‘Rock Hudson died of AIDS’ premiered 37 years ago today, October 2, 1985!

What were the Nielsen ratings?

I have never forgotten. I was going to post but figured no one on DL would care...I was a teen. The previous summer before his passing was nothing but endless tabloid stories on Rock. Exhausting. But tame compared to todays endless social media. Marc Christian also passed away...

Wow! 37 years ago today. I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news.

Thanks OP for being one of the people who posts these reminders.

Why couldn't he lie? Or he wanted it to be known as the last fuck-off to the world?

R6 = He probably could have lied but he did the Doris Day Show and it was obvious he was sick....People were coming forward to the tabloids. He collapsed getting treatment in Paris...I think he just said Fuck It, I admit I have aids---He pretty much said thats how it went in his autobiography.

How known was it to the general public (by say the 70s) that he was gay? I know he wasn’t out, and that some Dora Dumpfuck midwestern housewife would have no idea, but I mean among semi-sophisticated/semi savvy people. I swear I remember my mother commenting on the speculation before he officially revealed it, something like “of course he has AIDS and everyone knows he’s gay,” but when I ask her about it now, she says “no no one had any idea,” so that doesn’t help.

My guess would be it was a semi open secret at that point but please fill me in.

There were rumors about Rock Hudson in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

There were rumors about Rock Hudson in the late 60s when it was rumored he and Jim Nabors had gotten married.

Not long before Rock died, the attendant at the parking lot near my office volunteered to me one morning that Rock had died. I dutifully reported the (premature) news when I arrived at work. When I next saw this attendant, I told him it wasn’t nice to prematurely report someone’s death.

R9- It’s also not nice to fool Mother Nature!

There was a time when being a cocksucker or a fudgepacker was one thing, while being a homosexual or queer was another. This set up still exists in many cultures. Lots of people don't want to think TOO MUCH about other peoples sex lives and being a cocksucker could be "a kink" or "a dirty sin" that an otherwise "standard" man might pursue.

Hip cosmopolitan types might have understood there was a hidden subculture of real homosexuals. But most people could go on believing some married, publicly heterosexual man was that, even if he fucked some boy butt. "Gay" hadn't been invented yet. There was no identifiable lifestyle, no identity most folks would understand.

By the time of AIDS, gay was an identity and a subculture most people knew about.

For example the notorious Rod Stewart rumor in the 70s. Rod Stewart was able to maintain a reputation of a sort of playboy who dated and married beautiful women, but everyone had also heard the rumor he was a cocksucker. And Mick Jagger and David Bowie. I think almost all people took Rock Hudson at his "Public Identity" as a handsome hunk ladies man, and could also hear that he was a sometime cocksucker or fudgepacker and the two images could co-exist, bizarrely.

I remember watching this as a child and I had to ask my grandmother what was AIDS, and how Rock got it.

She said it was a heart disease.

It was a scandal because he’d just had a role on Dynasty in which he’d kissed Krystal. He’d already lost quite a bit of weight by that point. The appearance with Doris Day though was really shocking, he looked very ill.