Bob preble gay

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'Long before he landed in Hollywood, he understood that if he wanted to be accepted, the very essence of who he was would have to be edited out of the frame,' the author writes.

The next day.'

Hudson's career peaked in the 1960s when he starred alongside Doris Day in three comedies, starting with 1959's Pillow Talk.

By 1965 Hollywood was in on the joke of his sexuality and in A Very Special Favor, he played a man trying to woo a woman by pretending to be gay.

It was a cruel joke and Griffin writes: 'The conflicts that he grappled with daily and the deadening silence he had to endure in order to maintain his position as Hollywood's most popular leading man were being played for laughs.

'Hudson's personal life had been cannibalized by his own studio; his torment over his predicament had become the ultimate Hollywood in-joke.'

Amid a febrile anti-Communist atmosphere, the FBI investigated Hudson, as it did many leading actors, and found that he attended 'large scale homosexual orgies' in Los Angeles.

He also made visits to the first gay bar in Lexington, Kentucky, called The Gilded Cage, and through his connections there attended parties where he was believed to have slept with college football players.

Hudson's celebrity friends included Taylor who is described in the book as Hudson's 'soul mate'.

What is all this AIDS s***?' 

The book reveals Hudson's inner pain due to decades of living in the closet while publicly playing the role of a red-blooded, heterosexual male pin-up.

In his final months, he flew to Paris for treatment with an experimental drug called HPA-23, but his close friends said Hudson was in denial.

They revealed he once snapped at them in frustration and fear saying: 'I don't have AIDS!

I think he liked playing the big brother who came to the rescue.'

Hudson's career dropped off in in the late 1960s and 70s as he entered his 40s and lost his boyish charm - a low point was the disaster film Avalanche which was billed as 'six million tons of icy terror!'

Griffin writes that Hudson began to take 'whites', or amphetamines, to help him on the long shoots.

He had a career resurgence in the 1970s with the TV series McMillan & Wife and he moved into what would be his home for the rest of his life, The Castle, his 5,000 square feet property in Beverly Hills.

Hudson's other lovers included Tom Clark, who became a long term boyfriend and moved in for a decade.

Then there was Jack Coates, a 23-year-old who he wooed one afternoon over mint juleps but it fell apart because he got fed up with being what Griffin calls 'Mrs Rock Hudson'.

By the fall of 1983 Marc Christian, who was 30 at the time and 20 years Hudson's junior, became his boyfriend and replaced Clark as his live-in lover.

Friends said that you 'couldn't have found a taller, blonder, sexier guy' and he was Hudson's 'dream man.'

But according to some of Hudson's former employees, there were warning signs from the start that he was taking advantage of him.

Hudson's estate manager Marty Flaherty said that at the beginning it was 'basically shopping sprees for Marc Christian.'

Hudson was was 'so giddy and smitten' he bought Christian a new Mercedes Benz, presents for him and his friends, and acting lessons.

As Flaherty saw it, Hudson was 'getting older and had scored this hot, young trophy boyfriend - he really thought he was in love.'

Miller, Hudson's close friend, said that Christian even confessed to him that he had been working as a male escort in the past which caused further tension.

Hudson was desperate to work again and went against the advice of his friends to shoot, The Ambassador, a turgid drama about an American ambassador in Israel.

When he returned home from Tel Aviv in January 1984 Christian was shocked by his physical condition.

He had lost 10lbs in weight and his face was a 'dull, ashen grey'.

It was the first sign of the effects AIDS was having on his body.

Others began to notice Hudson's weight loss and after a state dinner at the White House Nancy Reagan, a big fan of Hudson's, sent him a set of photos of the night including a profile picture which showed a pimple on his neck.

In a touching gesture she included a note asking him to get it checked out.

On June 5, 1984 Hudson revealed to his closest friends his dark secret - he had AIDS, and maybe cancer too.

Hudson told Miller he had cried for a week after he got the diagnosis from a Beverly Hills dermatologist who had done a biopsy on a lesion on his neck and identified it as Kaposi's sarcoma, a type of cancer.

At the time AIDS was considered a disease that 'fairies on Santa Monica Boulevard got', as Miller put it, and was deeply misunderstood by the wider public.

Griffin writes that after decades of being in the closet the lesions and sores starting to sprout on Hudson's body were the most 'hideous kind of public declaration imaginable.'

Hudson asked Miler to accompany him to see his personal physician and an AIDS specialist from UCLA, Dr Michael Gottlieb.

Hudson asked if it was a fatal disease and after a 'measured pause' Gottlieb suggested it would be wise if he 'got his affairs in order', Griffin writes.

The doctor asked if Hudson had a lover and he said he did not currently have one, although a former companion - Christian - was still living with him.

According to Miller, Gottlieb told Hudson: 'You are a famous man and there will be headlines when this is announced, so it is up to you whether you tell your former lover or not.'

On the drive home Miller claimed that Hudson told him that he 'could have gotten AIDS from Marc and he wanted him out of the house by five o'clock that afternoon,' but Miller talked him down.

Hudson said that Christian would 'destroy me' if he found out so he decided not to tell him.

Griffin writes: 'Hudson insisted on sending anonymous letters to four individuals he had sexual encounters with prior to his AIDS diagnosis.

'(His friend) George Nader mailed the letters from Palm Springs so that they recipients wouldn't immediately connect the dots as to who the sender was'.

According to Miller, 'only one person ever responded', a 22-year-old man from New York that Hudson had a fling with.

The next day the man found out he had AIDS and sold his story to a tabloid for $10,000.

He died six months later and his name was Tony; the story did not run for 18 months after Hudson's death.

Hudson spent the next months denying he had AIDS as he did not want to tarnish his image.

He flew to Paris for treatment with the experimental drugs and after several sessions his doctors told him the AIDS virus was no longer in his blood, but that did not mean it had gone away.

Dr Dominique Dormont, one of the specialists at the Institut Pasteur, said that Hudson had been 'too optimistic' in his interpretation of this and he should have stayed in Paris longer.

Instead Hudson returned to the US to star in the TV series Dynasty and returned to Paris for more treatment, but by then his condition deteriorated so much he was beyond help.

On July 25 ,1985 his French publicist Yanou Collart revealed that Hudson had AIDS; the night before Ronald Reagan had phoned Hudson's room to offer his support.

On October 2 Hudson died at the age of 59.

America was initially shocked at the revelation and his implied homosexuality, but it became a milestone in the fight against intolerance toward gay people and those with AIDS.

Within days Congress allocated $221 million to find a cure for AIDS and donations to AIDS charities skyrocketed.

Shortly before he died Hudson donated $250,000 to amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, which helped to launch it and make it the fundraising powerhouse it is today.

William M.

Hoffman, the author of As Is, on of the first Broadway plays about AIDS which debuted in 1985, summed up the mood when he said: 'If Rock Hudson can have it, nice people can have it'.

Hudson left everything to Nader and Miller, his friends of 30 years; his estate was worth an estimated $27 million including real estate holdings.

But Christian was furious and claimed that the first time he learned about Hudson's diagnosis was the press conference.

He sued Hudson's estate and claimed Hudson carried on sleeping with him for eight months after he got his diagnosis, leaving him a 'dead man'.

Christian was awarded $21 million by a jury which said Hudson had displayed 'outrageous conduct', though the sum was later reduced to $5.5 million.

The California state Court of Appeal upheld the ruling for what it called the 'ultimate in personal horror, the fear of slow, agonizing death'.

Christian died in 2009 due to pulmonary issues which were attributed to his smoking - he had tested negative several times for AIDS.