All That Heaven Allowed, released to buy or rent on digital platforms on Monday, October 23, is an initiate portrait of actor Rock Hudson – Hollywood’s leading man of the 1950s and ‘60s – an icon of the “Golden Age of movies”.
His diagnosis and eventual death from AIDS in 1985 shocked the world, and subsequently shifted the way the public perceived the pandemic.
The film examines not only his cinematic and cultural legacy, but also takes a rare and sometimes heartbreaking look at his private life through interviews with close friends and former lovers. Born Roy Fitzgerald, he was renamed by his agent. With his 6’5” frame, strong physique and chiselled good looks, he was ironically the invented embodiment of romantic masculinity and heterosexuality.
In this film we see a man living a double life; one whose public persona was carefully manufactured by his handlers and planned by film studio bosses. While he feared a career-ending discovery that he was privately living as a gay man, he also seemed to have a contented life to those who knew him. His great successes included All That Heaven Allows, and Giant, opposite Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean, as well as blockbuster comedies with Doris Day like Pillow Talk.
He was the highest paid actor on TV in the 1970s with McMillan and Wife. The documentary places Hudson’s contribution as one of the last great stars of the studio system and celebrates his enduring legacy as a cinema icon who helped change the public perception of AIDS.
Nearly four years into the pandemic, his death was a wake-up call for the public and helped elevate serious discussions of the treatment of HIV and AIDS into the mainstream, forcing social and political change. Directed by celebrated documentary film maker Stephen Kijak, the film features interviews with Doris Day, Linda Evans, Piper Laurie, Ross Hunter, Armistead Maupin and many more.
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