Rock Hudson - Post Burial, Debate and Legacy

Post Burial, Debate and Legacy

Following Hudson's funeral, Marc Christian sued Hudson's estate on grounds of "intentional infliction of emotional distress". Christian tested negative for HIV but claimed Hudson continued having sex with him until February 1985, more than eight months after Hudson knew he had HIV. Hudson biographer Sara Davidson later stated that, by the time she had met Hudson, Christian was living in the guest house, and Tom Clark, who had allegedly been Hudson's partner for many years before, was living in the house.

Following his death, Elizabeth Taylor, his co-star in the film Giant, purchased a bronze plaque for Hudson on the West Hollywood Memorial Walk.

Hudson has been the subject of three plays: Hollywood Valhalla by Aidan Harney, starring Patrick Byrnes as Rock and Stewart Roche as his personal trainer, Toby, which was staged at Bewley's Cafe Theatre, Dublin, Ireland, in 2011; "For Roy", by Nambi E. Kelley, starring Richard Henzel as Roy and Hannah Gomez as Caregiver, which was staged at American Theatre Company in Chicago in 2010 and Rock, by Tim Fountain, starring Michael Xavier as Rock and Bette Bourne as his agent Henry Willson, which was staged at London's Oval House Theatre in 2008.

In 2010, with the gag orders finally lifted from the 1985 lawsuit trial of Marc Christian versus the estate of Hudson, Robert Park Mills, the attorney who represented the Hudson estate against Christian in court, released a new 492 page book entitled Between Rock and a Hard Place-In Defense of Rock Hudson. In the book, Mills argues that the public was blinded from the real truth, the gross injustice done to the late actor by Christian and by Rock’s alleged friend, Mark Miller, as was the court, the jury, and the press. Mills argues that the jury overlooked the possibility Christian may have been AIDS-free simply because Hudson never had the relationship with Christian which Christian claimed to have had with him. According to this argument, if Hudson had had such a relationship, Christian would have had to have acquired HIV and AIDS if the repeated unprotected sexual activity claimed had taken place. Christian, who died in 2009 at age 56, never had HIV or AIDS.

Mills argues that Christian did not tell the truth to his attorney Harold Rhoden or in court, and that Hudson could not defend himself before the jurors because Christian waited until Rock died. Only when Christian found out he was not in the late actor's will did he bring his lawsuit, which won $5.5 million dollars from Hudson's estate (minus attorney's fees).

In the book Rock Hudson, Friend of Mine by his live-in Hollywood publicist Tom Clark, Clark said he would go to his grave believing Hudson acquired HIV from blood transfusions during his emergency quintuple bypass open heart surgery in 1981. Clark's book characterized Christian as "a criminal, a thief, an unclean person, a blackmailer, a psychotic, an extortionist, a forger, a perjurer, a liar, a whore, an arsonist and a squatter." Christian then sued Clark. Christian was living in the guest house after Clark, who had left in 1983, had returned to Hudson's home in 1985 to take care of him at assistant Mark Miller's request.