and a jawdropper of a recorded phone call. Accounts from fellow actors and movie insiders make plain that many people knew Hudson was homosexual, yet they go on to explain that he could never come out and remain a star. Even Hoover’s FBI had a file on him.

While “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed” does tackle quite a bit in its 105-minute runtime, the documentary falls short when it comes to illustrating how his career reflected the decline of the Hollywood studio system, both as a movie star and later when he became a presence on television. It also doesn’t delve into his friendships with Elizabeth Taylor or Nancy Reagan with any depth, and sidelines his gay friends and partners near the end to mere handlers. 

In their summation, the director and his chosen pundits essentially absolve the icon of having denied that he had AIDS until the last minute by asserting that his death increased awareness of the disease, making him out to be an activist of a sort. If the notion of Rock Hudson as a reluctant crusader for AIDS funding and gay rights doesn’t quite jibe with how he lived his life, it does match the look one often sees in Hollywood publicity photos of the actor: “that little glint of fear in his eyes, the insecurity,” as former co-star Piper Laurie puts it. 

He was one of the last of the brightly shining, manufactured stars, and yet his true essence was humble and opaque.